08/08/2017b

[0:00:00] i still think within a three or four year turnaround and just everything that we're requesting to get things heading in that direction we can take them ourselves have more control over them and then also of course save the city the citizens money so our main priorities would be in my opinion whatever you see here we want to uh of all the things we have listed here we still put the asphalt truck as the number one thing that we really need we have a uh we got a used truck recently and put our existing hopper on that and we've called her a frankenstein truck but it is giving us ability to do hot asphalt work again but we still need to really seriously consider getting that truck a new piece of equipment for that uh otherwise these these changes the priorities would be the uh taking care of our staff and currently and uh in getting these new programs going uh if you can see it for that the work so like i said we feel it'll save money in the long run for sure and even some of it in the short term but uh we just need to see what you all think about it so okay any questions for bradley i've got i've got a couple on the animal controller we are we up on that i mean and the reason i ask is i see i see that a lot more in my ward and over on this side of town i mean we've got a lot of dogs that run around are we are we in this aspect are we reactive or are we proactive as much as we can be in the animal control side is there something we can do to improve that um well i'd like to say yes sir that where's chromatic from candy like he said it's a fairly reactive thing you don't know i mean depending on what the problem is if it's just the dogs roaming and when we get uh we we have both we do control and see what we need to be doing we see something out there and we'll try to deal with it obviously uh as we see it uh but we do get a fair amount of the emotion or a lot of i would say probably most of what we get is complaints that we react to

[0:02:01] uh we get those we uh i feel like we're very responsive uh i'm not trying to glorify our uh you know perry and staff do a great job they take care of uh he cares about the city cares about what he's doing and he puts that into his staff too so i mean they we we may be more reactive just because that's the nature of what they're doing but i think they respond well and take care of it i don't think we have a lot of lingering issues if we do it's because they're just they're working on them some of them if you have to trap things it takes time you have to work through issues with neighbors and things try to keep stuff out of court it takes time sometimes but they of course they spend their fair share of time in court too doing what needs to be done prosecute as appropriate but uh i'd say it's probably fair to say they're more reactive uh we but we do try to like say new patrol and so especially we know we have a problem area or something's going on they're trying to be out there staying on top of it and not just let it wait for something to happen i don't know that completely yeah and i know they are they're very good at what they do that's not that was never a question i just want to make sure they do have all the resources that they've got um well according to what i mean what i spoke with perry uh about this and i always of course talk with him before we do this and the main thing he requested was the consideration for some increases for some of the people as appropriate um not necessarily for him personally but i did put that in myself i think that's appropriate but that's just you know he that was the main thing he was interested he feels like they can keep and he does want to keep doing the training we're trying to keep that going for our personnel we had some people step up in training last year we did we were able to give them a little increase in mid-year kind of thing because they were getting additional certifications and so forth but he is definitely proactive on trying to keep up training and that kind of thing for the people we have in place and um you know he sees the need probably in the future would probably will want to request adding an officer and vehicle and so forth i just didn't think it was necessary this year so we didn't do that and so

[0:04:03] but uh for what he tells me yes sir i think we're we're sufficient uh and uh like i said we just want to keep uh doing what we're doing because they do a good job it's not broken don't fix the kind of thing but we definitely can always you know seek to be better and i think perry does a good job doing that so and on the public works side look any time i call i i want to give kudos to where they're due i i call and things get done whether it be a street sign or a bushes cleared from a stop sign you know come and contact you on a regular basis we are going to have some areas in in my ward and that's what i'm going to speak on today is is we're really going to have some cleanup to do is that going to fall under the public works side and when i say clean up we're starting to get a lot of tree limbs a lot of things like that that are hanging over into the roadway uh yes sir we do trim we've been trying beer so i know you've seen some of those recently we'd do that yesterday it's hanging out right away and stuff and we come through and do the trimming for that type of thing it's just not power lines and stuff is that you know we get energy and they they usually do that themselves anyway because they're always watching that but we don't mess with those type of things just for safety reasons but yes sir if it's hanging out over the street we will come out and trim them up and i asked them to look like you we had talked about right and they actually already been looking a little bit uh just kind of looking around the area to try to get the ones that they could see while they were out addressing the most recent ones that you sent us so we think we've got everything we need for to do that i mean uh yes sir okay sometimes we just need to know um i don't mean to say that we're not proactive as we can be in public works either but as the mayor said to some degree you know we suffer from having a lot more to do than we have people to do it sometimes and we have to prioritize what we're doing especially what y'all need us to do and what we do we need to do on a day-to-day basis uh so i feel like if we had additional personnel we have the equipment and we can give we have the means to get the equipment if we don't have it we have things we can use and we just need the people to be able to get out there to do this so of course we have some equipment we need because that's where as far in the budget but things like that or we can do them sometimes

[0:06:06] it's just do we have somebody available and we try to send people question pairs it's just for safety reasons so we'd have two people available to go out and do what they need to do uh we don't always have that so but we do try to be responsive as we can with what and with the uh how much are we spending now on our right away it's right at 180 000 for the year we think we're going to be able with the new equipment to save money obviously that's i'm all for that as that's got factored in the maintenance and everything for the same equipment oh that's that's my deal 204 is the contract for the general right of ways in my presentation i indicated that the employees will cost us 275 so no we're not gonna it's not gonna be it's it's going to be go up from 204 to 275 and then and what i proposed was buying the initial equipment the initial overlay would be in the capital improvement bond so your net change on an annual basis would be going from 204 to 275. obviously eventually we will have some maintenance on the equipment but the main thing with that is not you know the way i view it going from 204 to 275 being able to pick up the inbound right aways and improve the service and again i'm not gonna i'm not here to bash anyone in a public meeting but uh the current contract uh for the last four years we've begged them i beg them to do things like i want it done it's not getting done it's just the service is not good uh the city does not look like i wanted to look and so that's why that's my proposal to go it'll be 275 instead of 204 to improve our service and our look and pick up them dot right away and the other thing is they can be those six personnel can be cross-trained to work on the streets in the winter as well oh yes sir yeah absolutely we can use them for other things and as mayor said we'll just have a lot more control over our ability to do what we want done which all we've done or something we've missed something we can just get out and do we don't have to wait on anybody else to react to it we'll just stop and make it happen what a great example that again is during the storm i know several of you board members were contacting me suggesting that we do something

[0:08:07] different because we weren't getting it picked up in the in the uh right time and i agree it didn't meet my standards either but my hands are tight i mean you know when you have a contract with someone to handle your rubbish you've cast your lot with them that's your person because the other people if i'm an outside business person why am i going to come help you if you put your money in with another contractor and that's what we ran into we just simply couldn't find the other resources so again we've cast our lot with whoever it is that we hire to do it so if we're not getting the standards that we want we got to do something different i can tell you right now the may 28 storm was a big lesson for me because i felt helpless i mean we were not getting the service that we expected to get and we don't have the personnel i mean like i said we're a bare bones public works group i mean we need more people in public works to meet the pothole demands and the the right-of-way demands that we have yes sir uh we'll put a plug in for our guys they did help a lot and uh i mean i'm not talking to me i talk about our guys robert and his crew so that he had out there during the storm stuff they did a lot of what they could do with the equipment we had to work with and stuff so i just give them i know that's self-serving but it's not going to be it's about them and robert we just don't have a great resource he's the very own works he does uh he does a great job of what he's got and he really cares about what he's doing so we appreciate that that's all i got any other questions for bradley you have my the one that i had got answered okay okay thank you sir thank you um part we'll go west parks right now i think west is fairly short we've discussed his heavily uh mainly uh as far as expansion you know we've got the tennis pro shop that was at the top of the capital improvements list and then in the bond also for infrastructure was the resurfacing of pine tar alley sunset loot excuse me not pine tar alley but uh sunset loop and uh

[0:10:10] snowden lane those are the parts that were in my plan yes so take the floor please uh thank you guys first of all sorry for the entire i really thought this meeting was tomorrow so i got this and my assistants come back tagging along today but this is pretty straightforward as you know the mayor assets made cuts i'm 89 in 411 budget which is what you have on that first page in fy 18 our focus is neighborly parks and volleyball um if you appreciate we had 75 thousand dollars to spend in neighborhood parks which i plan to do something big in central park and wealth point and make improvements to the other areas um big news i hope the volleyball coming in the next week or two i'm gonna meet with mayor we we have some big opportunities there i actually met some people last last week and yesterday so i hope that blows up like it's supposed to um tennis twelve tournaments next year i had our first one this past weekend under players on the last page that you have is our revenue through yesterday we're at 2.3 four more tournaments in softball and two in baseball to go with iraq soccer and football still to come so i hope if things trend the way they're trending now it's the best year parks that we're having great deal pass this year obviously for your parks is huge and we're hoping to get that back so we make our improvements one thing that wes and i discussed on the capital improvement plan still keeping the volleyball and the tennis pro shop is the number one priorities but then you have green brook you know the green brick indoor training facility and soccer expansion amphitheater expansion those are things that we believe would be a great starting point you know for the penetrative parks tourism tax we're able to get that back that's something that

