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| OK, we are on but just before we started to I wanted to make a quick. | 00:00:03 | |
| Note that these are directional and so just make sure that when you're talking to go directly into them. I was against some lower | 00:00:07 | |
| levels on that last one, and I just want to make sure that I'm getting everybody's statements on the record. So thank you so much, | 00:00:13 | |
| Tony. Okay. | 00:00:18 | |
| Let's see. | 00:00:24 | |
| Let me get the time. | 00:00:27 | |
| All right, today is June 26th, 2024. The time is 7/23 and we're going to start our regular City Council meeting we're. | 00:00:30 | |
| Start with a presentation for the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by Christy Bayless, our Finance Director. | 00:00:41 | |
| Hi, thank you for being here and lyrics. I'm excited to share this with you, David Mortensen, our former Finance Director and his | 00:00:52 | |
| and his team. Thanks Anthony for the OR Tony for the reminder. It was David Mortensen that put this in and received this award. I | 00:00:59 | |
| want to draw your attention up to the shelf up there. The award on the far left is the Distinguished Budget Award from GFOA and I | 00:01:06 | |
| have added our 2023 medallion to that. | 00:01:14 | |
| I just wanted to read a little bit about what the the award is for and entails. So GFOA is the government finance officer's | 00:01:21 | |
| association. The Distinguished Budget Award is a prestigious recognition given to government entities that demonstrate excellence | 00:01:27 | |
| in budgeting practices. It is a national award that acknowledges organizations for their commitment to meeting the highest | 00:01:33 | |
| standards of governmental budgeting. | 00:01:39 | |
| Government entities that meet specific criteria and demonstrate excellence in budgeting practices are recognized with the DFOA | 00:01:46 | |
| Distinguished Budget Award. This award signifies the organization's commitment to transparency, accountability, and effective | 00:01:53 | |
| financial management. Receiving the GFOA Distinguished Budget Award not only reflects positively on the government entity but also | 00:02:00 | |
| enhances its reputation among stakeholders, including citizens, investors, and. | 00:02:08 | |
| Agencies, it demonstrates the organization's dedication to sound financial practices and provides assurance to the public that | 00:02:15 | |
| their tax dollars are being managed responsibly. Just as a side note, this is the sixth year in a row that Vineyard has received | 00:02:22 | |
| this Distinguished Budget Award. Thank you so much and we're so grateful for all the work that you put into that as you were part | 00:02:28 | |
| of this team. So we really appreciate it. | 00:02:34 | |
| That brings you to your second item 2.2, which is the fraud risk assessment presentation. | 00:02:41 | |
| The fraud risk assessment is something that is required by law that is conducted annually and brought before the council. I | 00:02:50 | |
| recently completed this. There is a possible of 395 points. The high points shows that you have low risk and we did get the 395 | 00:02:58 | |
| out of the 395 indicating that we are. Our fraud risk is very low. | 00:03:06 | |
| It it really is about asking a lot of questions and questions regarding accounting. | 00:03:15 | |
| Checks and balances, making sure that one person in the department doesn't have too much control. And so I was, I was very excited | 00:03:20 | |
| and confident to fill that out and know that Vineyard is doing its best to be fiscally responsible. Thank you so much. Great work | 00:03:28 | |
| on that. We really appreciate learning more about that and that we got a 395. You must feel like an A+ student right now. It's | 00:03:35 | |
| exciting. OK, we'll have our public comments and what this time is for anything. | 00:03:43 | |
| Talk to the council about that is not on the agenda. So if this is something separate from the other items, please come up, state | 00:03:51 | |
| your name and where you're from, and we will take those comments for you. | 00:03:56 | |
| Did you have a time limit or anything that you wanted? Let's do 2 minutes, OK? | 00:04:07 | |
| Tim Blackburn from Sleepy Ridge and I know that the mayor and the city engineer have talked with one of the residents about this | 00:04:13 | |
| concern just a few minutes ago, but I just wanted to bring it up for public information because of the fact that the area under | 00:04:20 | |
| development right now with Goodborough and. | 00:04:26 | |
| Caveman, thank you. And Cadence is under development is it isn't agriculturally being treated anymore? Prior to this time, it was | 00:04:35 | |
| always under agricultural like hay was being grown, corn, things like that. What's happened now is that we just have a lot of | 00:04:45 | |
| weeds growing in the area because it's not being plowed and we have a humongous infestation of what commonly is called Clover. | 00:04:54 | |
| There are other names for that and they are breeding and nesting in all the weeds that are there. And because of the high | 00:05:04 | |
| temperatures, which we kind of have a perfect storm occurring right now. We have the weeds growing, we have high temperatures and | 00:05:12 | |
| they are infesting now the homes that are on the southern end of that development and starting to move toward the northern end of | 00:05:19 | |
| the development. It needs immediate attention from the developers and city and I know that. | 00:05:27 | |
| Been a commitment made to do that and I just want to under score the fact that several of the residents asked me to speak for them | 00:05:34 | |
| tonight. Barbara couldn't stay and we haven't personally been infested yet, but we're just across the street. So we're anxiously | 00:05:41 | |
| awaiting the city's attention to that problem. Thank you. Thank you just for the council so that you're aware of it. | 00:05:48 | |
| Marty actually was in an area that also got the false cinch bugs and they because of the temperature they're coming up in | 00:05:56 | |
| different weed weeded areas. | 00:06:01 | |
| So Nathan's all over it and he's making, he's working with the abatement team and the weed mitigation group. So we'll be working | 00:06:07 | |
| on that. So any other comments from the public? | 00:06:12 | |
| Daria Evans, Vineyard resident, thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'd like to thank the Vineyard Days fireworks, so that | 00:06:32 | |
| was great. Also, the community garden fencing looks wonderful and pickleball, senior pickleball is fun. | 00:06:39 | |
| I would like to state that I'm disappointed that I did not know about the June 14th special session of City Council. I'm | 00:06:48 | |
| disappointed that it was not posted on the Vineyard City Facebook because that's what I look at, and that it was held on a Friday | 00:06:54 | |
| morning when I'm used to Wednesday evening City Council meetings. So I'd like to know why the special session was not live | 00:07:00 | |
| streamed and available to watch in Transcorp. Available to read. | 00:07:06 | |
| And in that June 14th special session, excuse me, item 4.1, the settlement agreement, the minutes only say that Jamie Blakesley | 00:07:13 | |
| presented a settlement agreement to the public. Well, I would like to know who are the plaintiffs? Who are the defendants? What is | 00:07:22 | |
| the complaint and lawsuit about? What was the when was the complaint lawsuit filed? What is the resolution settlement? | 00:07:31 | |
| Amount what course correction? | 00:07:40 | |
| Make to ensure that these types of issues no longer happen. | 00:07:44 | |
| And also continuing on that, the. | 00:07:53 | |
| Public Treasures Investment Fund. | 00:07:58 | |
| The management authorization that I believe that this acronym acronym needs to be identified and spelled out the first time it is | 00:08:01 | |
| used. | 00:08:06 | |
| On a June 12th agenda, there was also a proposed zoning text amendment for mixed-use in the industrial area. There was not an | 00:08:11 | |
| attachment describing what was proposed. When will this come up again to City Council, since it was not? | 00:08:19 | |
| On the June 14th special session or tonight's June 26 City Council agenda. | 00:08:28 | |
| And then lastly, I feel that participation of City Council meetings is no longer encouraged For these reasons. The last one that | 00:08:35 | |
| you just mentioned, please say that again. | 00:08:39 | |
| The city, the City Council, it was not. The proposed zoning text amendment for mixed-use industrial area was not listed in the | 00:08:46 | |
| June 14th special assessment or tonight's June 26th City Council agenda. It was on the original June 12th meeting that was | 00:08:52 | |
| cancelled. | 00:08:58 | |
| Thank you. I'd like to know when that will come about again. And then the reason, the reasons why I feel that participation in | 00:09:05 | |
| City Council is no longer encouraged or it's because the changing of the format of the Wednesday night meeting to the | 00:09:12 | |
| redevelopment agency, RDA first and then City Council not having adequate time to review the agenda, only 24 hours is | 00:09:19 | |
| disheartening, tonight's agenda. | 00:09:25 | |
| Is 209, excuse me, 109 pages. | 00:09:33 | |
| Not having complete minutes limits our ability as citizens to know what is happening in our city, referencing that Jamie Blake's | 00:09:36 | |
| place. And sometimes we get answers to our questions and other times we don't. Thank you. | 00:09:44 | |
| Karen Cornelius, Senior President I just want to talk about the two-minute time limit. I personally don't feel that it's fair. We | 00:10:07 | |
| give of our time and our service to be here. We have elected people that we want to hear and we want to know what they what they | 00:10:15 | |
| are doing for the people of Vineyard. And I also feel I have a real problem with you closing the public comments. | 00:10:23 | |
| And then you may or may not discuss what it was that we asked. We may wait months. | 00:10:32 | |
| Answer to our question I would like you to answer our questions as our questions are asked rather than to close the public | 00:10:37 | |
| comments. | 00:10:42 | |
| And then she is whether or not you're going to address it. I also would ask once again that acronyms do not appear on the agenda. | 00:10:47 | |
| We need to spell that because we don't have access to your Cheat Sheets. We need to know what it is that we're going to be talking | 00:10:54 | |
| about. | 00:11:00 | |
| We also appreciate the time when the council does have discussions back and forth because that is a lot of what we come for. We | 00:11:06 | |
| have elected people. We want to know what they're doing to continue to gain our trust. That's true of all of you. So those | 00:11:14 | |
| discussions are important. I have felt a little bit tonight like we were trying to sell people on our opinions and I'm not talking | 00:11:21 | |
| about me, I'm talking about people up there. | 00:11:29 | |
| And I feel like sometimes words are put in people's mouths and. | 00:11:36 | |
| I feel like we need to take what one another says as where they really are and accept it and not try to bring them to our side of | 00:11:42 | |
| the table, but let them vote as their heart says and not try to sway their vote in a meeting like this. Thank you. | 00:11:51 | |
| Hi, I'm Snee Riley and I've been your resident and I just have a simple request. | 00:12:08 | |
| And it's based on a problem down at the Lakeside Park. For the last three, two or three Saturdays, there's been multiple events | 00:12:14 | |
| happening at the same time. The school part, the park parking lot is full, the school parking lots full, and sometimes the church | 00:12:21 | |
| parking lots full. So the next thing is to start parking on the grass of our front yards. And the step in front of our house is | 00:12:28 | |
| not painted red from the. | 00:12:36 | |
| Corner of our Holdaway Rd. turns down to the park either on the it's painted. | 00:12:44 | |
| Partway down the foot past the 1st house. | 00:12:52 | |
| But not after that. So we've had people parking in front of our yard and blocking. And sometimes we have right now we have a dirt | 00:12:55 | |
| berm and we had a couple people park up on the dirt berm on our property. So and it's only because there is no other property or | 00:13:01 | |
| place and I feel bad about that. I've asked them, I've even told them just come park on my driveway but don't leave any garbage | 00:13:07 | |
| this time. | 00:13:13 | |
| Just because. So I guess my concern is twofold. | 00:13:20 | |
| Number one, can we have a little communication with Oren about the amount of of events that are happening down the park? And then | 00:13:25 | |
| #2 if we could paint the front, the finished painting, the extension from the part up to the corner around in red with red paint | 00:13:32 | |
| so that it will be a visible recognition of no parking there. So because it is a traveling lane, so people traveling have to | 00:13:40 | |
| travel in the turning lane, middle lane, so either. | 00:13:47 | |
| Change the striping, put the red. I don't know what would be the safest way of doing that. Thank you, thank you, thank you for | 00:13:54 | |
| that. | 00:13:58 | |
| All right, any other comments? | 00:14:03 | |
| If there are none, I'm going to go ahead and close the public comments and we are going to move our reports closer to the end and | 00:14:06 | |
| move into consent items. | 00:14:12 | |
| I'll make a motion to approve the consent items as presented. OK, We have our first by Marty. Can I get a second, second, second | 00:14:22 | |
| by Amber? | 00:14:26 | |
| Any discussion? Otherwise I just need. Can I ask why we can't just answer their questions while they're here so we can leave? OK, | 00:14:31 | |
| we're on this item and then I'll answer you. | 00:14:36 | |
| All in favor, aye. Any opposed? | 00:14:43 | |
| Yeah, I would say that it's different every time. Some of the questions are really complex and I was saving the ability for us to | 00:14:48 | |
| discuss while we are in our reports. | 00:14:53 | |
| Some of the some of the questions are things that we might have the answers to right now. It's there's really important to stay on | 00:14:59 | |
| our business items and to make sure that if we are giving answers or promising anything that we notify the public, we're required | 00:15:05 | |
| by the Open Public Meetings Act to do so. | 00:15:10 | |
| So sometimes we have the ability to do it and sometimes we don't have the ability, but we do take notes and we do bring it to our | 00:15:16 | |
| experts to get that information and bring it back. And if you leave your e-mail and your phone number and you come and talk to us, | 00:15:23 | |
| we can make sure that we make those more rapid. But some of the answers can't be answered tonight. But then I'll give an example. | 00:15:30 | |
| Like we're talking about red striping along the park. We can't make any decisions for red striping. We can't make any funding. | 00:15:38 | |
| Do you listen and we are paying attention, Mayor, would you like me to give a short answer to the question about the settlement | 00:16:46 | |
| agreement? Yeah, that would be nice. But I do have a question about that in general is. | 00:16:51 | |
| Maybe you can address that if it wasn't in our minutes for the statement that you did make publicly, we would want to you could | 00:16:58 | |
| add that supplement in the minutes. | 00:17:02 | |
| And you could even hold the minutes and approve them at a later meeting if you want with that supplement. So the special meeting | 00:17:08 | |
| was driven by the timing of. | 00:17:11 | |
| Threatened litigation against the city and I had for a few weeks before that and the council had held a closed session to discuss | 00:17:16 | |
| this litigation leading up to it. Settlement conversations are by definition confidential because if you speak about them openly | 00:17:25 | |
| then you scuttle your ability to come to any kind of resolution. And so the fact scenario is essentially this. There are. | 00:17:33 | |
| Some communities in the city that. | 00:17:42 | |
| When they were created in the plat, the platen included a note that prohibited telecommunications from being put within the public | 00:17:44 | |
| utility easement in those communities. It wasn't uniform across the city. It was in certain plots and not in others. It was put in | 00:17:52 | |
| there, we believe by the developer those kinds of restrictions are unlawful. There's a federal law that prohibits that. The reason | 00:17:59 | |
| they prohibit it is so that. | 00:18:06 | |
| People aren't limited in their ability to get communication. | 00:18:14 | |
| It goes back to the old days when you had radio and broadcast TV and if you only had one person doing the news, then your news | 00:18:18 | |
| would be filtered to their viewpoint. And they want people to be able to get communication from a number of different sources. Now | 00:18:24 | |
| we're concerned less about broadcast TV and radio and those things and more about. | 00:18:31 | |
| Can we get Internet for more than one provider? | 00:18:38 | |
| And in those communities with that restriction, they could only get Internet from one provider. And so that provider literally had | 00:18:40 | |
| residents of the city over apparel. It was the only choice, and it wasn't always the best choice. They wanted options. | 00:18:48 | |
| Comcast came in and requested a permit to enter that public utility easement we had. | 00:18:57 | |
| To sort out legally whether we had the right to give them that. | 00:19:05 | |
| Access where there was that restriction in the in the plat notes. | 00:19:09 | |
| And what we ended up doing was negotiating with Comcast that we would grant them that permission. | 00:19:14 | |
| We agree with Comcast on the reading of the federal law that prohibits that kind of plant restriction. | 00:19:21 | |
| And the state law that talks about public utility easements and what they have to be. | 00:19:28 | |
| And we believe they have to be open to telecommunications and that they have to be open to any telecommunications provider that | 00:19:34 | |
| has an agreement, a franchise agreement with the city. | 00:19:39 | |
| Franchise agreements are uniform, so if there's a franchise agreement for Comcast, the franchise agreement for other Internet | 00:19:45 | |
| providers is on the same terms. | 00:19:50 | |
| And they are given access to provide that service to everybody within the city. Comcast, in exchange for us granting them that | 00:19:55 | |
| permit, agreed to indemnify and defend the City if another telecommunications provider or a private developer sues the city for, | 00:20:04 | |
| in their view, unlawfully granting access to Comcast, contrary to what's in that platinum and that platinum. | 00:20:14 | |
| We expect that kind of lawsuit might come and so we wanted to be sure we were backstopped. So the the bottom line of it all is. | 00:20:24 | |
| The city engineers working with Comcast right now to give them those permits, they're working through that application process. | 00:20:33 | |