[0:12:12] you know would be um there should be an enormous amount of support for that those are projects that have been requested by the citizens for many years uh so anyway that's that's kind of how we prioritize that brought those back make that contingent upon the reinstatement of the tourism tax question i'm really excited over the prospect of the volleyball i think that's that's i'm the more i hear the more i keep getting excited about it are we going to we're not going to need to hire something if we're looking at doing tournaments and making making it a revenue and you know a revenue source or some sort of a revenue source would we need to hire a person to be in charge of that i had a meeting yesterday with a guy is that included in your budget no sir it's not because our plan at this point was to there's an enormous amount of interest from volunteers that have experience running volleyball tournaments so what our plan was is kind of like we did at greengrook to kind of start with a volunteer kind of thing and then see how it goes and then at that point we would know more about how that would justify having a full-time person on advanced volleyball tournaments is that the way that's how we what we talked about yes everything has changed since this week last fall there's been a few more developments that i just haven't had time to give you it literally happened yesterday but again the thing is to get it off the ground get it started and uh and like i said there's a lot of people that uh that are interested in uh volunteering to start with the volleyball first but i think next year you know if it goes like we think it will next year we want to make an adjustment but i don't think it's necessary for this but here well tournaments of course is is something that you're looking we're looking forward to this is primarily a wreck i mean we want to do rec leagues and i played player development

[0:14:24] i will add that again i couldn't help but read some of the dialogue that went on after the last meeting it's amazing that may be the biggest butchering of my comments ever in the history of this city but last meeting i explained and i'll say it again bob you hear you record me bob good lord um what i said was that the arena is an outstanding facility and we believe that it's underused i think it can be used much better than it is it was not to replace the events that are there now it was just to use it more for a parks facility there's an enormous amount of demand for girls volleyball and we we thought about a lot of different things and we felt like the demand was the greatest for volleyball that's how we came to the decision to make a proposal for volleyball courts we have hopes of keeping all the other events that are there and along with the volleyball it's also not about just volleyball tournaments is to add a volleyball record for own citizens to play and practice so that that being said uh there could be some conflicts i mean there may be a few i mean there may be a few trade shows that we have to let go but anyway my plan what i see is that it's being underused and we could do a much better job of opening it up for our youth and allowing volleyball there you know with all the opportunities that volleyball provides for girls there's many college scholarships that are available now and i just think that it's a park facility it could be much better used as a park facility than just doing you know trade shows and flea markets and things like that i would like to say too i've discussed some things with uh with mr brown i think that is one of our most under utilized buildings in the whole entire city like myself and i see it more than just as a as a flea market i mean let's just face it that that does come with its own

[0:16:26] connotation of where's the flea market and uh i don't necessarily like that but i'm okay with the flea market and everything else that goes on there because it does bring quite a bit of people to the to the area and it's and it's and it's desired by a lot of people as well uh not to not to demonize the flea market by any means uh but i also think we have more room for other things to go on in there as well as i've discussed with wes before i mean i've been to a place before where it was divided off with nothing more than tracks and netting they used it for baseball training softball training girls slow pitch fast pitch practice everything everything was there and it was all in a small little section of a building so i think that's something we can look at in the future as well but i do i think i think the volleyball is going to be huge over this out of town so thank you and again it's it's it's a it's another solution to the revitalization effort you know bringing more customers to the to the original business district uh where the volleyball tournaments would also help the businesses in the in the uh you know the original part of our city wes what about the neighborhood clerks can you get a little more specific on what you're planning on doing as you know this summer what was raining we got behind um i want more attention back to those because our citizens deserve that um areas like central park brookhaven ross point uh the ones that get used more we know we want to do more but frost point i want to fix the welcome trail the garbage cans picnic tables update the equipment um the same goes for central park as far as the weekly upkeep our bowlers the chute you know the grass just shoots out i want to talk about mulching decks to fill in their mowers that way it gets recycled up in there there's no clumps left behind and this is the first year that we've had a dedicated line for this so i'm hoping that as the years go on everything

[0:18:36] i think that's a great idea i'd like to see the walking trail redone brookhaven too so that's if and again just a quick recap of park priorities neighborhood parks is one of them what would you say the other volleyball we'll have all tennis uh you know softball arnold leader can testify what coach katie is doing in softball it's growing year by year uh she's had two tournaments this year but she's had to rent fields off the ranch that's because we couldn't handle 70 teams wow and that goes back to the volleyball i know it'll be great to have citizens volunteer to help but maybe we can squeeze a little bit of money to have whoever consoled a final consultant to bring in these teams from out of town and have a couple you know they bring in the state of the hotels to eat the restaurants and it's a revenue source and i know first and foremost for the citizens but wouldn't hurt to start a revenue source early if we could figure out a way to do it certainly yeah that's part of the plan part of my plan was to eventually have someone that operates the volleyball but um but at this point we're just trying to be as efficient you know as possible until we it's growing so do we need more softball fields long term yes more teams in the next place and they they came from everywhere oklahoma florida georgia alabama isn't there some land on the other side of sweden by the fire station yes sir that the and this that's published too it's on it's written down and what i gave you at the july 6 meeting but it's been part

[0:20:38] of our plan to eventually you know add some fields to cherry valley as well and that'd be a good spillover for large tournaments we could use that as a spillover of the only problem it's just a fact we face serious vandalism issues there how much does the blog run generally well that's a hot hard question but when we did the cost estimates for expanding that's 600 per field and then that includes you know your laser gradient or your black vinyl fencing facade irrigation okay and i appreciate your effort on the cuts too appreciate you uh helping us be as efficient as we can any other questions for wes thank you so chris shelton information technology and emergency communication chris serves a dual role also with rit and also you can manage his dispatch and all of our communications from the city helps me tremendously you know with emergency type communications throughout the city so i appreciate that i will attempt to be very brief our budget as the merit requested we were able to make the requested budget cuts even and meet that even after making a couple of increases in a couple of lines our primary operation lines in our budget are the computer line and the internet connectivity basically the computer lines is our all equipment that we operate with throughout the year across both divisions of our department we didn't we did do a decrease there but in the network connectivity line we increased that by 15 000 that increases is necessary uh to

[0:22:42] accommodate the new network connectivity that we did across the city we put in a mpls network and basically what that does just in short it allows us better redundancy and the type of connectivity that they have it allows for for greater speeds and bandwidth and in doing that that helps all these other departments in the remote locations and such be more productive a lot of what my department does uh basically can be looked at as infrastructure the things that we do often roll over from the i.t side to every department and then from the communications side we're basically infrastructure in the link between the public and police and fire services with that increase there we also did put in for a vehicle in our budget this year we're looking we're still dealing with some some really old vehicles we're driving some trucks that have been donated from other departments that have gotten us through for some time that they've sidelined and we still have one of the magnolia jeeps still being driven every day when it runs but we have a lot of problems out of it and that's a 2003 and so we we put in to replace that with something along the lines of the ford edge our techs those guys are awesome they do a lot with a little they're out and about all day long at all the sites they remote when they can but a lot of things that are needed to be done they have to go to the different sites and it's important they have a vehicle to come out and as well as we still are a hub and spoke set up for public safety for this county our i.t department manages all the equipment that all of the law enforcement in the county is all hosted on servers here at our site so those guys help to support that

[0:24:45] manifest so again it's important that they have something to be able to come out and support them to do their day-to-day stuff another thing that we requested was two additional dispatch positions as we're all aware the public safety business gets busier every year and as we have been fortunate enough to receive some grants for police and fire personnel is like obviously we we have a need for those personnel because there is a growth in the calls for service and the services that they provide those those services can't take place without those people in the dispatch center being there to make that connection and get them out there my part of my four-year goal is to get us to a position where we have 30 dispatchers basically an overall rule and a national rule for to man a position 24 7 the rule is 6.5 personnel per position and at 30 positions that would at least say that we should always be able to man at least five positions in there in 2010 i met i know alderman hill was part of that committee that we worked on and did a study after i came over to i.t we did a study in looking back and trying to determine exactly uh the number of dispatchers that we needed in there at a time and things we could do to make them more efficient and at that time we determined that we needed four positions and that equaled uh basically one of them would be a supervisor but they would also rotate in all the positions while they were working uh while they were working that would be one one supervisor um who would fill one of the four positions but the four positions would be basically two call takers one police dispatcher and one firing a best dispatcher since that time we have just that room never stops it never gets quiet within a year or so after that another

[0:26:50] position was actually created due to the abundance and the proactiveness of the police department they created what we call station b which is basically another channel when they need queries ran running someone's driver's license different type of things and some of the things they cannot get back due to fbi rules they can't run that stuff on their mobile computers so in order to free up the primary channel so calls could still be put out people could call for assistance as they needed this other position was created and it stays live most of the time so basically in in a sense we created even with our projections in 2010 in the business we were then we would say that we needed five positions so at this point i realized budget constraints i would love it we could just take it up to 30 today but my goal is to ask for two per year to see that happen even as as busy as we are today the needs are there as well it's a common practice in dispatch centers even when they're not that busy the dispatchers don't always get to take regular breaks or leave the room and i will say that we've got the the best best crew around and harness that center over there we have no doubt the busiest center in our county and we're handling things that we've never handled as often and frequent in the past and those guys have to go from taking one type of a tragic call on to maybe a not so tragic calling we want to make sure that we get to a point and give them opportunities to be able to get up and leave the room to be able to take a break to maybe be able to eat their lunch without talking to a citizen on the phone or talking on the radio while they're trying to eat to better improve the longevity and the performance of a personnel in that that kind of steers over the next one one of the things we've done for them because of the increase of the type seriousness of the types of

[0:28:51] calls they're taking is that we we're creating for them what's called a quiet room basically that gives them a place you know for an officer a firefighter they go out on on scene and deal with a very uh tragic event and i won't go into details obviously you know the kind of kind of things they deal with over there you know for a firefighter he might get to go back to the station he can go off to a different part of the states and be by himself it doesn't mean that he's not subject to be called right back out but at least he has a moment to gather his thoughts in his way a police officer he can leave get his car drive somewhere else for our dispatchers since we are completely out of room in that entire building for both communications and the police department we still needed to come up with a place for them to go so we've converted their locker room into a quiet room in the process of getting some some furniture in there and it's a well it's about a a fifth of the size it's a small closet they don't give them a place to go and get to it and get out of that ring but even that that's going to be really hard for them to do without additional personnel we won't be able to afford them that again they're going to continue to grow we're going to continue to get to get busier you know hopefully the economy keeps going like it is we continue to build houses and our citizenship continues to grow um i guess i kind of built off into the number one priority in my four-year plan that the mayor and i have been bringing up for the last couple of years we are completely out of room over there again both that's my my view and chief hertl's point of view we have made the best use out of that facility and been in several years but it just it has served its purpose but it's just not an ideal facility a at this point for a police department or especially at emergency communications center we've been very fortunate to dodge the bullet with some of these storms that have come through i can recall when the tornadoes took out all the warehouses i remember being on

[0:30:54] the phone with um chief long and actually screaming for us to get out of that room and find a desk to get under because we thought the tornado was going to take out the building that's what we live with that's part of life but i believe the public expectation is if that tornado comes through our city we're going to continue to provide the same level of public safety service as we did before the storm came through so i asked for consideration and just to keep out there on the front uh working with the mayor we're kind of looking at maybe a 20 21 timeline but a consideration of building been talking about it as a high-tech facility something that would hold our i.t infrastructure in the 911 center it would also hold an area with a room in it that could serve as an eoc and an emergency operations center so that when we have that that major event in the city it's a place where operations can be ran out of a place where the fire chief or the police chief public works the mayor chris andrea others can can come in and we can all work together but we would all each have our own spaces and of course i believe that that we should get the best bang out of our buck when we built that we would build that part of the building uh something that's multifunctional we could use that for for training at other parts of the year when it's not being used for that and basically have the equipment that would be needed as an eoc be stuff that could be rolled out and placed in place when it's not being used as a training room again the dispatch center would be something that would be built we're going to continue to have growth eventually we're going to need more positions than we have uh available today and we don't have the rings for that over there uh in in talking with chief pirtle and i won't allow him to share some up too but basically he has the same concerns and the same issues so he and i are looking at this collectively as to see can we can we find a grant can we we find some outside funding source that maybe says we could build a

[0:32:56] facility uh where the itec center and the police department would still be in the same facility there are uh some benefits to us being uh in the same facility for some of the roles that we we carry out today and even housing of something as simple as our warrants uh you know we don't we don't want to serve a warrant on someone without knowing we have that physical hard copy in hand if that warrant is sitting somewhere on the other side of the city that's a whole other challenge so we're just kind of looking uh initial plan was an i-tech facility but now we're looking for something along the lines of if we can find some some grant funding in the future maybe we need to look at a way to expand or build a new or better secure and expand the police department and in the itec center in addition to that are as you know there's been some things that occur with our employees personal vehicles subject to that happen even city vehicles but there's there's really little uh to no uh security over there like they're like there should be uh and in today's stances are dispatchers after hours they're there and often they may be the only ones in the building and no disrespect to bob but so bob can do his job and write down everything i say i won't go any further than that but there are there are serious security concerns and i i've walked out the front floor and literally had a car drive up in the parking lot that somebody had just shot his window out the suspect vehicle was was going the other way we've had you know armed people show up over there so lots of concerns and just ask that you uh keep that in mind as time goes forward that there are some things we want to look at there uh another one of uh uh four-year plans is kind of along the same thing we're having a lot more uh major events in our city involving public safety that often require will be on scenes for lengthy periods of time we're going to be looking to see if if we can come up with a some type of federally funded grant to maybe

[0:34:59] one day have a large scale command post today our command post for police to fire both are being used out of either donated or repurposed older trailers and stuff and we're getting by with that but it would be nice and i've talked with chief orton and angie perklin this would be nice if we had something more we could have a combined command post on a large scale incident and in that we look at a brainwalk line of being able to dedicate when those events come will actually dedicate what they call tactical dispatchers that's not doesn't mean it's just for a tactical event to serve the same for you know an airplane crash or something but we'll have dispatchers on the scene that can be part of the command post uh infrastructure and they can be responsible for getting the vehicle to the same stuff but again that's uh something in the full range plan four-year plan also in the the four-year plan we just want to continue to upgrade and stay up with technology on securing our network and our rit infrastructure and just listening to uh again a lot of what was said here today is part of our four-year plan as ray mentioned um we are looking at some upgrades both for for cork and utilities it doesn't our tyler technologies has our cork software is encode and also has our munis which is our financial suite and munis is what utility the utility department uses so them being with the same company we have the benefit of within the next year we will be upgrading the utility department's billing program and with that comes the capabilities of being able to scan stuff in and be even more paperless in the core department and then freeing up more space and being able to retrieve data even easier and the last thing i just kind of wrote

[0:37:01] this down as wes was talking i would like to in the in the future do some studies i know we we have used and have some wireless sailor cameras in different places and for different purposes that we've used them in public safety but i would like to also let you know that i'm going to be looking into that maybe in the future that's something we could put in some of the parks you know some of the things that are out there some of the cameras that we've used today or in some of the parts are older technology and again it it may or it may not deter the crime but it may help us solve the crimes when it goes out and destroys stuff in our parks yeah i think that's a good idea okay are there any questions for chris chris question explain to us real quick just the differences between your tech one tech two and your admin position and what they kind of what kind of problems that they uh do throughout the city okay the uh of course you know as each level goes up they inherit the responsibilities of the level below them the tech one we have one tech one personnel today they basically do desktop support they roll out new desktops and the computer comes in a person gets even with the best virus out there we're going to have viruses we're going to have infected machines that need to be rolled back or reloaded printer support basic troubleshooting you know basically the everything starts with them the level 2 tech then of course they have a greater role and have a better knowledge greater knowledge of the networking requirements and the server maintenance uh and being able especially with our mpls network uh we have uh greatly increased our our need for for knowledge and the things they do even though it's uh it's more stable it requires a lot more knowledge with the type of network that we're running

[0:39:03] today but they they take the same responsibilities as a level one tech but they take it up to managing the servers and things like that and then of course the administrator will be the person who runs the day-to-day operations he assigns all their all their tickets and then he inherits and also takes tickets as well uh and uh follows up to ensure that each of the other positions are doing so we have one level one two level twos and then one administrator and then of course the the administrator and often the level twos work with me on projects with the different departments we have a meeting it seems like every day with at least one of the departments and those guys all come in and share their site because so much involves technology today any administrators doing troubleshooting also i mean yes we promised right there you have one administrator yes sir your scenario your four-year plan in the new building what's off-site back up offsite backup is it's something that we i know it is what's your plans for offsite like okay well actually today we're looking at even beginning to try to replace the off-site backup program that we have today just because there's better technologies available than what we're using right now we do a lot of off-site backup especially with the repository of data and law enforcement here for the whole county being on our servers multiple other other servers are backed up all site but we want to go to a cloud-based backup to where we can actually spin stuff up in the cloud a tornado could come through here under the existing conditions i'll say where we are today could take that building out across the street even take this building out all these servers are gone we still have to provide service to the city some of our software is ran as it's called sas software as a service some of it's cloud-based where those servers are already off-site and in multiple sites but we want to get where we have better