| There's some discussion in that process just because we want to figure out things like. | 00:20:39 | |
| Where do the communications boxes go? And. | 00:20:46 | |
| How do they enter and are they going to leave it in the same condition when they leave? But once all those details are worked out, | 00:20:49 | |
| we expect they will be given a permit to go into those Public Utilities. And then after they're able to lay their infrastructure, | 00:20:56 | |
| residents within the city will have will begin having choices on Internet service. So that was the settlement agreement that was | 00:21:02 | |
| presented. The agreement again was. | 00:21:08 | |
| Confidential up until the point that we signed it, but we got Comcast to sign up before we brought it to the city, so the moment | 00:21:15 | |
| it was approved, it could be. | 00:21:18 | |
| Binding on Comcast and we could be backstop and kept safe. | 00:21:23 | |
| And that litigation, and it's now from the public document now that it's been approved, of course. And in the meeting, I did give | 00:21:27 | |
| an explanation. And as the mayor noted, we'll make sure the minutes are supplemented. You'll also have this recording that | 00:21:33 | |
| provides a little bit of an overview, overview of what that litigation was and what we did. Are we, are we now allowed to say who | 00:21:38 | |
| the developer was? | 00:21:44 | |
| What's that? Are reading out loud now by law to be able to say who the developer was? Oh, I don't think you ever were prohibited. | 00:21:51 | |
| I mean every plat within the city has the name of the person who proposed the the plan. | 00:21:57 | |
| Well, there there are. This was not exclusive to a single plat. So it's on several plants throughout the city, but the plant in | 00:22:05 | |
| question? | 00:22:08 | |
| You know the no, it's I don't have all the plants in front of them, so they're they're. | 00:22:13 | |
| Comcast provided us a list of. | 00:22:21 | |
| About a half dozen or so, but they were not the only ones within the city. So I don't, I don't know offhand the full universe of | 00:22:24 | |
| that and I don't want to. I don't know whether it was 1 developer or multiple developers, but they did exist. | 00:22:30 | |
| In the city and those notes are on some plots. Excellent. Thank you so much for that recap. I would like to make a comment on | 00:22:38 | |
| that. | 00:22:42 | |
| I was not invited to that meeting. You guys asked me if I could go Friday and I said yes, I can go anytime afternoon. That was the | 00:22:46 | |
| only thing about it. And you guys held a settlement meeting. You didn't contact me. You held a City Council meeting. You agreed | 00:22:53 | |
| upon it and made a public notice that I read about it on Facebook. | 00:23:00 | |
| And I want to know who's responsible to find out if I did or did deny a meeting and that there's a record because I'm on the City | 00:23:08 | |
| Council. | 00:23:12 | |
| So all of the meetings that go out are done the same way. They're noticed the same way, they're sent to you the same way. The | 00:23:17 | |
| recorder's office emailed everybody the same way. I asked everybody when they could make it and sound a quorum. And then the | 00:23:23 | |
| recorder's office puts a meeting together and notified everybody the same way that they do each meeting. So it wasn't about | 00:23:29 | |
| excluding anybody that couldn't couldn't make it. It was just about getting a tentative schedule, knowing that we had enough if we | 00:23:35 | |
| needed to move forward. | 00:23:41 | |
| We had to hold it according to the timeline and everybody was noticed this same exact way. | 00:23:48 | |
| OK. We're going to go ahead and move on to our business items 9.1 permit parking program and our Senior Planner, Kathy, will | 00:23:55 | |
| present there. While we're waiting for cash. I want to put one other thing in the record because it does matter as it relates to | 00:24:01 | |
| this litigation. We, I can't discuss an open session, the contents of what we talked about during a closed session, but we did | 00:24:07 | |
| hold 2 closed sessions. | 00:24:13 | |
| About this litigation and Council Member Holdaway was present during that. | 00:24:20 | |
| Sessions and the settlement agreement is consistent with what was discussed in those closed sessions. There's not anything in the | 00:24:26 | |
| agreement that should be surprised. That's good to know about. Thank you. And if you have questions for how you want to be noticed | 00:24:32 | |
| in the future, you can talk to Eric and our recorders office as well. OK, go ahead. Pass. OK, great. I'm here to present a | 00:24:38 | |
| resolution. | 00:24:44 | |
| 20/24/17 which is regarding. | 00:24:51 | |
| Street parking permit along 300 W and we're near the Bloop Rd. | 00:24:54 | |
| Near the lakefront at Town Center Development. | 00:24:58 | |
| And doing this permit, some of the council, myself, staff, other members, staff met with the HOA there, kind of discussed their | 00:25:02 | |
| ongoing concerns with parking and their development and came up with an agreement. And that's what is in this resolution to | 00:25:08 | |
| provide extra parking to that development, to hopefully provide just extra parking to the residents that live there. Do you want | 00:25:13 | |
| me to go through each line of the resolution? I don't think so. I think the overall is that we're opening up this parking to all | 00:25:19 | |
| of the areas that have done. | 00:25:25 | |
| Their due diligence and fixing the area and then giving the opportunity for that group. I think our council has been working | 00:25:31 | |
| really hard. Sarah and Marty have recently been meeting with them and this is a resolution that came from about a year ago and | 00:25:37 | |
| it's kind of merged a little bit with some new information. If you wanted to give, were there any questions from the council as | 00:25:43 | |
| you reviewed it or are there things that you wanted to add in any situations? | 00:25:50 | |
| I just wanted to make sure it didn't change the responsibility of the HO as to enforce their current parking improvements. | 00:25:57 | |
| We did an update to the resolution that was submitted to the packet. We did add line 11 here. That does say the Lakefront | 00:26:03 | |
| Homeowners Association must continue to enforce their parking permits and enforcement programs. I'm just gonna ask you on #11 is | 00:26:10 | |
| there something that you need to say, like the city has the reserves the right to withhold something if if that isn't upheld or | 00:26:17 | |
| are there enough teeth in the overall resolution? | 00:26:23 | |
| We do have in other areas of this resolution, I believe it's line. | 00:26:32 | |
| I should be looking at my laptop, it's a little easier to read. | 00:26:37 | |
| Line #4 talks about their visitor or their HOA clubhouse parking. They have 29 stalls there. They currently aren't not allowing | 00:26:47 | |
| people to park there. It's not really well known in the community that you can park there. But we said you guys need to allow your | 00:26:53 | |
| residents to park there with permits. And if they do take that away from their residents, then we could also take away that same | 00:26:59 | |
| number from the parking lot. 300 WI don't know about we could include. | 00:27:05 | |
| Other language on 11, maybe 11, says the city reserves the right to withhold permits if those violations happen. And that way if | 00:27:12 | |
| they removed the permit programs, stopped enforcing their whatever it is that we had agreed upon that the city could make a change | 00:27:20 | |
| at some point. And yeah, regardless, if they did stop doing that, there would be a lot of issues within their development because | 00:27:27 | |
| we are also only willing to sell 82 parking stalls or parking permits, and I believe there's 109 parking stalls along those. | 00:27:34 | |
| 2 streets. So they are limited in that fact as well. So we'll probably add that wording just in case. OK. Other than that, I did | 00:27:42 | |
| wanna just real quick mention we did make a few other small changes, Line 6 where we're asking them that if they need additional | 00:27:51 | |
| parking beyond what is being allowed on 300 W Engineered Loop Rd. that the HOA is responsible for providing at least 25 stalls. | 00:27:59 | |
| At a minimum of at least 25. And then the other wording we just got rid of by restriping, where the city can come in and improve | 00:28:08 | |
| the number of parking stalls just because there's other methods to increase the number of parking stalls and we didn't want to | 00:28:13 | |
| limit us to just restriping. | 00:28:17 | |
| So the sooner we can get approval on that, the sooner we can get these permits in residence hands and. | 00:28:53 | |
| I just wanna go over it with the HOA and make sure that everyone's good, and I'd be happy to join you with them as well. OK, | 00:29:00 | |
| great. Thank you. Are we allowed to have an open meeting and invite them here so that we can have a council? | 00:29:06 | |
| I would just could we invite them? I, I would say, I would say this very particular thing, it is not an agreement with just this | 00:29:14 | |
| group. It's with multiple groups. And so to just have one group, I don't think would be, I mean, we'd want to invite all of the | 00:29:20 | |
| groups if that was going to be the case. If you did want to take it back, you could, I think it's a fair, it's fair where you | 00:29:26 | |
| could take it back and you could show them and they could feel comfortable with it. But really we're just standing openly that | 00:29:31 | |
| we're OK with this. And if they. | 00:29:37 | |
| Well then do we'll just continue it on. We don't need to make a motion for that. We'll just continue it. So, OK, thanks. Kash. 9.2 | 00:30:14 | |
| is a public hearing adoption of the Vineyard City FY24 Budget Final Amendment Resolution 2024 Dash 18. | 00:30:24 | |
| We'll have a motion to go into a public hearing. So moved. Thank you, Martin. Second, second by Amber. All in favor. Aye. All | 00:30:36 | |
| right. We're now in a public hearing and our finance director, Chrissy Davis will. | 00:30:43 | |
| Give us the presentation. | 00:30:51 | |
| I just wanted to remind you all of what the processes that we're going through tonight. At the end of the fiscal year, it's | 00:30:55 | |
| required that any minor adjustments are brought before the council. This is very common practice. So this would be budget | 00:31:01 | |
| amendment #5 for fiscal year 24, the council was given the packet with any minor changes that were in there. So I believe we're | 00:31:07 | |
| we're OK to just go ahead. | 00:31:13 | |
| Unless there's questions. OK, Are there any questions from the public on this item? | 00:31:20 | |
| Usually, Christy, you go or we go through what the changes were when we do an amendment. Would you like to do that right now? | 00:31:27 | |
| I don't have that list available. I could get it together for you. | 00:31:38 | |
| I mean, I mean I've looked through it and I feel comfortable. I just thought it might be. I would like to know the differences | 00:31:45 | |
| too. | 00:31:48 | |
| Can you just speak to microphone and just say that it's in the packet and then we have it? | 00:31:55 | |
| Just reminding that this is this is what was provided in the package so that everybody could take a look at that. And no, I think | 00:32:01 | |
| it's great. I was able to read through it and I feel comfortable with the changes. I wanted a preview for the public. Usually what | 00:32:08 | |
| happens and we can plan for it next time is when we do an amendment, usually we're walked through what, what changes were made. | 00:32:15 | |
| Just like a like a slide show type thing that helps the public understand it better. But I have to get that for next time. That | 00:32:23 | |
| would be great just for next time, OK. | 00:32:28 | |
| What's the name of it? Is this resolution amendment 2023-2024? Because I'm not seeing a breakdown of the changes either. 241829, | 00:32:35 | |
| page 29. | 00:32:41 | |
| OK Ken, come on up and state your name and where from away your condom is. | 00:32:53 | |
| You were the first president with 109 pages in the packet last night for residents. That's a lot to go through and a lot to | 00:33:00 | |
| formulate. So to have it on the slide is what we need, not what we're asking for, but what we need. So I would hope that the next | 00:33:08 | |
| time we could expect to have that up there. | 00:33:16 | |
| When these packets are so big, yeah, that's fine. If if we want to just pull up on this page and just talk about it a little bit | 00:33:24 | |
| and give kind of a preview for how this amendment works and give some background so that as we discussed the new budget, those | 00:33:29 | |
| answers will come out a little bit more. | 00:33:34 | |
| I think that'd be helpful. | 00:33:40 | |
| And Christy, I know you've been so busy and you've been doing a fantastic job, so there's no way it reflects. It was just, it was | 00:33:43 | |
| out of habit and I thought it would be there so. | 00:33:48 | |
| Thank you for all you're doing. I appreciate your honesty and like I said, we will have that available for next time. My thought | 00:33:53 | |
| was that in giving the council the information that you guys would go through it and then obviously you represent the constituents | 00:33:59 | |
| and if there are concerns that you bring forth or that they bring to you, then we would be able to discuss those. But I'm happy to | 00:34:05 | |
| pull up the final budget for fiscal year 24 with any questions that you have. | 00:34:11 | |
| If you guys have any questions that you wanted to present to the public so that the public can make a comment on it. | 00:34:18 | |
| A question more than anything. It's a public hearing. Come up to the microphone, state your name and where you're from and what | 00:34:30 | |
| your comment is. | 00:34:33 | |
| I'm Darlene Price, I'm in the villas and. | 00:34:37 | |
| If my understanding is correct, we were. | 00:34:40 | |
| Short on the budget for last year, correct. We overspent last year. What do you mean by overspent? Well, I have a budget of | 00:34:47 | |
| $150.00 for XY and Z, right? And I spent $200.00. So I overspent. That's what I'm asking is that according to what I was looking | 00:34:57 | |
| at on, on the two sections that you have up there, that was for last year, correct. So my question for you is, are you saying. | 00:35:07 | |
| We overspent, meaning we didn't have a balanced budget or what, what exactly. Well, that's what I'm asking in in my household, I | 00:35:17 | |
| have to balance my budget every month and make sure that I don't overspend. If I do have a credit card that I put my excess on and | 00:35:24 | |
| then that next month that has to be paid off. So if we are having City Council that has been given an award for transparency and | 00:35:31 | |
| for balancing the budget. | 00:35:39 | |
| My understanding was that we didn't balance the budget last year, that we overspent and so this year we have to make up for what | 00:35:47 | |
| we overspent. Is that correct? | 00:35:52 | |
| Yeah. | 00:35:58 | |
| No, that's not correct. Sorry. I think what you're, you're confusing balancing the budget with having using fund balance to | 00:35:59 | |
| balance the budget. We cannot spend 1 penny more in any of the funds than what this council gives us the approval to do. So right | 00:36:06 | |
| now as we're talking about the budget for next year, we're making guesses. And of course this will change in the next year. We'll | 00:36:14 | |
| have amendments that come up, but there is no money spent that doesn't come before the council. | 00:36:21 | |
| Pardon me. You said your name and where you're from and everything. I'm sorry, I didn't get it. I think that. OK, hold on. Before | 00:36:29 | |
| we go back and forth, is that your final? Well, that's it, yes. And I'm concerned that if we're having some difficulty with the | 00:36:35 | |
| budget. | 00:36:41 | |
| I get a feeling that we're having a shell game. | 00:36:49 | |
| And I'm supposed to guess where the correct budget is? I hate to say that I am more angry than I am disappointed. I've gone from | 00:36:51 | |
| disappointed to angry. I don't feel that we even need to be here because you're going to just plain do what you want to do and | 00:36:59 | |
| input from us does not count. I, I have seen that on more than one thing that you have voted on where the House has been packed | 00:37:06 | |
| with people who have said, please don't do this. And you just went ahead and did it. | 00:37:14 | |
| So I guess I'm just frustrated and and I'm getting to the point of being angry that you are not representing us for some reason. | 00:37:22 | |
| My father would say follow the money. Why are you not doing what you say you're supposed to do? | 00:37:32 | |
| Hold on, before we go back and forth, I'm going to close the public hearing on it. Are there any other comments from the public? | 00:37:39 | |
| I'll come right back to you, Jake. | 00:37:51 | |
| OK. Daria Evans, Vineyard resident, Slide 30, Page 35. | 00:37:57 | |
| At the bottom. | 00:38:03 | |
| Fiscal Year FY Fiscal year 23 Actual at the bottom. Surplus deficit in parentheses. It's in parentheses a deficit of $2,487,980. | 00:38:05 | |
| That's probably her question. | 00:38:22 | |
| All right. Any other comments from the public? | 00:38:27 | |
| OK. Can I go out of a public hearing? | 00:38:31 | |
| So, moved first by Amber, can I get a second, second, second by Marty? All in favor, Aye. All right, Jake. | 00:38:34 | |
| Yeah, I, I think it's really important and I, Christy, I completely agree with the government conversation of where we can approve | 00:38:42 | |
| to go into debt or to use our rainy day fund or our savings or our set aside funds for other things, right. I think when a citizen | 00:38:49 | |
| approaches us and says, hey, we can approve to go into debt like that, the 2 million or whatever, I think we just need to be very | 00:38:56 | |
| clear and bring it down to. | 00:39:02 | |
| Yeah, we spent more than what we had and we went into a rainy day fund last year. | 00:39:11 | |
| Dramatically that needs society, but we have put the council last year approved to do so is what she. | 00:39:15 | |
| Want to make sure that Christie's not doing anything wrong like. | 00:39:24 | |
| Can you clarify that? | 00:39:29 | |
| Yeah. I would just clarify that, that each year there is carryover dollars in the budget from within the general fund. There's a | 00:39:30 | |
| minimum and a maximum on that. So the minimum is what, 7%? | 00:39:37 | |
| Christy five, 5% maximum is 35%. As a city we like to try to stay between 17% and 35% because it has a, it's a recommended amount | 00:39:45 | |
| to stay within because it improves bond ratings and things like that. They won't let you go above 35%. They want you to be below | 00:39:52 | |
| that. You get dinged by your on your audit if you go above that 35%. And so we try to stay in between that. So each year as we set | 00:39:59 | |
| forth our budget. | 00:40:07 | |
| A portion of our budget is utilization of that carryover general fund so that it stays within that range. | 00:40:15 | |