[0:41:05] capabilities of being able to spin those things back up in the cloud so that basically if i can get you on a laptop and internet access you can continue to operate just like you are today and that is one again some of the priority services are already in the cloud today but we're looking at moving more and one of the vital ones that i want to do today is to get our cad system in the 911 center we can hand write uh police reports and and enter them later uh even though we're moving back to a cloud-based service as well but it's very vital that we have all the resources that are available in the cad there's information about every address that we've ever been to uh directions it's not the house in the front it's the house in the back if we lose that building we want to continue to be able to operate that and so we we are currently right now meeting with vendors uh at being able to get the dispatch center to where it was spent up in the cloud as well our primary backup site today is to go to the sheriff's department if we lose that facility and that works in correlation with the plans of the 911 board all our 911 calls would rotate there and we've designed all the equipment provided by the 911 board is also so we can go there and log in as us into the radio system uh everything have all the same access to everything as you're doing here and then we'll continue yes sir thank you any other questions for chris on the computers reduction i know that's under the equipment and computers what is the main thing that you're cutting in order to achieve that is it i know we upgrade a certain amount of computers every year right we we have a total on that we have a total of 300 computers and we we try the goal would be to upgrade for replace says 60 computers every year so that at

[0:43:09] least are getting older than five years that's not how it was in the past we had some very frustrated employees out there with some very old stuff and no i don't have any more xp machines around so i got rid of those uh but that that line again is used for every bit of equipment that we have out there some of the things that were i think we're going to be fortunate we were looking at having to replace the infrastructure for the actual again there's multiple without taking too much time there's multiple pieces of the police software and a big portion of that that we're going to need to upgrade is going off site we're actually a couple of us are going to start training the officers over the next couple of weeks and we have a two predicted uh go live dates but for the records management system we're we're moving that to a different vendor and going to the cloud with it as well okay i just want to make sure we're not falling behind in like cyber i'm going to keep security that all that up thank you has your budget increased at three percent is it that was uh before i had met with a mayor in his presentation and i agree with his recommendation any other questions for chris thank you sir okay uh chief hurdle with police will you please come forward and can we take you sure y'all want a break take a breath let's take a five minute break priorities for fy 18 course first is raises for for all of our staff and i understand that that is being addressed so i'll move on from that

[0:45:12] i have requested additional manpower in the form of six additional officers which i have applied for a federal grant federal college grant in hopes of getting that grant to help offset those expenses but we need the additional personnel the plan is at this time i would take four of those and supplement and add those to our existing street crime division and comprise the street crimes and gain task force together for a total of eight personnel in that unit and that unit would be used specifically during the peak times of the day to address specific crime areas whether it be in subdivisions or in a particular industrial or commercial area in order to help try to free up our patrolmen to answer other calls and maybe get into some more proactive patrol then two of those would be utilized to go into the bureau's investigations to help handle their increase in cases over the past few years i'm also requesting two civilian personnel one of those would be an evidence kind of evidence slash crimes crime scene tech their responsibility would be to handle the evidence room and property room delivering evidence down to the crime lab for analyzation picking it up bringing it back keeping everything logged in at this point we have an officer that is responsible for doing that and it just makes sense that we can save some cost with a technician a civilian technician versus an officer and it would free that officer up again to actually handle cases at that point also requesting one clerk for our

[0:47:15] training and support services division they would handle all the uh the paperwork for those two divisions which includes registration for classes helping to get lodging things like that completed right now again our captains are actually handling that task if we could free those up and that would give them more opportunity to to do the services and patrol uh in their special divisions that uh that we need and with these civilian positions that's pretty much going to be what we're going to try to focus on in the future is to incorporate more civilians into our staff the more civilians that we can incorporate in the more we can free up our officers time such as potentially looking at next year or in future budgets to actually hire intake personnel that can do the booking for an officer to free the officer up to get back on the street and then helping somebody to be a report taker at the station right now we're utilizing any light duty personnel assignments that we have that's what they do but if some of the ships don't have light duty or personnel on light duties so they don't have anybody to help take those reports when they come to the station so they have to call an officer off the street in order to take those so for the future that's that's kind of where we're wanting to go is to uh start hiring some civilian personnel to do the tasks that they can do that would free up an officer of the officers that we have now to give them more time back out on the street and to help patrol also for our our future budgets just like director shelton talked about he and i have been discussing an additional building

[0:49:18] we are completely out of space at our current facility we've got captain's offices that we're actually using to store equipment at such end because we have no additional place for storage or officers in fact the civilian clerk that we've got in our budget request for the training and support services division don't know where we're going to put them yet we might find some place in the corner that they can work off of but we're in in dire need of a larger facility and instead of buying or trying to construct two buildings or have two separate buildings i think is best served that we could incorporate just like we are now emergency communications and police department uh keep them together and just uh make one building that would be suitable for both that don't serve those needs as we need like director shelton said there are some things that that we have to work hand in hand in such as when our officers serve a warrant our warrants are housed in dispatch at this time because that is man 24-7 the officers do call and make sure that there is a hard copy before an arrest is made and then uh when they're transported they have to go get the warrant uh to serve on that individual so if they're in a separate location if we're here on the west and if they were in the east then an officer would have to make a specific trip out east across the city to obtain the war so we think it's just more feasible that we keep our our divisions together for purposes such as that also at this current time like director shelton said our building doesn't provide the best in security we need to have our vehicles secure our

[0:51:25] patrol vehicles secure as well as our personnel vehicles there's a lot of things that we feel like that needs to be done to prevent any terrorism attacks that would probably be unfeasible to try to do with the existing building just because of the cost so looking at those we would like to or we've been working together in order to approach the board in future budgets about the existing building or getting an existing building built for us would also like to look at it expanding in the future our training facility probably at the range where we have the property at this point we've been hosting several classes where we're bringing training from the outside in and getting our officers training not only our officers but officers from other agencies trained as well what that does when we host a class that helps us to cut our training costs because when we host the class a lot of times we receive discounted or free slots that we can get our officers trained for free because we host that training right now we're utilizing a bankplus training center on wardrive they've been very gracious in allowing us to do that but at the same point at some point i'm afraid we're going to wear out our welcome if we overuse it or there could potentially be a scheduling conflict where we're trying to get training in and they already have something set up so i would like eventually for us to have a facility where we can we can do our our own training in-house and have ample room for classrooms and the activities in that training i also like to in that be able to get a place where we can set up our fats machine the

[0:53:28] shooting use of force software and equipment that we bought last year we like to get it set up permanently so that once it's set up it can be utilized effectively on a daily basis of our officers wanted to stop by and go in and get an electrical training on that as it stands right now it's uh the system has to be set up to be used temporarily and taken back down because of all the other things that's going on at our range uh and other than that that uh that is our biggest priorities and priorities for the future and the direction that we're going to try to take our department too thank you chief are there any questions for chief pearl chief would uh with more of the sky cameras or would that help in and cover some areas of the city at all absolutely it would uh as uh director shelton and west talked about we're uh we're looking at potentially trying to to look at the cost of getting those set up in all the parks we think that would definitely be of a benefit to the city not only is it typically a great deterrent because it does have blue lights so they know that that's our camera is sitting there watching that particular area but it also has a potential solving a crime if somebody goes ahead and interpretates a crime at that location is that is that grant money that's available for that that you're aware of the doubt that i'm aware of we can look and see i guess i'm asking in regards to something similar to what the city of memphis is doing with their neighborhood cameras yes sir uh actually uh we've got a are we're getting a meeting set up uh potentially for either this week or next week with our uh warehouses um and getting them in contact with skycop

[0:55:32] which is the same system that uh that we buy and that we utilize and they've expressed some potential interest on actually uh purchasing those or leasing those for their properties which will which will help us and that's what's going on in memphis as well a lot of the industrial areas have gone in uh and are leasing those to help with their their crime more questions thank you thank you dartmouth fire please come forward good morning and thank you for this opportunity we'll keep it kind of short and simple i trust that each one of you has a copy of our proposed budget is that correct yes okay so there are certain pages that i will ask you to to go to and the first page will be page number five first of all i want to let you know this is our operation budget this does not include any salaries so this budget was also presented pre-safer grant so the saver grant has not been included in this budget there will be some things that we will have to spend out of this budget we will reappropriate some of the funding and just simply move it to the categories where we need to move it we do not have budgets for uniforms for the 12 personnel or turnout year for the 12 personnel but i'm not asking for any additional funds we will have an adequate budget and we will be able to absorb those costs on page number five i do want to point