| The use of fund balance is perfectly common. Every year you bet you budget for it so that by the end of the year. | 00:40:24 | |
| When you know inevitably a portion of your accounts are going to go unspent it it automatically brings that account up to about | 00:40:34 | |
| the top of it again. And so you want to kind of forecast right about in the middle of it so that you're not too low and you're not | 00:40:40 | |
| too high come the end of the year. But it as as Christy pointed out. | 00:40:47 | |
| A budget is a forecast where budget we're forecasting our revenues, both property tax and sales tax and and our other revenue | 00:40:55 | |
| sources and and it's the best guess and you try to be as conservative in that in that estimate as you can be. And Christy does a | 00:41:01 | |
| phenomenal job and is usually. | 00:41:07 | |
| As history goes, our our finance directors have been very good at getting close to that. | 00:41:14 | |
| The approval of our end of year is simply the corrections that that we're a little bit plus here and a little bit minus here | 00:41:19 | |
| within the budgeted allowances. | 00:41:24 | |
| And within that fund? | 00:41:30 | |
| OK. So it's not that there was overspending or there wasn't? | 00:41:32 | |
| A portion of that fund balance. So Dari, you mentioned the word deficit and I think maybe you could explain that a little bit too. | 00:41:40 | |
| I think the average person though would understand that we're going into our savings and that's how most people speak, right? | 00:41:47 | |
| So it's kind of semantic. Well, you might, but I think what you're not clarifying for the public is to say that that's part of how | 00:41:56 | |
| all budgets are run and that what Eric was saying is that you stay inside a certain amount. | 00:42:02 | |
| And that's what we're that that's what is happening inside of this budget. And and one more addition is that, that the purpose | 00:42:39 | |
| behind that isn't so much so that you have a savings account on an ongoing basis. A big purpose of that is so that when the year | 00:42:46 | |
| begins and you have yet to collect your first tranche of of sales tax or property tax, you have a buffer so that the city | 00:42:53 | |
| continues to operate seamlessly between fiscal years. | 00:43:00 | |
| And so that is why there's a recommended amount to stay within so that you don't have. | 00:43:07 | |
| You know, critical cash flow problems during that transition from one planet fiscal year to the next. OK, I'm actually, I'm really | 00:43:13 | |
| happy to hear you explain it that way because some of the concerns that were brought up to me were that if, if we're looking at, | 00:43:21 | |
| you know last year, we're one the the budgets have changed a little bit, 1.1 million use of the prior fund balance. | 00:43:29 | |
| Up from 26,000 from the year before. So some of the the comments that I heard was that will take us above. | 00:43:38 | |
| The safe mark to be able to get good on financing. So I'm happy to hear you say that you guys maintain that 17% that. | 00:43:46 | |
| That's not something that I understood before, so I'm again learning. So can you help me understand how we went from? | 00:43:57 | |
| And, and the use of the prior year fund balance, what's what's in there now and how, how did we go from 26,000 needing to use | 00:44:05 | |
| 26,000 to needing to use 1.1 million? And then this year it changed from needing 465, which I felt OK about to going back up the | 00:44:13 | |
| new one is like 900. | 00:44:22 | |
| So when it came back last night at like 10:00, I went all through this with Kim Olson yesterday. | 00:44:32 | |
| So it's like I have three different, three different budgets and the numbers are so different, right? And I'm, I'm going off 1 and | 00:44:37 | |
| I ask all my questions and then we get another one and it's lower. And me and Kim are like, yay, this is awesome. And then I get | 00:44:43 | |
| the one at 10:00 last night and all the numbers are back up again. And so it's it, yeah, it's scary for me to approve it when, | 00:44:50 | |
| when it changes to this degree. | 00:44:56 | |
| Sorry, I asked questions and I didn't know. Sarah, I totally understand. I appreciate your questions because I want to make sure | 00:45:03 | |
| we all understand what's going on. | 00:45:06 | |
| And we are going to be discussing quite, quite in depth during the conversation about the fiscal year 25 budget and talking about | 00:45:09 | |
| this very thing. We are not headed in a good direction in the amount of fund balance that we are using in order to keep. | 00:45:18 | |
| Vineyard growing and having our services at the same level that we currently have them. And so our goal tonight, later is we'll be | 00:45:28 | |
| talking about what we're looking at in fiscal year 25 budget. It is to help course correct this action that has not been | 00:45:34 | |
| previously addressed. We are going to be trying to do small increments to at least get us on the right trajectory to be where we | 00:45:40 | |
| need to be. | 00:45:47 | |
| And Chrissy, I would, I would like clarity in that for the minutes you're not talking about. | 00:45:54 | |
| Course correcting how fiscally aware the council has been rather what we're bringing into the city with tax revenue. | 00:45:59 | |
| Is that right? | 00:46:10 | |
| Yes, and inflated costs. I mean, everything's going up, right? | 00:46:12 | |
| And yet Vineyard isn't hasn't had a tax increase in 22 years. So we, I think we kept, I mean, we all hope things get better, | 00:46:16 | |
| right? And I think the projections that the council had that were the things we're going to have a different direction, different | 00:46:22 | |
| than what it has. But in no way have they been fiscally irresponsible. We are just getting to where we're going to have a | 00:46:29 | |
| structural deficit if we don't do something to course correct. So, but however, that conversation is not inside of this one. | 00:46:36 | |
| It's different, and the conversation that Sarah brought up that said she got two different budgets for the 25, that's different. | 00:46:43 | |
| What she wanted clarity on. | 00:46:51 | |
| #3 actually, there were three that she's stating. | 00:46:55 | |
| Are you talking in 24 or I'm sure it's updated and I know for all of you listening, Christy computer glitch since you lost all of | 00:46:59 | |
| her budget so she had to redo it so. | 00:47:05 | |
| So yeah, anyway. | 00:47:12 | |
| But umm, but as I was going over it with Kim, we just went through and and Marty mentioned she doesn't want a nickel and dime | 00:47:15 | |
| staff because you guys are awesome. You do such a great job. And I don't ever want you to think that, that we don't think you're | 00:47:22 | |
| doing a great job because we, we do. In fact, I there was a petition going around to get to get crosswalk for. | 00:47:30 | |
| For Hamptons over to Parkside and before that this isn't even finished and the theme was already on it so. | 00:47:39 | |
| You guys are doing an awesome job and I so, so appreciate it. The thing, the thing that Marty said is she doesn't want a nickel | 00:47:45 | |
| and dime everybody. And I totally get that and I'm totally on board with that. The thing is, is that when you're talking about a | 00:47:52 | |
| $12 million budget, a dime is like 10 grand, right? So you, you. | 00:47:59 | |
| You pull back your budget 10 times, that's 100 grand. And if everybody did that across the board, pretty soon it's $1,000,000. Do | 00:48:07 | |
| you see what I'm saying? It's like paying attention to those little things add up, right? And so my challenge to staff, even Eric | 00:48:13 | |
| and the mayor, is to pay attention to those those Dimes that you're spending and see where you can pull back for the sake of, of | 00:48:20 | |
| getting this on the right trajectory. And. | 00:48:27 | |
| Just so you know, I like Julie likes to say we need to put skin in the game. | 00:48:34 | |
| Like I'm even willing you can take off one of my months of income to help. I'm totally willing to do that. Actually for the next | 00:48:39 | |
| three years. Mine's more like a penny compared to yours, but but I'm willing. Jake would probably do it too. So there's that. But | 00:48:47 | |
| I think if if we all just really looked at it, we would live in a really nice community. And I feel like if we just, if we just. | 00:48:56 | |
| Coasted for the next year and didn't do a lot of excess training, didn't do a lot of excess travel. It wouldn't be too hard to get | 00:49:05 | |
| us back. | 00:49:09 | |
| Where we need to be. So, OK, so just to make sure I understand everything that you're saying, I felt like inside of that | 00:49:13 | |
| conversation we talked about taxes, the 25 budget and did you have your questions on the 24 budget amendment? | 00:49:23 | |
| Answered. | 00:49:35 | |
| On just the closing out the year portion. | 00:49:38 | |
| OK. All right. That's where we're at right now. Let's wrap. No, that's OK. Let's wrap that portion up. And I believe I went out of | 00:49:41 | |
| a public hearing, didn't I? Yes. So I need a motion on. So real quick I want to go through it. So it looks like the biggest one is | 00:49:50 | |
| retirement and taxes. It was 36 and now it's 63. What was the increase for that online 54 transportation? | 00:49:58 | |
| A staff member I'm guessing maintenance on transportation that went up 16,000. | 00:50:08 | |
| I'm transportation. What was that? | 00:50:15 | |
| We know. | 00:50:19 | |
| I don't have the detail right off hand, but I'm OK and. | 00:50:22 | |
| Increase for transportation was in 24 for the maintenance transportation line from 35,000 to 51. | 00:50:27 | |
| Oh, for the many the. | 00:50:39 | |
| Right. And we moved it. | 00:50:45 | |
| Right. To cover the electronic message boards, yes, and that would be under the transportation fund. | 00:50:47 | |
| Electronic message boards. | 00:50:56 | |
| So yeah, they're like their mobile, their mobile like sports. To win, the city has to have messages to the to the public, | 00:50:59 | |
| especially specifically for Rd. closures and so forth. Now we're able to put them up. And then the equipment went from 22 to 65. | 00:51:07 | |
| The 40 an extra 40K. | 00:51:19 | |
| In transportation. | 00:51:24 | |
| Hold on. I'm getting, I'm pulling up the detail on our finance system. | 00:51:29 | |
| By the way, when you guys are talking about that, I pulled up our our training and conferences and stuff for this year and we're | 00:51:45 | |
| talking across all the departments like $60,000. So when we have like a 1.2 million deficit, $60,000 can go towards that. But | 00:51:51 | |
| that's not what is making our budget not. | 00:51:57 | |
| Fiscally responsible. | 00:52:04 | |
| Right, but it helps a little bit helps. But I'm saying there that's an awful well. And I think we need to be clear when you're | 00:52:08 | |
| talking about paying your bills and going and keeping a level of service, when you say something like we can pull back, that's the | 00:52:15 | |
| duty of the entire council is decide where you want to spend and how you don't want to spend. And one of the things you have to | 00:52:22 | |
| assess is do we want to get these services? Do we want the road crossing? Do we want that petition for the crossing across the. | 00:52:29 | |
| Things that we can say, hey, we went inside of here and we looked and we said we're not seeing a return of investment on here, | 00:53:06 | |
| Let's go ahead and pull that and that's this group, but let's go ahead and pull up the numbers. We were just talking about the 22 | 00:53:11 | |
| to 65. | 00:53:16 | |
| Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were talking the equipment fund. He was saying there was a $16,000 in the equipment fund. I don't, I | 00:53:23 | |
| think many of you are aware we received a grant, I guess it's kind of a grant from Domino's Pizza for plowing for the snow plows. | 00:53:29 | |
| And so that revenue was put into this expense account and that is why you're seeing a negative amount on that. I'm seeing like | 00:53:36 | |
| transportation and water, like retirement and taxes it seems like. | 00:53:43 | |
| Is there consistent from 36 to 60? Is that? | 00:53:49 | |
| Now transportation and water would not be under the same fund. You have water. | 00:53:54 | |
| Stormwater, wastewater transportation, you know, I know it's just, I know it's a different fund. But what I'm saying is, is from | 00:54:00 | |
| transportation and retirement taxes, it went from 36 to 63. What page are you on 29? | 00:54:07 | |
| But I'm saying also on others, it's a consistency that. | 00:54:17 | |
| Retirement in taxes it was 41 and 68. So like are all what? Why is all the departments retirements higher than what we budgeted? | 00:54:23 | |
| Not all of them are. There are some departments that I neglected to get coded correctly. When I took over as the finance director, | 00:54:32 | |
| there was a little misunderstanding about who was doing what and so people that were maybe being should have been charged an | 00:54:39 | |
| internal service fund or not. And so instead of going in and making all the rules adjustments, I left it and made adjustments in | 00:54:46 | |
| this final budget and have a list of which ones I need to change as a July 1st for this this upcoming year. | 00:54:52 | |
| Contract services and wastewater went from 970 to 1.3 million. Contact services and wastewater is an increase that we saw for | 00:55:04 | |
| sewer, a 40% increase. | 00:55:12 | |
| Is this typical at the end of the year where we'll just have this clean up and all the numbers change and everything and it is | 00:55:20 | |
| absolutely typical and they are very minor adjustments? | 00:55:26 | |
| We make adjustments throughout the year, and like I said, this was budget amendment #5 to finish up the year, but it is very | 00:55:33 | |
| common that minor adjustments are made as they need to fund at the end of each fiscal year. | 00:55:39 | |
| All right. | 00:55:48 | |
| Can we get a motion? | 00:55:50 | |
| I move to adopt Resolution 20/24/18, the amendment to the fiscal year 2023-2024 budget as presented. All right, we have a 1st | 00:55:56 | |
| November. Can I get a second? | 00:56:01 | |
| Second. Second by Sarah. Jake. No Amber. Aye aye, Marty. Aye Sarah. | 00:56:07 | |
| OK. | 00:56:16 | |
| Look ahead and move to 9.3 public hearing proposed salary increases for elective and statutory officials. This requires a motion | 00:56:18 | |
| to open and close the public hearing. So we'll go ahead and have that now. I move to open into a public hearing. Thank you, Marty, | 00:56:23 | |
| can I get a second? | 00:56:29 | |
| I need a second. | 00:56:36 | |
| 2nd Thank you Sir. All in favor, Aye, We're now in a public hearing and we will. | 00:56:37 | |
| Can I give her, I'm not going to introduce the numbers, that would be dangerous, but I will introduce the law and what the | 00:56:45 | |
| requirement is on this. So this is coming to the public a little bit differently than what it has in years past. The state | 00:56:52 | |
| legislature this last session made a change to the law, and compensation for public officials has always been a public record. | 00:57:00 | |
| There's a state database where you can search for it and look at it and it's all there. | 00:57:07 | |
| It now is required to come forward to councils at the time that you approve your budget. By ordinance, you have to approve | 00:57:14 | |
| compensation for certain positions within the city government. And so you have in the packet and ordinance that has those | 00:57:20 | |
| positions and those approvals listed. You also are required to hold a public hearing. And so that's why this public hearing is | 00:57:26 | |
| occurring to comply with that legal requirement. OK. And Corey, are you presenting this item this week? I just needed to add, I | 00:57:32 | |
| needed to highlight that. | 00:57:38 | |
| I made a mistake in the first submittal when I did that first. | 00:57:45 | |
| Submission of the spreadsheet. And so I made a correction right before the City Council meeting. So I just wanted to highlight | 00:57:51 | |
| your attention to that correction. | 00:57:54 | |
| Did you want, you want me to explain the correction or OK, in the budget, we had budgeted for a 5% salary increase. In addition to | 00:57:59 | |
| that, there's a 0.7% recommended increase for Tier 2 retirement staff. And that was included in the budget that I missed including | 00:58:07 | |
| that on the spreadsheet for the director salary increases. So that's what I added to that. And the 5% is the cost of living | 00:58:14 | |
| adjustment. It's 3.5. | 00:58:22 | |
| Cost of living and 1.5% merit. Merit. | 00:58:29 | |
| OK. | 00:58:35 | |
| Are there any questions from the public? | 00:58:37 | |
| OK, seeing as there's none, I will go out of the public hearing. | 00:58:41 | |
| I need a motion I move to go out of a public hearing. Thank you, Marty, can I get a second? | 00:58:45 | |
| Aye, all right, and now the Council can discuss. | 00:58:56 | |
| Jake, did you have something? Yeah. So is this just a code, Jamie, that the state requires us to put in place so that it's in part | 00:59:02 | |
| of our policy? Are we actually giving everyone a salary increase and now this is required, You have to annually adopt the salaries | 00:59:08 | |
| for those positions and state what they are. | 00:59:14 | |
| If you. | 00:59:21 | |
| Make for most cities, for example, will, will budget with the cost of living increase for staff and then they'll, they may also | 00:59:23 | |
| pair it with a merit increase. And if you were to do those routine increases for staff in certain positions, you, you have to | 00:59:30 | |
| include that in this ordinance that you adopt now annually. That's that's a new process. The the bottom line and the figures have | 00:59:38 | |
| always been public, but you have to approve them in a different way now than cities have done it in the past. | 00:59:45 | |
| So right now we're not approving 5. | 00:59:53 | |
| 5.7 We're just putting this in a policy that as a policy we will be doing like our city manager could be doing this. Let me look | 00:59:56 | |
| at your, I'm not following what you mean. I think he's saying are we approving the funding for it or are we approving the policy? | 01:00:04 | |
| Well, so you just, you just held the hearing on it and you are required to do that by law you have now. | 01:00:13 | |
| Two different resolutions in front of you. One will be your resolution approving the budget. | 01:00:22 | |
| And the the over the budget will include an overall figure right for compensation. And these would be within it. You have a | 01:00:27 | |
| separate ordinance that's item 9.5 that is the ordinance for the salary increases for those positions that's listed. So you'll as | 01:00:35 | |
| a council have to consider and then vote on both of those items separately. And so then they would, so they go hand in glove, | 01:00:42 | |
| we're approving the policy and then they would get the increase we would and they. | 01:00:49 | |
| Tonight. | 01:00:58 | |