[0:57:37] out we do a five year study we try to keep that running in the last five years our fire suppression division the call increase has gone up 68 percent and our ems division has gone up 32 and in that time period we have not really added extra resources uh and it's getting difficult to provide the services so uh with the safer grant we get 12 more personnel and we get another engine company well that will be a resource that helps offset the increase in cost on the ems side we have not had any additional resources and we do not have any proposed in this budget but we would like to point out we know what our high call volume times are we know it per day of the week and at some point we might make a recommendation that we either put a fifth unit in service or we put a filth unit in service for maybe a 12 hour period for those peak days and peak times so those will probably come in next year's budget and those will just be for uh proposed resource increases when we get into the operational expenses everything that you see with the exception of one category if the numbers are black that was a fixed cost that we could not reduce if the numbers are red it shows the amount of money that we're asking for and it shows the reduction in that particular category of importance we would go to page number eleven two page number ten that's our fire prevention and inspection and education investigation bureau uh this year we made a lot of

[0:59:40] improvements that will help offset the cost reduction here so our fire prevention bureau will still be able to function sufficiently with the cost reduction that you see there and the next page page 11 this is our emergency medical services the only increase in our entire budget that we recommended is the first category there medical supplies so in this current year recently we just moved seventeen thousand five hundred dollars into that category because we were running out of money we anticipate we may have to come back and add another five thousand in that category for this budget year so the next budget year we are asking for a 30 increase and that is based on a call volume increase it is based on the cost of medical supplies and is also based on the fact that we're making more cardiac arrest and we're making many more overdose calls heroin addiction calls calls and the cost of those particular calls has gone up significantly in the last year what would you estimate thinking about uh the type of calls the heroin we haven't pulled the stats and they're very difficult because sometimes we get there and the patient may be in cardiac arrest and we initiate cpr and cardiac protocols but it may be related to an overdose but we're working to call as a cardiac arrest so the the facts are not easily retrievable but i can tell you that that those calls are very predominant in this city uh

[1:01:41] yesterday we made two on overdoses it's not uncommon to make four in a day it's not uncommon to have deaths involved in that so it's a very serious problem for this general area desoto county and the state of mississippi narcan is one of the drugs that we use to counteract the opioids or opioid oh i hope it help you uh and that cost has gone up and we're finding that the more intense the addiction the more drug it takes to offset and counteract so that's one of the costs that has increased and we think the thirty thousand dollars is a reasonable increase based on all the facts i don't see chief pearl but there aren't our police officers carrying narcan and only only our ems i don't believe uh south haven police are but i don't want to speak for chief pearl i know there are some law enforcement agencies i believe the mississippi highway patrol and possibly desoto county are carrying narcan now but it has not been addressed in this city and typically we make the call as quick as pd does and we take immediate what is the cost uh i asked deputy scott do you know what uh let me put you on the spot yeah one treatment of that would be probably over a hundred dollars correct so 75 for two milligrams and that used to be sufficient now we're pushing as much as eight milligrams per overdose absolutely yes there are 300 bucks to say and we don't see any uh of that changing we think it's going to get worse before it gets better

[1:03:45] heroin and opioids are the cheapest drug out there and they're the most probably heroin heroin addictions become people heroin because they cannot get pain pills and in the ems side of the budget here you'll see if the numbers are in black that's a fixed cost again numbers are in red that's a reduction so overall the mayor had asked for us to reduce our budget our operational budget by seven percent uh there's probably been a little bit of a change since the last budget he got but we've actually reduced it down to eight point three percent that's a hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy dollars less than the current budget year we're in uh and in that again we've got to buy the necessities for uh the person that we're going to hire to save for grant but we're willing to absorb those out of other categories within our budget and uh with that said we may have to shift some monies around but we're not going to ask for extra money uh someone mentioned an aging fleet earlier i will tell you that overall i think the fire department has the oldest staff vehicles in the city our training officer drives a 2003 f-150 pickup truck we maintain our vehicles very well and we get every bit of mileage out of it that we possibly can we did not include any staff vehicles in this budget nor did we include a remount for another ambulance if you'll flip to page 14 we have some priorities listed there these are capital improvements at some point not in this budget year

[1:05:49] but next budget year we probably need to do another rebound of an existing ambulance uh the cost of a new analyst is about 260 000 we can do a rebound for 95 to 100 000. we've done two rebounds and they're working extremely well for us it's a brand new chassis they completely rebuild the aluminum module for the ambulance and we have had zero problems with the use of them so it's a good resource good outlet for us saves the city a lot of money i skipped priority one simply because we have a safer grant so we're adding 12 personnel which will give us a lot of options and services that we provide it will allow us probably at some point which schedule allows to run our squad that we purchased last year it will allow us to possibly put a filth ambulance in service just on a limited basis and obviously it's going to allow us to cover the southern portion of the city more efficiently priority three i suggest and and the mayor and i and chris have had many conversations about this that we try to acquire the land for station number five do that prior to the two or three years out so we have the land purchased the spot is there and then from that point maybe the following year hired architect to sign the stations and then possibly a year two after that actually start building the station so i'm sitting here starting to lose my voice obviously we would like to build station as soon as possible but i think the realistic plans are 2021 or 2022. priority priority five would be

[1:07:56] that we buy a new engine a state-of-the-art engine uh technology changes regularly a brand new fire engine will cost approximately 550 000 equipped we will get a 25-year life out of that piece of apparatus so i've got a couple thanks sir not uncommon for me to lose my voice and then the last priority is a central workstation a workshop a storage building it's something that we've been needing it's not the highest priority after this year every fire station will have an adequate storage facility except for station number three station number three houses the most equipment the most specialized equipment and it has really no storage whatsoever other than in the bay so you'll find lawn mowers and gasoline stored there along with the foam that is used for firefighting operations and all of our dry goods for supplies for all the stations and the maintenance of the stations that's the central storage facility for that so we're really in in need of that storage facility i would even propose that instead of spending maybe 300 000 in one year designing a building that could be built in sections so you build maybe half of it one year and then later on you add on to it and build the other half for a future budget year uh unless we're going to do this with a bond issue which i assume it could all be done at the same time but we are willing to work and and have different opportunities for making all of these

[1:09:59] priorities become reality there's not just one set rule on how to deal with those things on page number 15 you'll see a diagram this is the the coverage of our fire stations now and you look at the area that's in pink that is the station 5 territory obviously on the right hand side the circle there is station 4 and right now that extra engine will be running into that station 5 territory so it's going to be a big help for us it's going to actually give us the resources hopefully that we need for that area i would like to thank the board and the mayor for the consideration for our employee raises i think it's going to be a real morale boost for our department our entire city and i would like to compliment my personnel i have excellent staff and i have excellent paramedics and excellent firefighters we have some of the best that are in the industry working for this city and i'm proud of everything that each one of them do on a daily basis thank you chief any questions for chief thorn i will add as it relates to capital improvements obviously station 5 is as chief mentioned is one of his largest priorities it's one of our largest priorities as a city that we work our way there we've made a huge step towards that and acquiring the safer grant to allow the personnel that will because that was the biggest issue the building itself is not the biggest issue the biggest issue is you know the

[1:12:01] cost of about 900 000 every year in the operational budget to have to have it properly staffed so we felt like we made a lot of progress get the safer grant making the proposal on this budget you know to have those 12 new personnel as to the building itself we have been in the process of searching for the land chris wilson chief and i have been working on that for about a year and a half we'll continue to do that to find a location obviously we'll not we will not construct a building until you know 2020 to 2022 somewhere in that area right but we are actively looking for the land at this point and just food for thought on the fire station we recommend that a fire station when it's built is built to take care of what is planned for the next 40 to 50 years so you don't build a fire station for today's needs you build a fire station for today's needs and the future any any other any questions for um chief thornton thank you sir thank you all very much okay and that uh that wraps up all departments except for finance and administration at this time i'd like for chris wilson to come forward and give us a general overview of how all this affects our budget as a whole if you can get hard copies of the powerpoint this year so there that's it um so we'll jump right in so um basically it starts obviously with some just basic demographic information about your city the 2016 census estimates have us over 53 000 uh maintaining our status as third largest city in the state the the budget priorities that were laid out in a major presentation which you've seen today by your department heads basically um a few topics which obviously when you when you ask someone let me see your priorities you will meet your budget so improving quality life factors public