| The increase. I don't know the answer to the question on when the increase takes effect. | 01:01:00 | |
| You vote on the increase when you vote on the annual budget, that's the state law requirement. And so you you do them both | 01:01:06 | |
| together. I think, I think what you're saying, what you're suggesting is that we're doing a policy. This isn't a policy, We're not | 01:01:13 | |
| implementing a policy for these salary increases. This is part of the budget and this is the recommended increase. | 01:01:21 | |
| To increase the OK, yes. | 01:01:29 | |
| Who started this initiative? That's curious. | 01:01:33 | |
| I don't, I don't remember who the sponsor was. I can pull it up and tell you in a few minutes if you know not that from the state, | 01:01:36 | |
| I'm saying within the city, like who asked that we do an increase for us. | 01:01:41 | |
| This is the first time hearing it like I thought when the packet came out, the increase you're, you're referring to paying me | 01:01:48 | |
| more? Yeah, that is also part of the statute is that. | 01:01:53 | |
| Elected officials are listed among that group of. | 01:02:00 | |
| Select director level staff within the city. | 01:02:06 | |
| And the policy says that if the. | 01:02:10 | |
| If a cola is given. | 01:02:13 | |
| Elected officials will receive that same cola. | 01:02:16 | |
| With the stuff and cola is the cost of living the balance. | 01:02:20 | |
| And you can't separate it to cut us out. | 01:02:28 | |
| The statute says. | 01:02:32 | |
| The elected officials will receive the same COLA that that the city staff get if the if a COLA is provided. That's my | 01:02:34 | |
| understanding. I'm not quoting it, but that was what we learned. | 01:02:40 | |
| Our budget. | 01:02:48 | |
| It just it feels a little wrong. | 01:02:54 | |
| When we're when we're not on the right path. | 01:02:57 | |
| Right. I feel like everybody's he'd really fairly and I love the idea. You guys all obviously definitely deserve more for what you | 01:03:02 | |
| do. But maybe this isn't the best year to do this. Maybe we wait a year and see I feel a lot better of it about it if we were back | 01:03:10 | |
| to the the $26,000 prior year fund balance then. | 01:03:17 | |
| Then closer to a million I, I mean I, I don't want any I definitely don't want to vote to give myself a raise I. | 01:03:26 | |
| So that's how I feel. Yeah, me too. | 01:03:35 | |
| All right. | 01:03:40 | |
| It's not open for discussion, right? You already closed that, Marty. Amber, yes, this is not open for discussion right now. Marty | 01:03:42 | |
| and Amber, do you have any comments? | 01:03:47 | |
| You know, it's always an awkward conversation. I'm I'm looking at this and yeah, I don't care if I get another $400.00 a year or | 01:03:53 | |
| not. That to me, we're talking such a small percentage in my family's budget and the city's budget. | 01:04:01 | |
| What what I'm more interested in? Like to me that's it doesn't matter. | 01:04:10 | |
| If we need to cut that out or whatever we need to do, but rejecting the salary increases for the staff, I've been thinking a lot | 01:04:13 | |
| about it. | 01:04:17 | |
| And. | 01:04:23 | |
| You know, it's Mr. Price came in and talked about how everyone's struggling and how we don't, how we need to be respectful of | 01:04:24 | |
| friends and everyone is trying to make ends meet. And I think, and our staff is part of that, our staff is trying to make ends | 01:04:31 | |
| meet as well. And they're dying with inflation, they're dealing with gas prices. And so it's kind of like this Catch 22. It's do | 01:04:37 | |
| we cater to that and help show our staff that. | 01:04:43 | |
| We acknowledge the work they're doing. Dewey try to help with the intention of employees. | 01:04:51 | |
| Is 5.7% going to make a difference whether or not they're going to stay or go? And is 5.7%? | 01:04:57 | |
| For the 56,000, is that going to make or break our budget? I'd love to hear Julie and Amber's opinions. I I feel like we're, it's | 01:05:04 | |
| like there's some other things that we can look into arguing to get rid of before we look at getting rid of cola. I believe my | 01:05:12 | |
| husband's company is in a struggling field and they're still working on cola for them as well. I don't know. | 01:05:19 | |
| Yeah. I mean, how long was it? | 01:05:27 | |
| When we so we did an adjustment before, but it had been years since an adjustment had been made for the City Council and the mayor | 01:05:31 | |
| and I think it's excellent that we have this opportunity to. | 01:05:37 | |
| Address it like this. It's uncomfortable to talk about giving yourself a raise, however menial it is, but it's necessary. This is | 01:05:44 | |
| a hard job. | 01:05:48 | |
| There's a lot of work that goes into it and I think that following the state law, understanding the purpose of it, it makes a lot | 01:05:54 | |
| of sense. Can I jump in just for a second? The the state law doesn't require that the council receive a COLA with the staff last | 01:06:00 | |
| year. | 01:06:07 | |
| And I can't remember the details exactly because Ezra, the city manager at the time did this last year when you looked at the City | 01:06:13 | |
| Council and the mayor's salaries and we did an increase then I believe they could have done an ordinance in in what they did at | 01:06:21 | |
| that time was tie in any City Council mayor increases to a COLA that we would then give to city staff. So the state statute or the | 01:06:28 | |
| the SB 91 that we're referring to doesn't indicate that. | 01:06:36 | |
| Have to give City Council the COLA. So we'd have to go back and look at whether whether that city ordinance required that you get | 01:06:44 | |
| one or whether you could. I don't think it requires it. I think what it did was it instituted a policy. So what Amber was pointing | 01:06:52 | |
| out was that before this, the City Council was working X amount of time for $8000 and the mayor had been working. | 01:07:00 | |
| Full time for $15,000 and so they increased it and they said it's really uncomfortable to do. | 01:07:09 | |
| These significant increases for just getting a cost of living when you're dedicating this time. And so they said, why don't you do | 01:07:16 | |
| incremental things that annually comes up and if it's in the budget or if we can do it during that time, allowing the COLA because | 01:07:24 | |
| it's a small amount that doesn't create a very big burden on the residents versus the small incremental moments. So that's the | 01:07:31 | |
| question before you. We're definitely going to give you. | 01:07:39 | |
| In my opinion, where I stand, I'm voting for that. You guys, we heard it from our residents and we heard it from our council. I | 01:07:47 | |
| think that's important for me either way, however the council feels about a COLA for you guys. The idea is just taking small steps | 01:07:54 | |
| versus huge increases over time. And so whatever you guys want to do, I feel comfortable with. | 01:08:02 | |
| OK, but I need a motion. | 01:08:11 | |
| Yeah. | 01:08:13 | |
| Are you making a motion? No, I'm gonna comment on this. | 01:08:16 | |
| I think our staff are some of the best staff that are in other cities and I loved working with them. I just don't when down | 01:08:22 | |
| economies come, they hit and they affect all of us and I don't like that government staff. We just vote and then we put the | 01:08:28 | |
| pressure on the other side because the other side is hurting just as the other. | 01:08:35 | |
| You know, it's like, hey, so it's the down economy. So one gets out one of them. I'm not sure what you're saying. Well, when | 01:08:43 | |
| there's a bad economy at inflation, the private sector and the public sector at the same time. And so us as a council just voting | 01:08:50 | |
| that the inflation and everything in the down economy. | 01:08:56 | |
| Isn't going to affect it is what I'm saying so. | 01:09:02 | |
| But at the same rate I. | 01:09:07 | |
| You know, at the beginning of this January, February, when we did meet that one time, it was bringing us a, a budget that doesn't | 01:09:10 | |
| go into debt or have us raise rates on our taxes and we haven't been great. We have spent. | 01:09:18 | |
| We don't need the name Wall Church World Trade Center. There's a lot of things that we have just gone out and spent. And I would | 01:09:27 | |
| feel a lot more comfortable if we were not doing all of these things to say, hey, we're in a bad spot. But we need to be. We're | 01:09:33 | |
| A-Team and everyone needs to do it together. And we're going to be talking about a massive rate increase tonight. I just don't | 01:09:39 | |
| think it's the so we're gonna throw this and the massive rate increase to our citizens as well during inflation. So I would be | 01:09:44 | |
| voting no. | 01:09:50 | |
| For which part? For the color, for the staff, for both? OK. | 01:09:56 | |
| Any further closing comments That looks like there was a closing comment. And so let's go ahead and wrap that up and then we can | 01:10:02 | |
| make a motion and I just need a motion. | 01:10:06 | |
| Motion. | 01:10:23 | |
| There's no motion until after the budget, so let's move on. Think about it. | 01:10:25 | |
| OK. We will go ahead and move on to our. | 01:10:29 | |
| Discussion and action of the adoption of the final fiscal year 2025 budget and we are going to be hearing from our Finance | 01:10:35 | |
| Director and we are also going to be hearing from Laura Lewis who is coming back into this room. Would you like to give an | 01:10:42 | |
| overview first? Yes, in light of everything that we're going to be talking about here tonight in the fiscal year 25 budget, I | 01:10:49 | |
| thought it would be prudent to have someone who is very well versed in this to come. | 01:10:57 | |
| To speak to us, so Laura Lewis is going to be speaking with us. She was one of the original founders of Lewis and Young, which is | 01:11:05 | |
| now Lewis, Robertson and Birmingham. She has served as a financial advisor on over 1.5 billion in tax exempt and taxable municipal | 01:11:12 | |
| bonds transactions for numerous local governments here in the state of Utah. In addition to serving Vineyard for approximately 20 | 01:11:20 | |
| years, she personally serves as a financial advisor to West Valley. | 01:11:27 | |
| West Jordan, Orem, Ogden, South Jordan, Leighton Lehigh, Eagle Mountain and several others. And so with that, I'm going to turn | 01:11:35 | |
| the time over to Miss Lewis for a presentation. | 01:11:41 | |
| Because. | 01:11:54 | |
| You did a really good job and weren't distracted. | 01:11:56 | |
| It's nice being with you tonight. I have been with the city of Vineyard. I've been have the privilege to work as your financial | 01:11:59 | |
| advisor since your population was 268. And I remember distinctly that the mayor that ran at the time had 68 votes in favor of him | 01:12:08 | |
| winning. And I've seen all this phenomenal growth. I worked with Norm Holdaway. I'm assuming he is late uncle to you. | 01:12:17 | |
| So I've got to move on here. Deep roots here. | 01:12:27 | |
| So in addition to working with a lot of cities as a financial advisor when they issue debt, we do a lot of consulting and | 01:12:32 | |
| feasibility studies. We do analysis like comprehensive financial sustainability plans. And you're not the only cities that grapple | 01:12:38 | |
| with, you know, the whole concept of, you know, my revenues and my expenses. And how do we, you know, plan for that for the | 01:12:45 | |
| future. | 01:12:52 | |
| So I have given a presentation similar to this to both cities, large and small. I think the first time that I could find record of | 01:13:00 | |
| it was maybe back in like 2010 ish, which would seem about right because that's when a lot of the economy's wheels were falling | 01:13:09 | |
| off and cities were in a lot of financial stress at that time after the 2008 and 9 recession and. | 01:13:18 | |
| We actually presented to the League of Cities and Towns. | 01:13:28 | |
| Related to this, because a lot of people do not understand how the tax rates are set for cities, they think they understand and | 01:13:33 | |
| their view is, you know, generally quite. | 01:13:39 | |
| Rational, it's not an irrational way that they perceive it, but it's just not the way it works in Utah, it's the way it works in | 01:13:47 | |
| some states. So with that, they've been kind enough and when I sent the slides, I didn't realize that they come up like in fancy | 01:13:52 | |
| little pieces because when I was making so just. | 01:13:58 | |
| Populates page. There you go. OK, so just yesterday and I was working on this presentation over the past little while. | 01:14:03 | |
| I'm sort of a racist news reader and I saw this headline out of money wise just yesterday. And it's certainly, I mean, it's, you | 01:14:14 | |
| know, sort of all over the Internet. Remember, I'm talking about Montana. I should have put that in whatever. But it's it is how | 01:14:21 | |
| people think and they think it applies to taxes on how they're said in every state. | 01:14:28 | |
| We just can't take this anymore. A Montana man, 68, begs for a moratorium on property taxes after his bill reaches 8000A year. | 01:14:36 | |
| Just to live in our own house. | 01:14:41 | |
| My taxes were $8000 there. I'd be begging for you to post a moratorium. | 01:14:47 | |
| But then, as you read on this article, it says soaring property values. There are many reasons. Again, this is Montana. There are | 01:14:54 | |
| many reasons why property taxes may increase over time. First and foremost, property taxes typically based upon a percentage of | 01:15:00 | |
| your home's assessed value. That part is true. The last part is not for Utah residents. So if your value goes up, it's likely that | 01:15:07 | |
| your tax bill will too. | 01:15:14 | |
| That is not the way property tax rates work in Utah. All right, next page. | 01:15:22 | |
| So one of the first things to understand, and probably everyone in the room knows this, if you get a tax bill, you see it, | 01:15:30 | |
| probably have asked what it is or figured out. And but it's like, Oh yeah, they're giving me a reduction. I'm happy for that. | 01:15:34 | |
| So one of the things under Utah State tax law is that for a primary owned resident, you do not pay taxes on the full market value | 01:15:41 | |
| of your home. So market value is like if you're going to plunk a for sale sign in your yard. | 01:15:50 | |
| Market value is what you're expecting to be paid when you sell your home, or what your home's value is if it were going to be | 01:16:00 | |
| appraised. So if it is a second home, if you're fortunate enough to have a second home in Saint George or wherever. | 01:16:07 | |
| That is not your primary residence and you will not get that same discount and it's only for primary residential properties. So | 01:16:15 | |
| they take the market value and they reduce that by 45% and your taxable value in this example would go from market value of | 01:16:23 | |
| $744,900 to the taxable value of $409,695. | 01:16:30 | |
| If that full market value were a business. | 01:16:39 | |
| Whoever's nail salon, whatever it is right that residential exemption does not apply. They would pay the taxes on their full, full | 01:16:44 | |
| value of that. All right, next slide. | 01:16:49 | |
| Oh my goodness, that is microscopic. So here, believe it or not not to believe me, I've got it in a little bit bigger than on the | 01:16:55 | |
| next page. This is an actual. | 01:17:00 | |
| Tax bill that one of my colleagues actually went to the county assessors website and ****** ** a tax bill and if with your | 01:17:06 | |
| microscopic reading eyes just you can see 123 fourth column over the 2023 tax rate that top one for the school district basic levy | 01:17:15 | |
| is 001 four O 8. How did I do? | 01:17:23 | |
| 06 OK, not bad from here, no? | 01:17:34 | |
| Of the second one down. | 01:17:40 | |
| Thank you. | 01:17:45 | |
| So is is 4048, so .004048. So we use the numbers in that column from that tax bill to develop some data on some other pages. So | 01:17:49 | |
| next. | 01:17:57 | |
| That's a little bit larger, so I can read it from here at least. So the second line, Alpine School District, 0.004048. So the | 01:18:07 | |
| numbers in that column, the second column next or the column next to item, the 2023 rate, those are off of a 2023 tax bill for a | 01:18:14 | |
| residential property in the city of Vineyard. | 01:18:22 | |
| We show what the taxes are and the percent of that total for your tax bill. So you as a City Council and this is true statewide | 01:18:32 | |
| for cities and it's and it's just something that we as an individual, if you were to ask me, Carlos, what is your total property | 01:18:41 | |
| tax? And Murray, I can give you a pretty good estimate of what that check is for. What is your total property tax in for your. | 01:18:51 | |
| Saint George, I can tell you what that Taco Bell is. Even being in this industry, I cannot tell you. I mean, I could look this up | 01:19:00 | |
| and find it out. I cannot tell you how much of that money goes to the city. It's not what's planted in my head. What's planted in | 01:19:08 | |
| my head is my total tax bill. So when any jurisdiction goes to, you know, raise property taxes and the state law requires that you | 01:19:15 | |
| have to, you know, show and have a hearing and show. | 01:19:23 | |
| Percentage increases, people naturally do the math in their head of oh, and I'm just making up a number now, right? They naturally | 01:19:30 | |
| do the math and say, oh, a 5% tax increase. If my tax bill, my total tax bill, cuz that's how they think of it. My total tax bill | 01:19:38 | |
| is $1000 and a 5% increase. I can do that math, right? I know that's going to be $50. | 01:19:47 | |
| So when each jurisdiction raises taxes, it's important. | 01:19:56 | |
| That you understand and that you educate your constituents that what you get to control is the taxes for that 30% line. Okay, So | 01:20:02 | |
| we'll talk in a minute about well, okay. | 01:20:10 | |
| But my tax bill as a whole is still going up. You're very likely so because everyone of those entities, school district, the | 01:20:20 | |
| state, school levy, the city, Utah County and Central Utah Water District. | 01:20:27 | |
| All can act different apart from you to raise those property taxes, right? And that's going to affect the total tax bill. | 01:20:37 | |
| The pie chart at the bottom just shows what's at top in a cute little pie chart and you can see that the you know, the big orange | 01:20:46 | |
| piece that is Alpine school districts chunk of money Vineyard is the light blue pie to the left and the county is the light blue, | 01:20:53 | |
| the darker blue pie to the right of that. All right, next. | 01:20:59 | |
| I'm sorry about this. I didn't realize I was doing this until I got here and I'm like oh crap. | 01:21:10 | |
| OK, there we go. | 01:21:16 | |
| The certified tax rate calculation pursuant to state law. | 01:21:20 | |
| Aims to maintain revenue neutrality for the jurisdiction. | 01:21:25 | |
| Revenue neutrality means whatever dollar amount. So, you know, put yourself in a, in a place which is a little bit hard probably | 01:21:32 | |