[1:14:04] safety public infrastructure municipal parks recreational amenities and sustain our strong fund balances so the the draft that is also in the front of your book and after meeting not to the mayor of the department heads of the mayor on this multi-month process the budget presented will be balanced there will be no prior year cash reserves no prior year cash brought forward to make it balance there is no property tax increase contemplated there is no utility rate increase contemplated no sanitation rate increase contemplated as the mayor said the targeted and across-the-board salary adjustments are included in this balanced budget which does include the 12 new firefighters and funding to match the grant for these six police officers the next slide you'll see just a comparison of 17 to 18. the 18 budget is three and a half million higher but that's attributed to really the foundation of the eighteen budget which is that six million dollar bond issuance that we'll talk about in a little bit you see the dramatic decrease in your tourism fund which obviously is the simple loss of revenue and expenses along with many of your parks your full-time employees by area 62 of all your employees are public safety and then you can see parks 10 and actually in info tech and dispatch you know for budgetary purposes dispatch is broken out of this but when you look at total budget public safety they are involved in that as well as court so when you look at your total budget by fund 67 percent of your total general fund budget is general fund again tourism now that's right at 1 debt service is 11 that's your annual debt obligations on your geo payments utility 17 and sanitation at four the numbers we are receiving from the county i think some of the supervisors have mentioned we've seen an uptick in assessed valuation that directly

[1:16:06] correlates to our increased revenues and property tax you will see the dip down in 15 that's when some of the properties rolled off and the pilot with tva this plant down here was put into effect so they came off the property assessment roles but you'll see that we're getting back the assessment is growing next slide shows kind of where we are as assessed valuation county-wide you'll see that south haven remains the highest valued city in the southern county the next chart is simply the municipalities in desoto county equate for 79 percent of the total assessed value the rule 21 again the city's 79 percent the rule is 21 of the county's assessed value the next slide shows a breakdown of your average south haven homeowner and the three taxing entities that they pay into city county school the city tax comprises 31 percent the county 32 and the school is 37. so up to three the city taxes are the lowest portion that homeowner pays and speaking of property tax you'll look at our tax rate has remained flat since 2009 no increases and that 2009 actually came after a one meal decrease from the previous years and again no tax increases are in this budget next chart you'll see where south haven rates our tax rate is one of their jurisdictions within the southern county with south haven not being the highest municipal tax rate in the county we are number four is that correct well we are well corn lake 46 i don't even have 43 but the county goal is a school yes sir yeah and by the way there is a lot of misquotes related to that as well

[1:18:09] satellite is not the highest tax rate and that would apply to car tax as well we would not therefore have the highest car tax in the county due to card tax being assessed based off your military military rate by allocation this means basically every dollar that we've received in property tax 70 cents goes to general fund and 30 cents goes to debt service now this next one's important because you'll see the general revenues by source so our property tax is 42 which is 10 higher than our sales tax which is a good stable in years past our property tax is a greater portion than our property tax so our property tax which is a more stable form of taxation and revenue projections are actually 10 higher now than sales tax that's not an indication of declining sales taxes the property tax is now growing and is stabilizing as you'll see in the next one with our annual sales tax revenue you'll see that again it's like in 16 that was due to receiving the tanker money we budget again for about 13 8 for 18. you'll see the orange line is our budget and the blue is the actual revenues received so you'll see again the big spike 15 to 16 was the impact of tanger those funds are now part of being recouped by the department of revenue through mda through the incentive program so we're not receiving those so that's why we dip it back down in our projections chris quick question are the projections on the tango revenue are they meeting what the nba was thinking we have no idea we know that when we talk like an american will tell you their meeting their projections might exceed that dor is not giving us the information we request on the projections okay to add to that uh piano recall the tourism rebate program is not just the city's part of the sales tax it's the entire state's portion also with a piece of that broken out for administrative

[1:20:11] costs and such but chris has requested that we know how much annually is being applied to the rebate and they've not been able to provide that information we do know uh from the representatives at tanger that they are exceeding sales expectations well could i i guess i mean i would think that they would be keeping up with it at some point because at some time the state is going to say hey do you get the bite when are we going to get our money you know because right now the state's it's going to the public financing and they're just not well yeah i mean you make a great point we gotta have that we gotta know when it's paid off so right that's that's the thing that and this is not new chris has been struggling they initially said 300 000 a month is what's going toward the payment and i would assume just based on our numbers that does include some going from the state so do the math that's you know under 4 million a year we know roughly 38 million went to the program so you're looking at 10 9 or 10 years of repayment it was actually it was not it was about 30 yeah because initial was okay so it was it was projected to be 115 million project but they didn't do some of the out parcels so actually it turned out to be about a 100 million project the rebate program was at 30 so it's actually about 30 million so it's not quite eight years and based off of what they initially told us now we haven't seen any documentation that shows that we've requested that and we'll continue to do so yeah we need that information and we're trying to get that yeah the next slide you will see um let me let me interrupt you just a second it is important to note you know being the first time that the city of south haven used the tourism rebate program and one of the few times that had been used for our retail development we all had concerns about what impact that would have on our total sales tax revenue in the state so it's important to note that even with the tanger money going we're still seeing a slight increase in sales tax so the transfer tax that we feared did not happen so yeah what we're seeing is we budget 13 6 this year we had two months in fy 17 where we

[1:22:14] did receive the tanker money which is why it spiked at the early um in the first quarter of 17. but that's why you'll see it budgeted actually we still budget base a modest increase up to 13.8 from 13.65 so the transfer loss which again you see our population growing you see you know goes back to the permitting that whitney talked about we're seeing increased population increase housing so the trans that's mitigating against any potential transfer loss of money is going from one location down to the tanker plus tanker's still bringing in a lot from outside south also i mean with the big boxes that are they're closing and things like that we're still that's including that too so i mean i would say that's that's a very positive thing well i also asked just because i'm interested in knowing how ours is doing within the rebate program uh in comparison to the one in pearl just outside jackson because they did the rebate program as well and uh i was wondering if they were on projection or above or below or you know how their sales are doing versus ours just yeah we again that's we need that data we don't have that so again you'll see the public safety expenditure is continuing to grow with our city on the next slide to where public safety is over 25 million dollars a year of your expenses and speaking of which so we'll bring in 18 million dollars in property tax we'll spend 25 over 25 in public safety so again every time you bring in public safety in the general fund doesn't account for what we will allocate to public safety which goes back to the value of sales tax and our other fees and service revenues we don't have all the updated police activity stats um as of yet but this chart's indicative of just you know our population still exceeds over 50 but then you'll see up to 2016 the calls and services obviously are outpacing our

[1:24:18] growth which obviously our daytime population a lot of the calls happen is greater than our regular population but as soon as we get those updated for 2017 we'll come back and present those as the mayor outlayed earlier the major capital improvement projects um and again these are what we are talking about absent 1.5 in overlay which is in the 902 the walking trails the tennis pro shop nail road will begin star lane resurfacing is underway now um i'm sorry the church road resurface underway now star land resurface and get will road further south those are all contemplated in major capital improvements going forward and also tied into the 6 million bond issuance next one is the stark reality of what happens when a tourism tax goes away you'll see it you'll see that our revenues were bringing them higher than their budgeted estimates each year but now we will be back to preventing for your parks days we've made the internal adjustments for that as as ray mentioned enterprise funds these funds are self-sufficient so everything generated by the user piece has to be spent back in utility and sanitation the water well again is being paid for when cash that's going on right now and the course sanitation fund is what the monthly charge for sanitation again just shows the water rates where we are in a sanitation rate and no increases for fy 18. you'll see the next charge is how stable since 14 the water rates have been no increase since actually fy13 and this next one which shows our total geodet annual debt service that does include absorbing the six million dollar issuance which we've talked about which we will um defer full payments for two years which matches up with the time that we've got some of the older snowden bonds rolling off to absorb this new issuance we have an estimated 78 thousand dollar

[1:26:20] interest payment due in this budget fy18 and then the payments full principal interest will begin after that but those are absorbed into our current debt status meaning that enough rolls off in 19 and 20 to absorb this which you see and the big drops again begin in 20 and 20 21 and 22 when we contemplated for the fire department and any other major capital expenditures at that point but again the primary focus of this budget really does depend on the foundation of that six million dollar issuance for those capital improvement projects where we actually lowered we cut a lot of the operational costs in 9-2 funding and moved that along with departmental cuts to offset the increase for that bond and to finish up as you know part of the issuance every year part of the budget every year is we get organizational requests and those are those do include those are the requests which the majority of them did increase did ask for increased funding from the city that actually what's presenting your balanced budget does not include increases for those includes actually cuts to those um you know as the mayor said we've asked our departments to look inward and cut seven percent or more and that would apply to the majority of these charitable organizations as well are these the totals in your budget no those are what they've requested where are the uh they should be on the front before the fire department one of the last pages i think speaking from memory first regional library for example asked for 365 to ask for an increase they are put in at 3 35. economic council remains that that's really more dues than a terrible contribution