| mentally where Vineyard doesn't have any new homes built, but just pretend that we have a year right, where no new homes, no new | 01:21:39 | |
| businesses are built, right? And from 2022 to 2024. | 01:21:46 | |
| You all know right? Property values are doing what we're going up, right? | 01:21:54 | |
| But if there's no new growth, the tax statute is structured so that you will receive the exact same dollar amount. | 01:22:00 | |
| Dollar amount, not rate dollar amount. | 01:22:11 | |
| In 23 that you received in 22. So if you take no action, right, you'll get probably some more money in the real world because you | 01:22:15 | |
| do have some new growth. But what comes with new growth? | 01:22:22 | |
| Cost, cost Exactly, Jacob, Absolutely. So it's important to understand that. | 01:22:31 | |
| I talked about new growth, okay, but that is not an increase in existing home value. It does not capture anything related to the | 01:22:40 | |
| home valuation. As a matter of fact, it it's been. | 01:22:45 | |
| The rating agencies love our tax law. Why do they love it so? Let's go back mentally to 2010. What was happening in 2008 and 9 | 01:22:51 | |
| with properties in Nevada? | 01:22:57 | |
| Property values are going up and they don't have this law. So tax revenues were just skyrocketing, right? But then here comes | 01:23:05 | |
| 2008, 2009, right? | 01:23:11 | |
| Crashing values also crashing revenues, right? Yeah, exactly so. | 01:23:18 | |
| That makes it really hard for local governments to budget because you're like in Utah, guess what? Property values went down some. | 01:23:26 | |
| Now that you know this Gilead thing, what you think happened to the tax rate? | 01:23:33 | |
| Up a little, up a little and you didn't have to take any action for that to increase. | 01:23:42 | |
| Because they're seeking to maintain revenue neutrality, OK. | 01:23:48 | |
| There's one page that things come up right. The last one comes first. It's a little bit of a hot mess, so sorry about that. | 01:23:54 | |
| OK, this is an example. This is not Vineyard. | 01:24:03 | |
| That's an example I actually got off of. | 01:24:08 | |
| Legislative Report. | 01:24:12 | |
| From 2022, I think I later on I've got a reference to where you can go look it up if you want, but they're trying to educate the | 01:24:15 | |
| legislators about the same kind of thing. And I said, oh, OK, so how is the general fund budget number set? Well, they look at | 01:24:20 | |
| what the whatever. | 01:24:26 | |
| City they pulled, I don't know, they didn't reference it. So if your general fund budget last year from property taxes generated | 01:24:32 | |
| $7,400,000, they went, oh, what is the current taxable value of the city? It's two billion, 155 in this example and it is | 01:24:38 | |
| relatively simple math in this example. | 01:24:45 | |
| So it's just really we need to get the 7 million four. We, what are we going to multiply the two billion 1:55 to get to 7 million | 01:24:53 | |
| four? Oh, it's .003434 in this example. | 01:24:59 | |
| Now when I say simple math, the actual way they they the mathematical formula that they utilize to deal with new growth and | 01:25:06 | |
| changes in centrally assessed property. What big giant thing is in Vineyard that essentially assessed? | 01:25:15 | |
| PowerPoint exactly, 100% spot on. You have no say in what the centrally assessed every five years, right, Whatever they do with | 01:25:26 | |
| it, right? He said power plant, yeah, sorry, power plant and it's five years, I think it is every five years. So it's centrally | 01:25:35 | |
| assist, right? And depending upon what the state sets that rate for, for all, you know, centrally assessed railroads. | 01:25:45 | |
| Or gas, those type of facilities are what gets centrally assessed. So if they go in and argue that their taxes need to be lower | 01:25:55 | |
| and the state says, OK, sure, we agree with that, which they do. Sometimes it impacts this math calculation. But again, you get to | 01:26:03 | |
| say nothing about it. I mean, you can go to the hearing, right? But the city that you don't have to approach the city to do that. | 01:26:10 | |
| So the actual calculation is more complicated. | 01:26:18 | |
| Than this example that the state presented the legislature, because I do take into account new growth, they do take into account | 01:26:26 | |
| changes in centrally assessed taxes. | 01:26:30 | |
| But this is intended to give you an idea of how sort of the basic part of that is set. And then again, if you don't act on this in | 01:26:34 | |
| the future and that taxable value goes up. | 01:26:40 | |
| And they're trying to get you that same 7.4 million. You're going to see that 003434. | 01:26:47 | |
| Go down, which is what we will. I'll show you in a minute relative to Vineyard, okay, next. | 01:26:54 | |
| And that's the presentation that I referenced a minute ago. And I pulled that example from the state specifically says. | 01:27:04 | |
| There is no windfall or loss of revenues that they're Speaking of like the revenues to the local government from market | 01:27:12 | |
| fluctuations. So again, property values go up. | 01:27:17 | |
| Tax rate goes down, property values go down, tax rate goes up. Because they're seeking for revenue neutrality. They state it is | 01:27:23 | |
| designed to be revenue neutral to the taxing entity. You as a taxing entity with that additional property tax revenues then can | 01:27:30 | |
| only come from new construction. | 01:27:36 | |
| And adjustment to the certified tax rate, that's it. And as Jacob indicated, right? | 01:27:43 | |
| It wasn't you. I'm trying to keep track. But if you have, I think you did say that if there's, if there's new construction, you've | 01:27:51 | |
| got new costs, right? You've got more people, you've got a police, you've got more people you've got to fire for. You've got more | 01:27:56 | |
| people who want parts and roads and water and it goes on and on. So those new revenues for construction, I believe I wasn't there | 01:28:02 | |
| when they authored the, the state tax code. | 01:28:08 | |
| But I believe that why they agreed to an adjustment for new construction is because they realize that any new construction is | 01:28:14 | |
| gonna require new services, right? OK, alright, next. | 01:28:19 | |
| So here we are. | 01:28:29 | |
| With vineyards tax rates, so I have one cell highlighted in green from 2017 to 2023. You're with the exception of the green cell, | 01:28:32 | |
| your property tax rate. Property tax rates have fallen and fallen and fallen and fallen and fallen. | 01:28:41 | |
| I did not have time to research it my my best educated guess relative to why that property tax rate went up in 2021 as you did not | 01:28:51 | |
| the council seated at the time did not act to increase taxes because as as Kristen stated, you don't raise taxes for in that | 01:29:00 | |
| capacity to adjust your certified tax rate for a long, long time. | 01:29:09 | |
| What I believe happened here is I think it was the. | 01:29:19 | |
| I was post COVID, right. I think property values maybe went down and that was a slight adjustment. I don't know that. So put a pin | 01:29:22 | |
| in that one. But you can see the trend line right from 2017 to 2023 is down, down, down, down, down. All right, next slide, I | 01:29:29 | |
| might be a next, it might be a ball. There we go. It just says what I just said, OK. | 01:29:36 | |
| So now let's look at some of the other main taxing entities. | 01:29:44 | |
| That your, you and your citizens will see on their their tax bill. So we've got Vineyard there. That's the same data that was on | 01:29:49 | |
| that previous slide. We have Alpine School District, Central Utah Water Conservancy District and Utah County. As you can see, | 01:29:57 | |
| Alpine School District's tax rate has gone up in that same period of time three Times Now. If my assumption on 20/21 is accurate, | 01:30:04 | |
| there's may have gone up in 2021 for the same reason I didn't again. | 01:30:11 | |
| Go research every meeting they had and see which years they actually acted to increase their rates. Also, if they have a general | 01:30:19 | |
| obligation bond that either comes on. If the citizens approve a general obligation bond, that's going to raise the tax rate. If | 01:30:27 | |
| they pay off general obligation bonds, that tax rates going to naturally fall because they no longer have the the need to collect | 01:30:34 | |
| that tax because it's voted on specifically to pay that debt. | 01:30:41 | |
| Umm, I meant to highlight all of central Utah water Conservancy districts in green because what do you notice is like a trick test | 01:30:50 | |
| question. What do you notice about Central Utah water Conservancy districts? Right. | 01:30:56 | |
| Remains constant. And why do you think that is the amount of water people use, right? It means they act each and every year to | 01:31:02 | |
| hold their tax rate the same. | 01:31:09 | |
| Each and every year they are required to be in a public hearing. No process like you're doing tonight and say we're just going to | 01:31:17 | |
| preserve that same tax rate. That's all we want to do. Preserve that same tax rate. If you notice, everyone else is right, Utah | 01:31:24 | |
| County, there's goes down, down, down. Oh, now we got to bump it up, down, down, down. At some point they're going to have to bump | 01:31:31 | |
| it up. Central Utah. I do have a couple of clients that do this. Clearfield is 1. I know West Valley looks at it every year. | 01:31:39 | |
| So just now see if they should hold their rate constant. Fine, Ogden looks at it every year to see if they hold their rate | 01:31:47 | |
| constant. And Ogden several years ago was in a situation like you and, you know, but with a little bit bigger numbers or a bigger | 01:31:54 | |
| city. And they had the need to, you know, raise revenues to pay public safety. And I, I don't remember the, you know, the number | 01:32:01 | |
| of years they hadn't raised taxes. Same thing for years and years and years when we went and did. | 01:32:07 | |
| Their look at their analysis and I didn't think to do this for you. | 01:32:15 | |
| But, umm, we looked at, oh, what would their revenues be today? How many more dollars would they have in their general fund if | 01:32:18 | |
| they had held that tax rate constant? | 01:32:24 | |
| From the last time they raised taxes for them, the number was $8 million. They if they would have just done what Central Utah did | 01:32:32 | |
| and held that rate constant every year, just like clockwork, they would have had $8 million more a year in their budget. So you | 01:32:38 | |
| can see the compounding impact of just letting that rate slide, right? I mean, it's, it's going the wrong direction when inflation | 01:32:45 | |
| is going to the direction, which I'll show you in a minute, so. | 01:32:51 | |
| As you can see, yours is dropping, dropping, dropping. | 01:32:59 | |
| Alpine Mike again a guess is the reason that did drop in in that one year is my guess is they had a Geo bond payoff they have they | 01:33:02 | |
| keep all their debt really, really short. | 01:33:06 | |
| But you've got central Utah just steady as she goes. Utah County is, you know, pretty flat overall. So that I just want you to | 01:33:12 | |
| keep that in your head as we talk about the what happens when an inflation comes along. All right? | 01:33:19 | |
| This is the one that they come up all wonky. I don't. | 01:33:29 | |
| Well, there's one more. One more at the top. | 01:33:33 | |
| So additional property tax revenues generated from new construction growth, as we've talked about, come with new demands on | 01:33:38 | |
| services. | 01:33:42 | |
| They're designed so that you can provide the same level of services to those new citizens that you do today. It relying on that | 01:33:47 | |
| like, Oh yeah, we're going to have lots of growth, so we'll have more revenues. | 01:33:52 | |
| Lying on that alone falls short overtime because it's not designed to keep pace with inflation. So without action taken at your | 01:33:59 | |
| level right, you just can't practically keep up with the inflating costs of providing city services. As someone who came to the | 01:34:07 | |
| podium noted earlier, I've got a slide that, you know, had has some shocking numbers relative to. | 01:34:15 | |
| Inflationary increases over the past same period that seven years, but no while yes. | 01:34:25 | |
| You and I are all feeling the squeeze as individuals. | 01:34:31 | |
| It's not like fairies work for you. You have individuals that work for you, right? They have the same need to have, you know, more | 01:34:36 | |
| money to put the gas, the same amount of gas in their gas tank. So that stress comes to a city as well. So not again, if you just | 01:34:43 | |
| let that rate fall, fall, fall, fall, eventually you've got you've got a budgetary problem. All right, next. | 01:34:51 | |
| Oh, here it is. The inflation game, I called it. | 01:34:59 | |
| So with, you know, references to where I found these numbers, I couldn't always find the same reference for the same number. But | 01:35:03 | |
| we look at, I looked at the price of ground beef in 2017 and the price today or last year and it's gone up 31% price of the movie | 01:35:10 | |
| tickets gone up 25%. A car, that one, I was like, wow, so I have to buy a car for my 16 year old this year so I get to quit | 01:35:16 | |
| driving her around. | 01:35:22 | |
| The average house in Utah County, that was also pretty shocker for me, 74%. The median income in Utah County has gone up 42%. So | 01:35:30 | |
| it's not all, I mean, median income appears to be keeping up with everything but housing, right? It's like, OK, it seems to be | 01:35:36 | |
| keeping up with car. At least it seems to be keeping up moving tickets. And we all know there's a real housing squeeze. And then I | 01:35:43 | |
| just toss on here for the sake of it. | 01:35:49 | |
| The main annual firefighter wage in Utah. Because again, that's something that hits you as a city directly, right? | 01:35:57 | |
| Some of that may be supply and demand, some of that may be, but it's real. It's what you have to deal with and that's gone up 51%. | 01:36:04 | |
| And I got that from Forbes and zip recruiter. So I don't know the Fire Chief from or may may think I'm way off, but all right, | 01:36:13 | |
| next. | 01:36:18 | |
| OK, now here's the soccer. | 01:36:25 | |
| So I'm comparing the inflation rate, so not, you know, I'm just giving you some cute little samples on the previous page. The | 01:36:27 | |
| actual annual CPI inflation rate is what's listed there in the second column of the right. So you got the year, you got the | 01:36:35 | |
| inflation rate, and you can see that that increases sometimes a little, sometimes 2022, a lot. | 01:36:43 | |
| Thankfully it's coming back down. I think she'll be in the 3:00-ish percent range, which will be nice. | 01:36:52 | |
| And then you can see the cumulative nature of that inflation. So if it's 2.41 year, then we add to that 1.8, then it's a total of | 01:36:58 | |
| 4.2, then we add to that 1.2, then we add to that 4.7. So when you look at it from a cumulative perspective, it adds up to a 22% | 01:37:07 | |
| increase and that inflation index over that period from 2017 to 2023. | 01:37:16 | |
| Now let's look at the percentage rate change and Vineyard Cities tax rate. Oh look, there are lots of negatives. Went down 1.4%, | 01:37:26 | |
| it went down 14.8%, it went down 3.5%. So you can you can see it right there. | 01:37:34 | |
| And so you're going the wrong direction. That's what that graph at the bottom is trying to show you. Inflation is going this way. | 01:37:43 | |
| Your tax rates going this way and again new growth is in the tax increase you get from new growth is intended to cover the new | 01:37:51 | |
| same level of cost of services. OK, next. | 01:37:59 | |
| And sell these great things. And then these words come up. All right, here are some. | 01:38:09 | |
| Pie charts relative to where your. | 01:38:16 | |
| The pie charts went away. | 01:38:20 | |
| That's OK. | 01:38:24 | |
| So this is where your your tax revenues, this isn't just your property tax revenue, this is the revenues that come into your | 01:38:26 | |
| general fund. So for those in the audience, the general fund takes in things like property tax, sales taxes, business license | 01:38:33 | |
| fees, license implements, that kind of thing. The general fund does not deal with water and sewer. That's in a separate enterprise | 01:38:40 | |
| fund that is intended hopefully to be self-sustaining. | 01:38:47 | |
| So this just gives you an idea of where the money comes from that makes up your general fund. And then the next pie chart on the | 01:38:56 | |
| right is expenditures, general government, public safety, highway and public works, and Parks and rec. | 01:39:04 | |
| So I have several clients that you know, aim. I actually was texting one earlier tonight before my phone started playing really | 01:39:14 | |
| loud music. I was texting to say will you remind me this frog because I know she works like will you remind me how many what your. | 01:39:22 | |
| What amount of your public safety cost is covered by your property taxes? And she said you need to look and get back to me. But | 01:39:34 | |
| several cities that I work for really aim to, you know, try to have their property taxes cover. Oh, thank you. I bet I have like. | 01:39:41 | |
| 15 bottles of water scattered around here. | 01:39:50 | |
| Getting over a sinus infection? Oh look, there's one right there. | 01:39:56 | |
| Drink all night. | 01:40:01 | |
| So several of my clients and my colleagues clients aim to have property taxes pay for public safety. They like the feel of that, | 01:40:04 | |
| right? Which I'm not using our quotes, but just because it's the word feel. But it's like, OK, what is the most essential thing? | 01:40:13 | |
| That you provide. | 01:40:24 | |
| The safety of my citizens. OK, so is it nice to look at them and say, oh, where do your property tax dollars go? Oh, they go right | 01:40:26 | |
| to pay police and fire. OK, so if you look at where your revenues are coming from and where your expenditures are going, big sea | 01:40:32 | |
| of blue is public safety. What do you think about blue being like, you know, in blue line kind of thing? So big sea of blue public | 01:40:39 | |
| safety. | 01:40:45 | |
| So in an ideal world, it would be lovely if the the the property taxes on the revenue source. | 01:40:53 | |
| Covered that big sea of blue but you can see it's not right. So by my calculation it might be on this page. As you keep clicking | 01:41:03 | |
| it might be on the next one. | 01:41:08 | |
| All right. | 01:41:16 | |
| There we go. That's what I've already talked about in the first bullet point for Vineyard. Your public safety costs in your fiscal | 01:41:18 | |
| year 2025 budget are estimated to be about $5.6 million. | 01:41:25 | |
| It is not uncommon. I I mean I haven't canvassed every city that we work for at Lewisham, but it is not uncommon that public | 01:41:32 | |
| safety is a number one expense. That is not uncommon. | 01:41:39 | |
| So even with the proposed change in tax rate that the city you know is going to be discussing, it's estimated that you would | 01:41:47 | |
| collect 3.9 million. | 01:41:52 | |
| To go to that, I mean, again, if you use this philosophy, I'm not saying you have to, but just understand that when you're sitting | 01:41:59 | |
| and say what does my property taxes go to pay for, it's only covering about 70% of public safety costs. | 01:42:05 | |
| Right. So you're looking to sales taxes and other things to augment that. So I just want you to be aware of that. All right, next. | 01:42:13 | |
| So another way of looking at, you know, sort of like are we keeping up with inflation? It's just another view of it is looking at | 01:42:24 | |
| your total population and your revenues. So we looked at that in 2017 and 2023. And here's a cute little grass. The next page has | 01:42:29 | |
| more specific data than I like. | 01:42:35 | |
| So taking that same per capita, so per person, what? | 01:42:43 | |
| You know what was your general fund or your property taxes generating in 2017 per person? | 01:42:49 | |
| Versus what is it capturing now? Well, if we don't adjust for inflation, it looks like oh you got you can party all day, right? | 01:42:56 | |
| Because in, in 2017 you were collecting 32,000 approximately per person. | 01:43:04 | |
| And now you're collecting 37, so you're like, oh, yay, that's $5000 more until I go back and add in those inflationary figures, | 01:43:12 | |
| right? So I'm inflating that so that you're comparing apples to apples in today's dollars. If I take the $32,057 in 2017 and use | 01:43:21 | |
| the inflationary numbers that I showed on that other page like 1%, one point two, 1.8, whatever they were, we add that. | 01:43:30 | |
| Compound that over time and bring it up to today. | 01:43:40 | |
| In today's dollars, you would have $39,808 per capita to work with, but you really only have 37,490. So you've lost again, another | 01:43:43 | |
| way of looking at the fact that you've lost buying power of roughly $2300 per person. All right, next. | 01:43:53 | |
| I don't know whether Howard Stevenson knows that I use this quote. Probably not. But maybe he'll watch this and he'll know. | 01:44:07 | |
| So Howard Stevenson was the executive director of the Utah Taxpayers Association for many years. They bill themselves as we are, | 01:44:15 | |
| the taxpayer watchdog. And this was written, I think he was a senator until 2018. | 01:44:23 | |
| This was an article that he was written by him and I've got the the date site. I can't remember I meant to include the. I could | 01:44:33 | |
| find it if you need it where what the article is written in. | 01:44:38 | |
| And this is a direct quote. | 01:44:46 | |
| If local governments want to exceed the certified tax rate, they must go through truth and taxation notification and hearing | 01:44:49 | |
| process. | 01:44:53 | |
| This is a good opportunity for local government officials to explain the proposed budget to their constituents. And then I should | 01:44:58 | |
| have put this in bold with like bright yellow around it. For the record, the Utah Taxpayers Association does not oppose local | 01:45:04 | |
| governments, does not oppose every proposed increase over the certified tax rate. In many cases, local governments are recouping | 01:45:11 | |
| inflationary losses. | 01:45:18 | |
| So probably one of the most conservative taxpayer guys I know, right, is saying, I mean, he's acknowledging that your certified | 01:45:26 | |
| tax rate drops and drops and drops and doesn't cover inflationary increases. | 01:45:32 | |
| All right, next. | 01:45:40 | |
| So if you all pulled out your tax bills for the past blah, blah, blah years, so that was 20 from 2017, going forward, you might | 01:45:45 | |
| look at it and say, well, it might. What I'm paying my taxes have gone up. And you would be right, right. Because there are | 01:45:51 | |
| several reasons that those taxes might be going up. What do we show on those charts? Oh, every Alpine school district had three | 01:45:57 | |
| tax increases. | 01:46:03 | |
| Central Utah holds their steady. Utah County had one tax increase. | 01:46:11 | |
| Right. So your total tax bill could be going up one because of those other entities that are raising taxes. That's the easy one. | 01:46:16 | |
| The harder one to kind of grapple with is related to how your property tax value is increasing compared to quote UN quote your | 01:46:23 | |
| neighbors. | 01:46:30 | |
| Um, locally assessed property has to be valued every five years. Now do I think they run around and appraise all of our homes? No, | 01:46:38 | |
| I do not know by what method they, they do. All I know is that some years it's like, oh, your property is now worth this and you | 01:46:45 | |
| can go in and, you know, fight against that if you think it's overvalued. | 01:46:52 | |
| But they have established a cycle for that reappraisal. Again, they're not sending people to run through your house and really | 01:47:01 | |
| appraise it. But they do reappraise those houses, but they don't do. | 01:47:07 | |
| An entire city at a time, right? So they may do. Let's assume you have. | 01:47:14 | |
| 5 segments of your city and they're gonna do one of those segments every year. So if you're in segment 1 and it was a year where | 01:47:22 | |
| property values went up a lot, right? Because you have to think of the total pie when they're when they're coming up with whatever | 01:47:29 | |
| that same revenue is for you from year to year to year. | 01:47:36 | |
| What did they look at? Do you remember the total taxable value number, that 2 billion, whatever the number was, right? Well, that, | 01:47:44 | |
| that total number is made-up of, oh, look, there's 5312345. So your area gets reappraised, right? So you're now a bigger piece of | 01:47:51 | |
| that total pie. There's hasn't been reappraised yet. | 01:47:59 | |
| So in that year. | 01:48:07 | |
| Your property taxes may go up a little because your valuation went up a little relative to theirs next year, right? So eventually | 01:48:10 | |
| it catches up. But in any one given year, your property taxes on your own bill may go up for one of those two reasons. | 01:48:19 | |
| All right, next I think we're getting, oh, conclusion. Yeah, you're all happy, right? | 01:48:28 | |
| So if you don't act to adjust those property tax rates from time to time, you lose purchasing power. If I have convinced you of | 01:48:35 | |
| nothing else. | 01:48:40 | |
| Please understand that. | 01:48:45 | |
| The only viable alternative to increasing property taxes occasionally is to reduce your level of services. Several years ago I had | 01:48:48 | |
| a similar discussion with Orem City and their council, and their council was really convinced because. | 01:48:57 | |
| A dare I say it, I think they hate raising property taxes more than anybody in the state. Terry Peterson can be that way. OK, So, | 01:49:06 | |
| so, so it was, I mean, it was a process to get them educated, right? And they had, you know, come to the table with with ideas of | 01:49:13 | |
| like, oh, well, here's what we can do. We can. | 01:49:20 | |
| Lower the the hours that the libraries open. They they operate their own library and their finance director, you know, had met | 01:49:29 | |
| with them in advance and went, OK, what what are your ideas right. If you don't want to raise taxes, what are your ideas? So he | 01:49:35 | |
| had time to put the math to. | 01:49:40 | |
| What that would look like? | 01:49:46 | |
| Less than the library hours closed the senior citizen center, which there are people in the audience would be like no, right And | 01:49:50 | |
| do that. close the rec center close all of the things that they came up with that they that they knew were hard political asks | 01:49:57 | |
| weren't even much of A needle mover, quite frankly, right. Most cities we work with South Jordan years and years ago. I still work | 01:50:05 | |
| with them today, but we work with them on a long range financial sustainability plan for their general fund. | 01:50:12 | |
| And. | 01:50:20 | |
| Learned that I, you know, give me a little bit of leeway, but approximately 72 to 75% of their total budget was on payroll. | 01:50:22 | |
| They take into account what you actually pay and the benefits, right? And as a small business owner, guess what? My largest | 01:50:34 | |
| expense is payroll #2 my rent, right? So if you, you apply that business sense to a city, your largest probably payroll. Your | 01:50:41 | |
| second is, you know, I think of rent, I think of your cost to operate City Hall, right? So those are the big needle movers. | 01:50:49 | |
| Anything else, you know, so when you're talking about reducing level of services as your alternatives? | 01:50:56 | |
| Who you gonna fire? Who and how many? Because that's gonna be the fastest way to reduce your level of services. And it's not fun. | 01:51:05 | |
| Citizens do not like their taxes raised, but they do not want their services hit. So put you in a command room, but those are your | 01:51:11 | |
| two levers that you can move. Now think of your teeter totter, right? I can either raise taxes, I can lower services. That's it. | 01:51:17 | |
| All you can move. | 01:51:24 | |
| Now I think it's time for questions. I'm so psyched. | 01:51:31 | |
| OK. Are there any questions for Laura? | 01:51:35 | |
| I just think it was awesome. Can we get those spreadsheets? Oh, absolutely. That was it was really helpful information, honestly. | 01:51:42 | |
| Well, the only question I have. | 01:51:52 | |
| I should have used purple. | 01:52:00 | |
| So here, here, I didn't know when I was going to school, but I went to so many universities in the States that I can cheer for | 01:52:06 | |
| anybody. | 01:52:10 | |
| Went to BYU, EU, Utah State and graduated from Westminster. So I bleed purple. | 01:52:15 | |
| That was very helpful. I learned a lot that I didn't even know I didn't know. So thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, if you | 01:52:24 | |
| think of anything afterward now, please feel free to, you know, shoot that to me. It was early. I mean, I bet it's been 20 years | 01:52:31 | |
| when I was working for Clearfield and they pulled their tax rate. I don't know if they still do, I don't know, But they held their | 01:52:38 | |
| tax rate similar to what central Utah does and people just came to expect it and instead of people. | 01:52:45 | |
| Pitchforks like blah, blah, blah, are you doing it was they educated them, they saw it. It wasn't a huge increase as opposed to, I | 01:52:52 | |
| mean, I got war stories coming out my ears as opposed to West Valley City. Before they built their rec center, they hadn't raised | 01:53:00 | |
| property taxes for a long time. They needed to raise property taxes so that they could pay for that building. And it was. | 01:53:09 | |
| I don't think all the people could fit in this entire building and they were pitchfork mad and but the kind of comments that they | 01:53:18 | |
| made was we'd rather have a little increase every year than. | 01:53:23 | |
| A big whopping 1. | 01:53:29 | |
| So my question is, if you if you strive to do that consistency, are there years that it could possibly go down? Absolutely, | 01:53:31 | |
| absolutely. Because if you educated the people to to understand that we want that tax neutrality, right? Is that what you called | 01:53:37 | |
| it right. And then you help them understand that there, there are going to be years that it goes up a little and there are also | 01:53:43 | |
| going to be years that it could go down a little, but we want to maintain. | 01:53:50 | |
| That consistency so. | 01:53:57 | |
| Ogden's in my head, so we're working with big Water deal right now. | 01:54:01 | |
| But I know specifically with their water rates, so I don't know that they apply the exact same thing to property tax rates. I do | 01:54:05 | |
| know they look at adjusting them every year, but specifically their water rates, they actually have a state of thing in their | 01:54:12 | |
| ordinance that they adjust their water rates every year based on the inflationary costs or a portion. I mean, so they they break | 01:54:19 | |
| their like into fixed costs and variable costs, right. And the variable cost element of. | 01:54:27 | |
| Water system, they adjust according to inflation every year. So some years inflation goes down, right, like 2008, 2009, it went | 01:54:34 | |
| down every other year almost it goes up. Some years it goes up a lot. So inflation went up 8% a couple years ago. They didn't | 01:54:42 | |
| they, they went, that's a little much, right, But but you could apply the same philosophy if you wanted to to. | 01:54:51 | |
| Your tax rate. And it might, you know, you might not need to hold it constant like central Utah does. | 01:54:59 | |
| It might still fall a little, but it's it's a good thing to think of. Thank you. May I add a short edition to Laura's | 01:55:05 | |
| presentation? And I should say, I sat through a lot of these presentations and nobody does it better than Laura. | 01:55:12 | |
| Yep, Yep. It's a It's a great explanation of how the process works. When you make a decision on your tax rate, there is the truth | 01:55:21 | |
| and taxation process that you have to follow. It's outlined in state law. They are set processes. You can't deviate much from what | 01:55:29 | |
| it is, but the way the truth and taxation process is set up, it can be difficult to explain to your neighbors and constituents | 01:55:36 | |
| what it all means. | 01:55:43 | |
| And it's it stems from the portion of Laura's presentation where it talks about revenue neutrality and the tax rate. When we hear | 01:55:51 | |
| rate in common language, what we usually think of is what's our percentage, right. You have a rate on your home and it's what | 01:55:57 | |
| percentage you pay interest. | 01:56:04 | |
| Everywhere you hear rate, it's it's that kind of a thing when the truth and taxation notices go out if the dollar, if the baseline | 01:56:11 | |
| dollar amount goes up a dollar. | 01:56:17 | |
| Folks will get a notice that says their tax rate is going up. | 01:56:23 | |
| And they think it means percentage, like at that very first Montana example. And what it really means is dollar amount, not | 01:56:27 | |
| percentage. And so there is always an educational hurdle to explain that. | 01:56:34 | |
| If you're making a tax rate increase. | 01:56:42 | |
| That as a percentage increase. | 01:56:46 | |
| That holds your rate at that percentage. It will be communicated to residents as. | 01:56:49 | |
| A larger ring, it will be communicated as a percentage increase over the dollar amount they've been paying, not a rate increase in | 01:56:58 | |
| the way we would traditionally think of that. | 01:57:03 | |
| So relative to that, that I'm glad you. | 01:57:08 | |
| Trigger something in my head. So we talked about that certified you do nothing on the certified tax rate just falls, right. So for | 01:57:11 | |
| you to bring it back up to what even what it was, even if you bring it up to half of what it was right, you are still going to | 01:57:18 | |
| have to notify that we're raising our rates because it automatically has fallen. | 01:57:25 | |
| They wouldn't. I mean, your constituents won't have seen that yet. They don't, They don't see, oh, my tax rate was this and the | 01:57:33 | |
| certified tax rate is now saying this and you're seeking to just put it back up to where it was. So education is really, really | 01:57:38 | |
| important. | 01:57:43 | |
| Because we are raising our projected to raise the tax rate. When did our truth and taxation notice go out for the first time to | 01:57:51 | |
| our citizens? There will be so in the resolution that will that you'll consider today. It lays that out so that it it I have added | 01:57:57 | |
| a section to it that I'll put on the screen when you get to that point, but it says the property tax rate of the menu of a blank | 01:58:03 | |
| spot where you can fill that in. | 01:58:09 | |
| For the tax year 2024 is hereby proposed, a truth and taxation hearing will be held and then the date is August 14th, 2024 at 6:00 | 01:58:17 | |
| PM and then after that the Council will deliberate and adopt the final property tax rate. | 01:58:24 | |
| On August 28th, 2024. But if we're approving the budget, aren't we locking that in now already? You are making your budget based | 01:58:32 | |
| on assumptions, and one of the assumptions is the tax rate you're proposing. | 01:58:38 | |
| If we'll go, you decide not to not to adopt that tax rate, then you would have to make a budget amendment right to to match | 01:58:45 | |
| whatever that is because your projected revenues would change. Is it normal for a city to do that reverse? Why wouldn't we do that | 01:58:52 | |
| in May and March? I don't know why state law doesn't have all the timing aligned it. It's a difficult thing for every city. I was | 01:58:58 | |
| in a meeting last night where. | 01:59:05 | |
| The they were having the same conversation because. | 01:59:13 | |
| They hadn't made an increase since 2019, and so their buying power had declined in exactly the way that Laura talked about it. And | 01:59:16 | |
| what that city did was ironically, looked at Clearfield. It was the Davis County city. | 01:59:24 | |
| And they said we want to have an informal policy as a city that we. | 01:59:32 | |
| Make a property tax adjustment at least every two years. They wanted their goal with that is to keep that line flat so that you | 01:59:38 | |
| don't have those alligator jaws between what your inflationary costs are and what you can do in terms of service and then what | 01:59:44 | |
| your revenue costs are. They wanted to try to keep both of them. | 01:59:50 | |
| But it it might be, and Christine may know even better than me, the state has a certain process with when when you're notified of | 01:59:58 | |
| your certified tax rate. | 02:00:03 | |
| And I again, it might be that because of that timing, you don't there's like time that you have to set your budget. If you're not | 02:00:09 | |
| going to raise your certified tax rate, then there's an extra time that you can set your budget if you are considering erasing it. | 02:00:15 | |
| And so I know that most of my clients are considering this kind of thing right now. Yeah, they don't align with when you get the | 02:00:21 | |
| numbers back from the county. | 02:00:27 | |
| And the county numbers even can change a little bit down the road, as as Laura mentioned, the county's making its estimate based | 02:00:33 | |
| on. | 02:00:37 | |
| The total revenue amount that the city would receive and if that and so to hold the certified tax rate means that your revenue | 02:00:41 | |
| would be dollar value equal as to what you collected in the last year. | 02:00:48 | |
| When they make that, when they then take that dollar value and allocate it among the different property owners within the city. | 02:00:56 | |
| They're doing that based on their estimates of the assessed value of the property. Those estimates don't always stay the same. You | 02:01:03 | |