[1:28:32] yeah so um i believe these should match up here so family theater asked for 50 they're into 35. uh the chamber asked for 85 i believe may lsu they asked for i think it was a 5 000 increase i think they asked for 90. we kept that at 85. like chris said the chamber of commerce and the desoto county economic development council are not real they're not charitable organizations they're actually organizations that are directly tied you know to city promotion so we left those the same um but the ones that we propose like looking for a cut again we didn't want to you know give a back breaking blow to anybody but just uh and that's the hey that's the board's call but my recommendation is that we gradually cut charitable contributions we're having to say no to department heads you know with needs that the city has and we're giving money away to charities i just i have a fundamental problem with that but anyway what's in there now at this point before moving on to further discussions no change with the chamber 85 to the chamber healing hearts was at 65 dropping that down to 60 uh de soto museum keeping that the same at 10 000. the library requested they were at 340 last year they requested what 355. okay 365 335 is what's in there now from the library the soda family theater was at 50 last year i recommend what's in there now's at 35 and then again no change with de soto economic council no change to the youth solutions which is fighting gangs in the city we're only providing them six thousand dollars so that amounts to a sixty thousand dollar cut last year we paid a total of six twenty six uh this is with 566 000 so there's a 60 000 and the museum does ask for 16 every year and they received 10 last year and we're recommending 10 again this year i just i think my one of my concerns is

[1:30:37] i know that the state has cut funding their resources and funding on pretty much all these organizations and um it trickles down to us i know it's not that's not our issue but then again it is because a lot of these organizations are even though they may they even though not all of them are necessarily promotion of the city many of them perform a very viable service necessary you know well i will add to that excuse me just a second i want to add to that that uh again please don't misunderstand my comments i agree with you 100 every one of them are incredible organizations they provide a benefit to our city there's no doubt about that it just comes down to the point of when do we draw the line how much can we pick up the burden you know the ridiculous state cuts uh to some extremely good organizations the city of south haven is not big enough to handle the burden of all the state cuts and uh and it's not just with charities you can look at you know the uh you know uh region four mental health services you know they had major uh cuts with the you know with the state we have people with mental illness they're in our jails um yeah in my opinion that's a terrible decision to cut them uh but then again what do they do they come ask you know they're they they in previous meets they've come to us asking for help we can't pick up the slack for the uh for the um in my opinion the non-prudent uh cuts that were made by the state of mississippi but i i get your point and again i just want to make sure i clarify that i think every one of these organizations are incredible organizations but at some point we just the city's not able to carry the burden you know by the state cuts i understand that part i just hate that we're cutting as well i do too i agree and i hate that we can do it when the state's already cutting some of these

[1:32:39] organizations and they're already hurting i don't think that we have to pick up the burden of the additional but it also hurts when you know we're going to turn around and cut as well well the other thing to relate to that is some of these organizations when a governmental entity provides in funding that's like seed money that's to help them get going and unfortunately just from what i've discovered in my you know four years here some of these organizations have not just taken the money and using the seed money uh they've become dependent on us you know it's it's it's not fair that some of these organizations serve the entire county and we're the only city given money why are the other cities and why is the county not giving money i mean as you all know our primary goal is to i mean we got to handle our own operation first i agree and we've got to cut where we are cut and let's not forget the state cut us too sure so who's going to help us with that i cut us what around 2 million 1.2 million dollars again that obviously is a great point but i will add to that as well the concern of that is not just the uh tourism tax as it relates to parks it affects everything because now if we're going to do something in parks that has to compete for funds that are for infrastructure and everything else it's all done as a capital improvement so without that tourism revenue that creates a burden on capital improvement as well and not only that i won't spend a lot of time but it is important to note that our concern about the penetrative parts is not just that it's the funding for other issues in our city i mean what what does it do to mdot i mean what does it do as i mentioned to region 4 mental health services department of corrections has been cut that's affecting the county which then affects us i mean there's a lot of everybody talks about the penny for your parks that's not the only issue when you start sweeping budgets statewide uh that

[1:34:42] affects a lot bigger issues than just uh parks and south africa and one of the things you notice now if you're if you're shopping on amazon the state did enact they are amazon is you know paying attacks to the state so but that's not being relayed back to the city it's not coming back to the cities keeping the states keeping all the new amazon tax which they're being so city revenue so people in south haven that order amazon which i'm sure there are none uh well but it's a point to the state where they're not compelled see that's still up in litigation cases about the nexus of your business and can you can you apply online tax if there's no fiscal location in in the state or in the city so is the state collecting six percent i mean five percent tax relief again there are some who cut that from us because they think you should come back to us but that's the figure that's obviously a that's going to be you know there's there's other litigation and other factors but the state state is not levying an online tax amazon was compelled they they're offering it up maybe it won't be so hard to swallow if they'll actually put that money back in the roads and schools infrastructure instead of giving cities maybe we can actually see some improvement why don't be okay you know that that's interesting so again this budget again the the foundation's marriage sales capital improvement plan for that bond issuance which is a 12-year deal we're going to do the interest in the first few years only so it's a short-term bond and that would lay the foundation for all the projects and just before we go just real quickly would you go over like the the debt service the effect that that has on like this bond and then we have the debt that's rolling off in the subsequent years yes impact right so i stated that this budget in this budget is built in seventy eight thousand dollars which would be the first year's interest then

[1:36:44] it would be one fifty seven six and one fifty seven six in in nineteen and twenty which our natural growth in our assessed valuation will absorb that into that service line you're talking about 150 000 out of a 43 million dollar general fund budget which that would just come out of the debt service fund your debt service beginning in 2021 that note would then become 687 000 which again that's the year where you'll have projected of right now where we're paying over 5 million in 2021 your debt service is 4.2 so you'd have 800 000 freed up all things being equal to offset this increase any potential other bond that we're talking about from potential fire station so again we're set up nicely in 2020 2021 you know for fire station number five and possibly the you know the central storage facility so we have lots of uh we have more flexibility so in each year as it is now so in 2022 your debt service goes to 3.8 so another 400 000 is freed up in essence so that 400 000 can either been pushed back to general fund or go toward other bonds and capital improvements while eating the debt service of this new bond issues okay any other questions for chris and then we'll just spend just a couple minutes before we get out of here for just general discussion thank you chris and alderman wheeler i didn't mean to cut you off you were gonna you had a comment about one of the issues did you want no i don't know his answer okay is there any other um any other questions for any department heads or any other discussion should we give our darren did you did you they better give us a new request this year so again it was new so what's there is there is not a contribution to arc at this time

[1:38:48] again a fine organization but a new request so our goal is to trim you know um and just one other update as far as infrastructure improvements to start church road uh we just got word that we got authorization to go out for bids um from mdot on church road we still have hopes that we can have church road resurface from the interstate to highway 51 before the end of the year this year starlanding road is the next biggest emergency i would call it because the condition of the road i've talked with the county about that we do have an estimate you know to resurface the road all the way from get well on the east side all the way to the city limits on the west side near the railroad bridge of about 1.2 million the county is discussing that now we've requested that they help us with a 50-50 co-op since in the past they've led the projects for you know for the widening project at star landing so we're asking for their assistance on that so we should know something about this soon okay floor open anybody have any other comments or questions at all i would like to i would like to make a mention for if there's a way possible we moved the amphitheater seating expansion up to this coming budget chair and maybe replace the city hall renovation of 19 instead that's one way we could look at spending a little less money but getting a little money in return at the same time so that's the only thing that i can see right now that may have questions i appreciate you bringing that up i would like to speak for just a minute about that because uh ideally uh my plan you know with that capital improvement plan is just uh to account for a million dollars not the full amount for the city hall renovation because we've had we're in

[1:40:50] discussion now with some prospects on potential sale of city property so ideally if we had enough proceeds from the seller on the city property we'd use that funding for the city hall renovation and i'd have to use the bond at all for that the problem with that is you know that we don't have that we don't know when that's going to occur the other thing is and i want to explain this to you in detail it's not just about you know making the building look pretty in the whole thing although i believe your image is extremely important when you're bringing in developers from california new york which we are and they come to this building it's just it's an image thing with us but even beyond that we're on hold from an operational standpoint we we need to do some we're not efficient on the first floor like when people come in and they're going to city clerk's office they're having to go all the way through city hall to get there that should be the face of your building so we want to move city hall up to the area uh vacated by the chamber but it's all a domino effect i mean we can't do that i mean we can't move the building department with planning and combine all that until city clerk vacates that news up front same thing we have issues with the building that and that need to be repaired well we're almost having to make i wouldn't say daily but weekly or monthly decisions something comes up you know do we want to spend you know ten thousand dollars to fix this ten thousand here i mean we gotta decide you know we could eliminate all that it's very difficult to run the city operation knowing that we could make it more efficient uh not knowing when we're gonna do the thing with the bill that's why i think the city hall renovation i would just i want the amphitheater improvements too but uh but if you ask me do i value that more than uh renovating the face of our city no i don't i would just i mean i get what you're saying alderman hail it's important to me too we believe we can generate a little bit more revenue at the amphitheater if we do that but i you know i just you know we what three years ago