| get people to contest that valuation. And so it changes and there's some adjustment even there. And so it's not uncommon for City | 02:01:09 | |
| Council members to get calls from people saying, hey. | 02:01:15 | |
| What I thought my rate was going to be is not exactly what it ended up being. And part of that is that reconciliation process with | 02:01:22 | |
| the county and have that all plays out. My my two comments are. | 02:01:28 | |
| If that taxation notice would have gone out two weeks ago, there would be a lot of people here in the room. | 02:01:35 | |
| Knowing about it, but because we're going to spend more and then we do taxation two months later, it's like, well, the budgets | 02:01:40 | |
| already been set and it creates a problem. You're like, oh, we're not going to make the budget because we're, we're lower. And | 02:01:47 | |
| then it, it's easy to raise the rate in August. And I don't like how that is because that's a fair complaint concern. I, I wish | 02:01:54 | |
| that you would align so that cities would have the tax rate information at the time they're making the budget decision. | 02:02:01 | |
| They don't. That's not unique to Vineyard. That's the same everywhere. But notice this will go out. A hearing will have to occur. | 02:02:08 | |
| Before you can make any adjustments, the only. | 02:02:16 | |
| The only scenario where you wouldn't have a hearing and wouldn't have to. | 02:02:19 | |
| Didn't notice this at a later time as if you accept the certified tax rate as it's put to you by the county. | 02:02:23 | |
| The county sends out the tax notices in July and that is when the citizens will be notified. So they will have a good 5-6 weeks | 02:02:29 | |
| before there before we have our hearing to discuss it. Yeah, but we're setting the budget today though, right. But today typically | 02:02:37 | |
| we do an absolute final fiscal year 25 budget. I mean, we can amend it throughout the year, but what we have to do tonight is we | 02:02:44 | |
| do what's called a working budget so that we can so that we can start paying things at the beginning of July through September. | 02:02:51 | |
| We would then approve an actual final after the taxation hearing in August. It has to be submitted to state by the end of August. | 02:02:59 | |
| So that's when we would do our final budget and that's not considered a budget amendment. That would be our final budget budget | 02:03:05 | |
| that we would then go forward with. | 02:03:12 | |
| I don't know that answer your question. With that, we are getting to the close of the evening, so I want to run through the budget | 02:03:19 | |
| and see if the council has anything before we because we will have to adopt the budget and the certified tax. | 02:03:27 | |
| Opportunity. | 02:03:36 | |
| At the same time, so we need to talk about anything we are keeping or getting rid of out of the budget right now. And I appreciate | 02:03:38 | |
| Laura coming to present, but I had asked Chief Sanderson if he would take a minute just briefly to again educate on what it is | 02:03:44 | |
| that we're doing here tonight. So I'll turn the time over to Chief Sanderson from Orem Fire. | 02:03:51 | |
| Madam Council, thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. You guys know you're really ramping up the services with Vineyard with | 02:04:01 | |
| Fire or I'm servicing you guys. It's a huge expense and we're within this budget if I'm not mistaken. We're just looking at phase | 02:04:09 | |
| one, hiring 6 full time employees that will then be housed out here as soon as. | 02:04:16 | |
| It houses completed. There's still going to be phase two. Phase three, we're starting with six employees and we're going to end up | 02:04:25 | |
| with 18. | 02:04:28 | |
| And so I think that supporting a tax increase. | 02:04:31 | |
| Specific to public safety is very prudent and very responsible from a property tax perspective and being able to accomplish what | 02:04:36 | |
| you've asked of us from the service level. | 02:04:43 | |
| And like Laura mentioned, your only options if you can't afford that is to reduce the level of service. And I think fire police is | 02:04:50 | |
| something that's very specifically from the community and asked for. And so I'm hoping that you can leverage the fire and police | 02:04:57 | |
| in support from the community with the tax increase. | 02:05:04 | |
| At least with the other cities I've worked, that seems to be very favorable because of the services we provide. | 02:05:12 | |
| Thank you. Any questions for Chief Anderson? | 02:05:21 | |
| OK. | 02:05:25 | |
| Thank you so much for being here. So we will jump right into the fiscal year 25 or do we need to? | 02:05:28 | |
| So they have Colton say anything about our police. I asked him if he wanted to so. | 02:05:34 | |
| Are we sent it? | 02:05:41 | |
| I think I would just echo what Chief Sanderson said. Every year when I, when I evaluate what our needs are for the Sheriff's | 02:05:46 | |
| Office and we look at our contract with the Sheriff's Office, you know, we established how much, how much have we grown, what type | 02:05:52 | |
| of growth was that? What's our call volume? What types of calls are we getting? Are those the type of calls that require backup? | 02:05:58 | |
| If so? And what's our coverage and what our response times, the priority that we've received from you over the years. | 02:06:03 | |
| And different councils has been to be a proactive Police Department. | 02:06:10 | |
| And keep our response times low and provide a high level of service. In order to do so, pretty much every year I have to add new | 02:06:13 | |
| deputies because we grow and our demographics change. We get more businesses, we get different things like that, that create more | 02:06:19 | |
| calls for us. So in this budget that you're going to receive today, we're looking at adding a full time deputy in July and then | 02:06:25 | |
| another one in January, which would give us. | 02:06:31 | |
| Two teams of five deputies and a Sergeant. There's some logistics there to help us out and be more safe as deputies, help us be | 02:06:38 | |
| more proactive, make sure that we have two people on it at the same time 24/7 to keep our deputies safe and provide a better | 02:06:44 | |
| service to the public. When I look at that, I mean, and I try to look to the future, there's other asks and I get pressures from | 02:06:50 | |
| some of the, the resources that we use at the county, You know, one of those that I've been that have come up lately as a special | 02:06:56 | |
| victims unit detective. | 02:07:01 | |
| We don't currently pay for one of those. I've pushed that off to next year, hopefully because I understand the budget constraints. | 02:07:07 | |
| But I would just echo the same thing as we grow and we try to provide that same level of service, we we have to be able to fund | 02:07:14 | |
| that. I'm happy I haven't answered your questions. So I just wanted you to mention on record when, when I came to meet with you, | 02:07:20 | |
| you said the national average per. | 02:07:26 | |
| Her citizen for deputy. Can you just state that so people have it? I understand that you are being very careful with the money. | 02:07:33 | |
| One of the metrics that the fire department uses, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're kind of standard level of services response | 02:07:39 | |
| times. You know, they need to be able to get to somewhere in 5 minutes. Currently in Vineyard we fall below that standard. We're | 02:07:45 | |
| at like a 7 minute time frame. The national standard for police services is how many police officers do you have per per thousand | 02:07:51 | |
| residents. | 02:07:57 | |
| The national standard generally is one per thousand. | 02:08:03 | |
| We are below that and I'm not saying that we need to be at that one per thousand. When I met, when I first came here seven years | 02:08:07 | |
| ago, sat down with the city manager at the time and we talked about, hey, what are our goals moving forward to keep up with our | 02:08:14 | |
| growth. And he and he mentioned, you know, I've been told that it's one per thousand. We can't fund that right now. But at the | 02:08:21 | |
| time, Vineyard was nothing but basically residential rooftops and the Megaplex and a few other little small businesses, right? | 02:08:28 | |
| And so at the time, we sat down together and I looked at call volume, we looked at the level of service we wanted to provide and | 02:08:36 | |
| we came up with a number. If we have one deputy per 2000 residents, we can provide a level of service that's acceptable at the | 02:08:40 | |
| time. | 02:08:44 | |
| As we've continued to grow, as we've got more businesses, we get more influx of people into the city, we add different things. And | 02:08:49 | |
| I look at the whole thing, not just residents, right, call volume, response times, type of calls. We've had to lower that number | 02:08:56 | |
| and we lowered it in our budget goals to one per 1750. We currently have. I feel like it should be at one per 1500 to maintain the | 02:09:03 | |
| level of service that you have asked and I feel the citizens have asked as well. | 02:09:11 | |
| Spectrum, I foresee down the road as soon as we get more commercial, more business, more people, different types of calls that | 02:09:19 | |
| that number will have to come down possibly to that one for 12:50 or one per thousand depending on how the city grows and what we | 02:09:27 | |
| see in the future. But right now kind of my goal, if we're just going off of that, that number alone is one per 1500, so. | 02:09:36 | |
| I hope that answers the question. Any other questions for Lieutenant Rockwell? | 02:09:45 | |
| Thank you. | 02:09:51 | |
| All right, Christy. | 02:09:54 | |
| Okay. | 02:09:59 | |
| OK, so now that I've got it turned on. | 02:10:02 | |
| I know this is the time that you've all been waiting for, and I so much appreciate Laura coming in, also Chief Sanderson and | 02:10:05 | |
| Lieutenant Rockwell for their explanations. I have been very well educated from them and I'm hoping that as they have educated our | 02:10:11 | |
| City Council on there, that they will in turn be able to educate the citizens on exactly what it is that we're doing here. And if | 02:10:18 | |
| you'll draw your attention up to the slide, just a review of what we would do on the budget process. | 02:10:25 | |
| Everything on here is what was part of the original calendar with the exception of the second one. | 02:10:32 | |
| We did add a second meeting with the council where they went over their goals session as requested. And so that is the only thing | 02:10:37 | |
| that was changed. As far as the budget process. I have met with all of the departments over the last couple months and seeing what | 02:10:43 | |
| their asks are. I've met with the council members and we've been able to ask questions about what's in the line items and what | 02:10:49 | |
| what they would like to see happen with the budget. And we've had our public hearing and now tonight we are to the point that by | 02:10:55 | |
| law we are required. | 02:11:00 | |
| To adopt A final budget. Now again, if we do the truth in taxation in August, then we would again we would have a more final | 02:11:07 | |
| budget. I should call, I should call it. So that's where we are. The budget that I've put together has very many assumptions. I | 02:11:13 | |
| have just put the, I just put a few basic ones on here. The number one that everyone is talking about is the increase in the the | 02:11:19 | |
| property tax rate. | 02:11:26 | |
| If you it is only going to be increased .000534. So the certified tax rate that was brought out by Utah County, the auditors | 02:11:33 | |
| office was .002835. We are recommending that it go to .003369. This is the same rate that we had in 2019 and it is not our highest | 02:11:42 | |
| rate over the last five to 10 years. | 02:11:50 | |
| We are assuming that there will be a sales tax revenue. We projected that there will be a 5% increase in sales tax revenue. | 02:12:01 | |
| Building permit, there's a lot happening in the city right now and we project that the revenue for the building permits will go up | 02:12:05 | |
| by 26%. | 02:12:10 | |
| And then if you look at the expenditures, the biggest assumptions that were made, we have a $740,000 increase for our fire as was | 02:12:16 | |
| explained and a 434,000 increase for our police force. I also wanted to mention, I don't believe it's been mentioned yet, but | 02:12:23 | |
| Lieutenant Rockwell asked for two individuals and our our compromise was we said we will give you one in July and the other one in | 02:12:30 | |
| January. | 02:12:37 | |
| So we are trying to be fiscally conservative as much as we can. Just wanted to make sure you're aware of that. Employee health | 02:12:45 | |
| insurance has gone up by 6.2%. And then as we were talking earlier about the cost of living adjustment and the merit increase, | 02:12:51 | |
| that is also an assumption that was put into this budget. | 02:12:57 | |
| This slide. | 02:13:06 | |
| It's relative to what Laura was talking about, but it's looking at it a little bit differently. This pie represents our total | 02:13:09 | |
| public safety costs for the fiscal year 25. | 02:13:13 | |
| The yellow portion that you can see is the amount that is covered by the property tax revenue with the rate increase that I | 02:13:19 | |
| proposed. So you can see that even with the rate increase that's proposed, we have 29.38% of our public safety that is not covered | 02:13:27 | |
| by our property tax. So that would have to be supplemented with sales tax and other revenues. | 02:13:34 | |
| This again, we had some concerns raised about fund balance and of course that is an issue everywhere you go. It's ideal to keep it | 02:13:46 | |
| at least 17%. | 02:13:51 | |
| Just for the record, if we do not do a tax increase and we use the general fund to fund the difference that's needed for public | 02:13:57 | |
| safety, it will take our general fund balance down to 11%. And that is not an acceptable level, especially when you have bonds | 02:14:04 | |
| outstanding. So we need to be cognizant of that. So the certified tax rate that I am recommending is the .003369 that will bring | 02:14:11 | |
| in 626,000 of the 1.1 to 1.2 million. | 02:14:19 | |
| That we need. | 02:14:26 | |
| Just as a final note, my final bullet there is if we were to go in and. | 02:14:29 | |
| To fund public the public safety increase and no need to use the general fund, we would actually have to put the certified tax | 02:14:36 | |
| rate to be 44168 instead of the 3369. | 02:14:42 | |
| So we we are aware that this is a tax increase and just for the record, the the state sets a ceiling at which you can go and we | 02:14:48 | |
| are not even close to that ceiling. The amount that we can put on a certified tax rate is .007. And so like I said, we are not | 02:14:57 | |
| anywhere maxing out our capacity to tax. We are trying to be fiscally conservative and are aware that. | 02:15:07 | |
| Prices are going up for everyone, everywhere. | 02:15:17 | |
| And with that, I'm just going to go into. | 02:15:21 | |
| The. | 02:15:25 | |
| The slides that I have, Council members should have received the updated 20 fiscal year 25 budget. And so if you have any | 02:15:27 | |
| questions as we're going through this, please. | 02:15:32 | |
| Feel free to interrupt. | 02:15:38 | |
| This pie chart shows our total general fund expenditures. Just a reminder, our general fund is different from a enterprise fund | 02:15:42 | |
| like our water, our storm water, our wastewater, our transportation, those are all our own enterprise funds. The general fund is | 02:15:49 | |
| police, fire finance, the recorder, parks and rec and those kind of funds. And you can see all of that listed there on the left. | 02:15:56 | |
| So this pie chart shows of our total expenditures, which department and. | 02:16:04 | |
| How those funds are allocated? | 02:16:11 | |
| Excuse me going into the water fund. | 02:16:16 | |
| This just shows, you can see that we in fiscal year 24, it shows that our revenues are higher than expenses that's related to bond | 02:16:20 | |
| proceeds that came in. But then you can see that reverses in fiscal year 25 when we actually have the projects that have carried | 02:16:25 | |
| over. | 02:16:29 | |
| The same thing with the wastewater fund, again, we had bond proceeds come in, in fiscal year 24. Those are going to be spent in | 02:16:37 | |
| fiscal year 25. | 02:16:41 | |
| I think this one is a very telling slide. We're in the process of doing a stormwater master plan and you can see that it's much | 02:16:51 | |
| needed. The general fund is currently supplementing the storm water fund. | 02:16:56 | |
| And that is an enterprise fund is meant to be self supporting, self-sustaining. And so there are some adjustments that need to be | 02:17:04 | |
| made there as well as in the transportation department, the same situation is there and we are working on master plans that will | 02:17:09 | |
| help us assess that and correct that problem. | 02:17:14 | |
| Internal service fund, I know we've had a lot of questions about that. The internal service fund is fleet facilities, HR and IT. | 02:17:22 | |
| And so obviously all of the city funds and departments use those those services and so each of them pays a part of it into the | 02:17:32 | |
| internal service fund. You can see that our costs have gone down our total budget from fiscal year 24 to 25. And a big reason for | 02:17:38 | |
| that is that we are leasing vehicles instead of outright buying them. | 02:17:45 | |
| Here are the capital projects that we currently have listed. | 02:17:54 | |
| We we already went over this last time, so if anyone has questions please speak up. But this is just. | 02:18:04 | |
| The slides from the last time that we were here, as we're going through this council, do you want to look through these really | 02:18:10 | |
| quick and decide if that's an up or down, if there's something that somebody wanted to discuss or try to convince somebody to take | 02:18:14 | |
| off or add to, now is the time to do that. | 02:18:19 | |
| I'd like to run through this as fast as you can so we can get out of here. So if you see something just feel like don't want the | 02:18:26 | |
| 75. Do you want the whatever you know, and we can say whether or not we're obligated or that it's already. | 02:18:32 | |
| It's OK, We'll just start at the top. | 02:18:44 | |
| Looks like nobody has any questions from the council so far, so let's go to the next page, OK? | 02:18:46 | |
| Again, these all were listed in the packet that you received as well. There's a very few changes. | 02:19:02 | |
| From the last budget that we had, I'd actually, I'd like, I'd like it if we could arrange a town hall where the citizens are | 02:19:08 | |
| allowed to come in and see the capital projects and see what's being spent. I mean, education goes a long way to help people | 02:19:14 | |
| understand and if they feel like they have an option, right knowing knowing what we have a fire station coming for a fire | 02:19:21 | |
| Firehouse coming right. And that's going to add. | 02:19:28 | |