[1:42:52] we sunk a million dollars 750 000 in the facility um i just think that um from a priority standpoint it's it's behind city hall with me absolutely now we could have an excuse we could and that's something else if y'all want to we could look at uh the seats alone not the other improvements but the seats alone were about estimated about two million we could i mean we could look at uh increasing the bond amount since we're going to have additional revenue i mean if it goes as proposed to me we could generate about another four hundred thousand dollars a year with a facility with a seven dollar facility fee on there um so that would help you with uh debt service if you want to add that if you want to make it a priority and do them both now i mean you could do it but you'd be bumping your bond from six to eight million um and again ideally i i would wish that we don't have to use any of the money for city hall we sell these other properties but um we've been in a holding mode for about three years i mean we're like looking at the building i mean other department heads can tell you they don't know what to to do with their department that because if we're gonna move um it's just uh it's hurting our efficiency we can make our operation more efficient here and that's why i think it's a priority could we not look into doing the city hall improvements and maybe yearly phases do some of the interior stuff either here and or moving the departments like in year one with this revenue or with the sale of this you know property here and then add the outside structural you know things later on that's a great idea possibly we could but um then you get into economies of scale you know when you bid it you know if you bid the whole thing i think you're going to probably you know you're going to come out with a better price for the entire thing the other thing is the disruption you know if you thought about that it's going to be a it's going to be a pain in the tail when we're doing it i mean because we're operating now this building that's going to be under construction so the sooner we can get it done you know

[1:44:54] the better but but yeah i mean that's something that you know we can certainly um it could hurt us you know from a bid standpoint but as far as he's smelling it together we could try to do that well i agree with uh on the seats and and maybe we can you know we sell the property maybe get a million and again just in all fairness um you know with my ear open to the citizens you know we were heavily criticized for spending all the money you know here we go turn right back around we're going that's not going to be our first project let's pump the money back it's i mean i'm not saying that's right or wrong i'm saying it's important to note that that my goal was um and it's been that way the whole time we have other plans for other parks besides snowden uh but here we go the first thing we do we you know we dropped another two videos also you're preaching the choir i'm 100 in agreement with you i would have seen that yeah and i'm looking i'm looking also at we are fixing to do a few more things there with the pedestrian contract and of course the safety reasons and all and we're looking at doing that this is is this the best time to to do the improvements if we're going to do any in steps because i don't think we need to do all of it once i'd love to be able to take the lot and doing all that that's not practical but if we if we're going to do that for that standpoint alone it's it's really a good time to go ahead and make that additional because if if we improve the seating we're going to improve the traffic and that's going to fall right in line with our six foot sidewalks and everything else i'm in total agreement and don't misunderstand my comments i'm not i'm not opposed to doing the amphitheater sitting now i just uh if you but again like i said if you said is that a priority over city hall absolutely not with me and i would imagine that the employees that work on the first floor can explain that better than i can

[1:47:00] feel free to stand up and speak but that's a possibility we can talk chris can do a little more delving into that but um the projections that i got um and again projections were with the proposed additional ticket sales it would net us a difference of 400 436 000 a year if if the projections are true that we really do sell those seats that's pretty good concerts at the amphitheater well the way it is i mean i don't know i mean and i'm hopeful that the additional seats will provide better acts and more seats but you know that's assuming that we do get that seven dollar facility fee on those additional seats your your total debt service go about 197 about 000 000 and for 12 years keeping it with this issuance that we're talking about the six of eight so we need to show reflect now again if we're everyone's confident that the increased ticket surcharge you know we'll cover that then that's put that in as part of our revenue to go towards offset that service 197 because that's not included so the way it was structured with the six and the cuts that were made and moving the 902 funds out was just to cover the six so we're going to have to have another revenue stream another source to offset that 197. we're in the 400 000 range which is double i mean yeah even if you take a conservative we're paying for it yeah so i'm again i'm not opposed to doing that but you are you're requiring you're acquiring more debt i want to look at what jim green's numbers and what we're doing over there before we well you're averaging uh you're averaging eight um uh eight shows at 7 000 is your average attendance now his projection says that we can do eight i mean we can do two more shows at eight thousand per show

[1:49:02] and then your change right now on this in the city contract we're getting a dollar fifty per ticket uh so his proposal is to raise that to seven dollars a ticket with the facility fee which um it works out to be about full i think it's uh 436 000. is he selling out all the seats that those are his projections what i had the question i asked him is show me a presentation on before and after like what you're doing now and if we do these improvements with the seats what do you think we can do and that's the numbers that he gave me i understand that's his projection but i would like to see is he selling out all the seat backs for the shows that he's doing now i see what you're saying are we are we at maximum capacity if we go and add 2 000 you know 3 000 more seats are we going to have 2 000 3000 epcs that depends on the show and that's that's what his point is that with the additional seats you can acquire some shows that have a seat minimum like some acts won't come here on some but some of the same acts if i understand it correctly you didn't include the any more seats for the current acts that will be repeated there or similar acts that will be repeated there it's just the new is that what you understand say that again if i understand correctly his projections uh are basically leaving those acts and having two more acts on uh with increased seating on the the two more acts is that what you would have understood or is he saying he's going to help well the question i'm asking is generally we have generally your lawn tickets are cheaper than your seat back tickets are are we having concerts where we have where we're selling i won't say more but we're selling a whole bunch of loan tickets versus again that depends available and i think

[1:51:05] the answer to alderman gallagher's question is it's not that black and white like he's looking at it from a from a season standpoint like like he may have one act where they're not all full but then again it may allow him to get an act where he fills up you know the additional seats in the whole arena which offsets that so we're looking at it you know from a bottom line standpoint not a per show standpoint it doesn't mean that every show is going to be filled up correct right that's right that's basically what i was saying is that you have better chances right you're going to he's going to add a couple shows a year that are going to sell out that he feels like we're going to sell out and that ain't the increased seating will be sold during those two shows but the other the other projections are going to remain the same well i think he also said though that if you you put additional seats in there you can bring in other actions other different actions other different acts besides so although he was projecting that some of those would sell out as well so again you know what we can we can rant about but i think we really need we really need jim to come explain this how he got to his owners yeah we can definitely do that but but yeah that's uh that's that's something that um i appreciate alderman hill bringing that up i mean i'd love to be able to do it all at one time too i just again i want to say one quick thing about city hall the other thing too is uh i want to be true to what i told the people the city i promised them that revitalization was a big part of my priorities and this ties into revitalization as well i can't go down to a building on state line road or main street and ask them to renovate their building or make sure their building is in compliance when ours is mine i mean look at our parking lot when you walk out i mean is that really that's hypocritical i'm not going to be like that i mean if we expect we want true revitalization in the original business district we need to set an example for that and renovating our building will not only you know give us a better image help us with economic development but it also and we'll take a main step towards the revitalization of the original southeast

[1:53:08] that's why it's important to me minimal effect on bond rating or any maximum allowed that we have that type of thing capacity-wise okay let's make sure just make sure they understand that we're gonna have to structure it to where it's all still geo backed but so what we'll have to do is offset move some more out of general fund village to debt service to cover the two and then plug that gap in with a revenue stream with increased revenue from ticket sales in other words you don't want to go out to bond two separate ones and have a revenue bond tied to an outdoor amphitheater that won't rate as high as a go obviously and it would be my recommendation too and i have no doubt total confidence that green machine can produce this but it would be my suggestion to the city that when we redo the green machine contract that we do put a minimum in expected revenue to protect the city like we can't just you know take his word that he's going to provide this amount of ticket sales that needs to be uh we need to have some contractual protection there i agree with that yeah but also keep in mind the closer you get your your bank qualified 10 million is what you want to keep it under okay so adding that to would limit in case of an emergency or the city had another priority that needed immediate bonding you know the closer you get to 10 in one year the limited you're going to be financing the debt but that's something we can bring um at one of the next board meetings we can invite uh jim green to come go over the projections would you like to do that yes okay any other questions or comments about anything else hearing none is there a motion to adjourn got a motion by allman brooks second baller than flores all in favor saying all opposed they know eyes have a motion carries this meeting is adjourned

[1:55:28] okay

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=1U-I0qX9Y04