| A significant amount to the budget. | 02:19:36 | |
| Right, if they'd be willing. You know, it's it really is. | 02:19:39 | |
| Like helping people understand that they need to right, if they want more services more than capital projects, or if they they | 02:19:44 | |
| want to keep the tax rate the same and not have all the services. It really is a matter of education. So people understand. | 02:19:50 | |
| Because the problem, I mean, I, I yeah, I think what you're saying is good. Each of these have had something where the public has | 02:19:56 | |
| been able to come to it. But I think what you're saying is really meaningful and that we could get them all together and maybe in | 02:20:02 | |
| our next town hall. | 02:20:08 | |
| Even before that, as we're going through this, start gathering each of these and doing some posters where we're talking about it. | 02:20:14 | |
| I like what you're saying. I think I think that needs to happen in the next town hall and I'm happy to help if we could get some | 02:20:19 | |
| of the slides from Laura and help people understand, right. Because this, I mean, there's a lot of money in capital projects and | 02:20:24 | |
| maybe I. | 02:20:29 | |
| I don't know, just helping them understand, right, that there's, there's a give and take and, and when, when the community | 02:20:35 | |
| understands that there's a give and take and we haven't. | 02:20:39 | |
| I mean, our tax rate will match what it was at 2019. That that's a whole different conversation then we're raising taxes on you, | 02:20:44 | |
| you know what I'm saying? So I it really is about helping the community understand and like you said. | 02:20:51 | |
| Always bringing transparency out as much as we can to the community, right? I think that's so important. So I think we should do | 02:20:59 | |
| that at the next town hall before, before, you know, the tax rate. | 02:21:06 | |
| OK. | 02:21:13 | |
| Yeah, you probably want to make note of that. The next town hall is in September. So she's talking about putting. Yeah. Didn't we | 02:21:15 | |
| move it to September? Oh, perfect. | 02:21:20 | |
| Perfect. Let's let's put it there. OK. Marty, did you have anything, Jake Amber? Well, the format of those are very important that | 02:21:27 | |
| we're all there as a council kind of like this with an open mic, right? That's what we've been demanding or kind of asking for. | 02:21:34 | |
| Well, I was at the last one and it was more open house. So I don't know for sure if I'll be at this next one that we have. | 02:21:41 | |
| Agreed to like do that and I was like we've tried multiple times to do it. So and I think we can do it. OK. Just tell us when as | 02:22:19 | |
| soon as possible. Is there anything else you guys are looking at that you wanna go through and slash or add to? That's the real | 02:22:26 | |
| question right now. Otherwise, so basically we're 1,000,001. So if we were to just put the modular roundabout, we're over halfway | 02:22:33 | |
| there just off a year, right? | 02:22:39 | |
| I'm not sure I understand when you say basically we're 1,000,001 like we're 1,000,001 over like we're we're gonna go into debt or | 02:22:46 | |
| not going into debt, we're short. | 02:22:51 | |
| Sort of what? | 02:22:55 | |
| What? What numbers is 937 now $937,000? | 02:22:58 | |
| Is this what we're? Yes, that's what we would be using from the fund balance, from the fund balance if we if we don't or we | 02:23:06 | |
| already are. | 02:23:10 | |
| No, if, if we increase the taxes, we still have to use 937,000 in yes. My slide, I don't know if you remember my slide that was | 02:23:16 | |
| showing that what would have to be if we wanted to cover the whole amount, we would be more like a 4168 so that we didn't have to | 02:23:23 | |
| draw from the general fund to help fund public safety. So the 1.1 is just the increase in public safety alone for fiscal year 25. | 02:23:31 | |
| But I, I. | 02:23:38 | |
| Lot of these projects up here if you go back there that are just like not time sensitive like. | 02:23:45 | |
| The garbage or just different things, benches on a trail, but I mean, those are nice. Cemetery, same thing. I mean, nice. But it's | 02:23:50 | |
| like in a down year and hitting it, it's like, why couldn't we just push a lot of these off and not the rate increase, but I feel | 02:23:58 | |
| like that's something we should let the community decide, right? That's what I'm saying. We should have that discussion. But yeah. | 02:24:06 | |
| Correct. And that's why I think having a quorum and having an open mic of like, hey, what are you things? What are things that you | 02:24:15 | |
| think? | 02:24:19 | |
| You know, how do you how would you like us to make up to this would be great. | 02:24:24 | |
| And what we've been doing and I think we could talk to a few of them. I mean, people have petition for these things like the | 02:24:30 | |
| cemetery and the benches. I'm happy to discuss back and forth with you on what you want to get rid of. If you want to get rid of | 02:24:36 | |
| some of those things inside of here, we can go ahead. But I feel like. | 02:24:42 | |
| I, I think there's, I mean, I kind of went through a list, Christine, I don't know. I asked you and Eric to kind of bring them up. | 02:24:51 | |
| Umm, you know. | 02:24:57 | |
| The 14,000 on employee appreciation, having an employee appreciation week or whatever of something that I would like cut, is that | 02:25:02 | |
| a fully appreciation or is that motivation? It's the program, yeah. Just as the point of clarity on that one. The cost of | 02:25:09 | |
| motivosity is a separate budget item. It's $22150 or something around that ballpark. All 15,000 that is requested goes directly | 02:25:16 | |
| to. | 02:25:23 | |
| Through a variety of programs that enhance Wellness and and provide. | 02:25:32 | |
| I'm against that one. What about No, no, I'm not gonna cut it. I want it. So anybody else agree with Jake to cut it? You just need | 02:25:41 | |
| a quorum. | 02:25:45 | |
| What about World Trade Center in Utah? World Trade Center Utah is not on here. I know it's not on here, but it's from previous | 02:25:52 | |
| years. That's something that could close the gap. | 02:25:57 | |
| If we do understand helpful out of that well it started in April and now we're in the June yeah we have full agendas every time | 02:26:33 | |
| we're not like doing short meetings all right point of order though let's get back to this agenda yeah X Factor 40,000 okay so my | 02:26:40 | |
| thought on X Factor is we already paid up until next October so I say we reevaluate it and see if we like the services we've | 02:26:47 | |
| received and if we don't feel that it's useful then let's not renew yeah and I say it's. | 02:26:55 | |
| Decrease from the PIO budget that was put in last year and they were able to figure out how to decrease by 30,000. So I think it's | 02:27:03 | |
| been going well. I just want to point out that it's a frivolous thing that most cities aren't doing right. It's not something | 02:27:10 | |
| above and beyond doing studies like that. I disagree, but anybody else have any comments for him? So I don't have 3. | 02:27:18 | |
| I want to reevaluate that one later. I I don't see Harmon keeping it in the budget and then deciding if we want to renew come | 02:27:27 | |
| September. I'm cool with that. | 02:27:31 | |
| All right, Next Qualtrics 74,000, we're in a three-year contract for that. We we can't get out of a contract. Have you evaluated | 02:27:35 | |
| that contract, Jamie, I did add it on to the agenda for you to reevaluate having worked there. I know they're easy to get out of. | 02:27:43 | |
| That's what I want to make sure. If you remember from our meeting the other day, we have to have baseline assumptions in order to | 02:27:50 | |
| get a budget to go correct. But you're talking about 100. | 02:27:58 | |
| $30,000 on a, you know, 900 gets us what, OK, But 11% more World Trade and Qualtrics, we would be backing out of a contract, which | 02:28:05 | |
| is not a good idea for City. It's not a good reputation, it's not a good practice. And right now, tonight we can't do that. So | 02:28:12 | |
| tonight we go on the assumption that it's not going to happen. And then if it does, we do a budget amendment and say, hey, we were | 02:28:19 | |
| able to claw back this money, but for tonight. | 02:28:26 | |
| And and this budget that we're talking about, I don't feel like that's relevant. | 02:28:34 | |
| And like I did, put it on a future agenda so we can address it at the time. So let's go to the next one. | 02:28:37 | |
| I work for the public group. We do electronic contract management. | 02:28:43 | |
| About 4% of all contracts nationwide are pulled back. That's OK, we can do that on another agenda. I'm making clear that you say, | 02:28:48 | |
| hey, it's not done or people don't do it. It's actually quite regular in government when cutting pays. I think what Christy is | 02:28:54 | |
| suggesting is just that. | 02:29:00 | |
| We have 3 to reevaluate we said it's on a future meeting already moved to the next item so we can keep going through the budget | 02:30:07 | |
| please. OK but I want to make sure right so it's already been said in previous meetings. So does that what type of action do I | 02:30:13 | |
| need to take to you? Don't we already voted it. We already did this at a public meeting in the minutes now Jamie would be | 02:30:19 | |
| preparing those for the next meeting like evaluating those scheduled. I thought OK I'm not sure what you're asking I know that | 02:30:24 | |
| the. | 02:30:30 | |
| Chair of the council keeps a running list of things that are agenda for future meetings. I know an evaluation of the Qualtrics | 02:30:36 | |
| agreement is slated for a future meeting. It's not slated for today and I can't speak for the rest of staff, but I can't speak for | 02:30:45 | |
| myself that I structure my work to lead up to the meeting. And so it's not work I've done yet, but when that meeting occurs. | 02:30:53 | |
| I'll look at the contract and if there are options for. | 02:31:02 | |
| Modifying or changing it, we can talk through whether those are prudent or wanted by the council, right? It's just timers of the | 02:31:06 | |
| essence with a, with 100, with a like a Qualtrics contract $74,000, it's $1000 a week. So every week we wait, it's just another | 02:31:12 | |
| $1000, right? It's actually a $1500 a week just waiting and waiting and waiting $3000 every, between every other meeting, right? | 02:31:18 | |
| And so are we getting $3000? | 02:31:25 | |
| Between every meeting on Qualtrics, you know, it's just it, it delays that. | 02:31:32 | |
| What about, here's the point, I think you have to prioritize your work and the mayor leads those discussions that it's, it's on | 02:31:36 | |
| your slate. All right. What about Safe Solutions 42,000? That's a two year contract that if we pull out, we still have to pay for | 02:31:43 | |
| it. You know that we did. David, did you review the contract on that? And I am familiar with that contract and that you pay the | 02:31:49 | |
| bottom line amount whether you use the service or not. | 02:31:56 | |
| You're gonna have discussed that in the meeting before, and you acknowledged it. | 02:32:03 | |
| We tried to do it and he didn't. I don't remember that part. It was. We'll talk about it. | 02:32:07 | |
| And I disagree with that one. If you get $10 million and you pay 42 in, how much did you pay? You know what I mean? And we got to | 02:32:13 | |
| know. | 02:32:17 | |
| What that agreement, and I know that power line transmission line study 50,000. There's no way I will back out of that one. Nope. | 02:32:23 | |
| That one is so important to our city. The idea of taking those huge power lines down and burying them underground would be such a | 02:32:30 | |
| value to the city. If it's the only legacy I leave, I'll take it. | 02:32:36 | |
| I'm not agree I hate them I just studying it out. Have you ever seen those transmission lines ever moved? | 02:32:44 | |
| With that, I have another client city that is in the process of burying above ground lines similar to vineyards. It's not the same | 02:32:55 | |
| length. | 02:33:00 | |
| It's a different length. That's the former Cottonwood Mall site and it has transmission lines and as they're redeveloping it into. | 02:33:05 | |
| So why would we? Why would we bury the Lions on like one part private properties land and not do it on other private properties | 02:33:13 | |
| land? Utah City would be paying for their portion and we'd be paying for the rest. | 02:33:20 | |
| The 50,000 is across the city. It's not for one property's land and all Eastman is turned over, the right of way is turned over to | 02:33:29 | |
| the city. So each property once they develop, can't develop underneath the property line. What the great thing about this is that | 02:33:35 | |
| there has been study and lots of discussion on how you would underground these voltage wires and they're saying there is a process | 02:33:40 | |
| in the step forward. If you don't want to spend the 50,000 this year and you wanted to do it a different time, this is really | 02:33:46 | |
| fine. | 02:33:51 | |
| Anything like we're at a downtime. It's like why now we we haven't done it for any of the property looking at doing it now. So we | 02:33:57 | |
| need to do it at the same time as them to save money and to get. So why wouldn't we have them pay for it? They are paying for | 02:34:02 | |
| their portion, yes. So why are we paying any of it? Why wouldn't they pay the 50? | 02:34:08 | |
| So they're paying, they're paying, but we're paying for the study. I think maybe what you're getting at with the council is that | 02:34:16 | |
| you think that Utah City petitioned the city to do it. But I think for this council is saying is that. | 02:34:23 | |
| We have been evaluating it and found somebody to take some of the costs. And so it's a different discussion. And so they're | 02:34:30 | |
| saying, hey, look, we can cut costs down if we also get some more people on board and potentially we could get more costs down if | 02:34:36 | |
| we kept going along the line and it was meaningful to other people. But like I said, the right of way is turned over to the city. | 02:34:41 | |
| So it's going to be who's looking at the the views that really dips into that. But we recognize it looks like you don't have three | 02:34:47 | |
| votes. | 02:34:53 | |
| So go to the next one. | 02:34:59 | |
| I, I, I guess I would just close with just saying I have zero issues with the extra public safety and services being provided by | 02:35:02 | |
| fire and by police. But I, I expected this to be offsetting and finding reductions. You know, we increase our city manager's pay | 02:35:09 | |
| this year off a new one to another. We're not that big of a city to do that. | 02:35:17 | |
| From the previous city manager to this. | 02:35:26 | |
| My my pay is is contingent upon the passing of a COLA and the in the No, no, no, I know, but you're not there. You're paid more | 02:35:31 | |
| than what Ezra was. | 02:35:34 | |
| I didn't see what Ezra was paying, right. I know. But I'm saying that for the budget, it's 30,000 more. And so there's an extra | 02:35:40 | |
| quarter employee that's added to the city manager. We discussed this at our meeting. It's the deputy recorder that does 1/4 of his | 02:35:47 | |
| time in my budget, right? But again, with downtime, we're just increasing it, right? We're, we're just splitting it. | 02:35:55 | |
| We had a deputy recorder before, we have a deputy recorder now. | 02:36:03 | |
| Pam was kind enough to allow 1/4 of his time to be spent helping me and so it's it's not extra dollars, it's just extra dollars | 02:36:08 | |
| showing up on my account and and a quarter less showing up on her. Are you asking for that to be removed from the council? No, I'm | 02:36:15 | |
| just saying that like it just balloons and and I think that. | 02:36:21 | |
| Umm, there simply needs to be some sort of accountability of past actions and all of this spend to then and what I feel obviously | 02:36:29 | |
| is my opinion of being irresponsible and we just need to be more accountable. | 02:36:35 | |
| You know, obviously I don't agree that we should be raising by $1,000,000 so or half 900,000. So that's my comments. Thank you. | 02:36:43 | |
| Any other comments? Sure, go ahead Marty, I see the concern. It's not, it's not like it's not a noble cause trying to save the | 02:36:51 | |
| residents money. I understand that. I look at the budget, I feel like we have made content. | 02:37:00 | |
| Contingent, contingent, contingent. | 02:37:09 | |
| He's made adjustments. | 02:37:11 | |
| Concessions. Thank you. It's getting late. | 02:37:13 | |
| We have made concessions over the past three months as we've been working on it. I've actually looked at a lot of things and made | 02:37:19 | |
| adjustments just on my end and, and discussing with staff. I know that we had several staff, our department heads asking for a | 02:37:25 | |
| certain amount of employees and we said no. We were looking at different parts spaces. We said no. There's a lot of things that | 02:37:31 | |
| had to be cut from this budget already. And sure. Are there a few things that I would like to revisit? Yes, but most of those | 02:37:36 | |
| things are. | 02:37:42 | |
| Contracted out and so it would be something later that we have to reevaluate and we can make amendments in the budget like we do | 02:37:48 | |
| throughout the year. The other aspect of it, I do not find it prudent to go through and cut, take capital budgets to pay for our | 02:37:55 | |
| day-to-day. I think that if you need, if you're not making the cut, you don't cut out, you don't take from your savings like we | 02:38:03 | |
| are taking from the general fund, but the capital. | 02:38:10 | |
| Are not meant to be for public safety or day-to-day and so agreed that we're coming off of a year where we've been traveling the | 02:38:18 | |
| world and the optics right now are not good. No, you're just stating that and we've already had this discussion multiple times | 02:38:25 | |
| that that money. It's just not a good time right. I don't agree. That's not what's causing us to have to. You saw the graphs of it | 02:38:33 | |
| going down and coming up and the one thing that the city needs is economic development. | 02:38:40 | |
| The one thing that keeps modeling out right is economic development. And what these people need are corporate recruitment and | 02:38:48 | |
| businesses coming in so that the property taxes can stay down so that we can diversify the tax base. And every time you see it, | 02:38:54 | |
| and then we're all silent and we just sit here. It's so frustrating to me because no, it's not honesty. That's that's the | 02:39:00 | |
| detracting part is that you've heard the facts, you know, you've seen the data and you keep repeating things that are alluding to | 02:39:06 | |
| a falsehood. It it may or. | 02:39:12 | |
| I won't keep going back and forth with you. I'm I'll let it go. We'll just, we'll just say this. | 02:39:18 | |
| The founders of our city all have really small homes and one bedroom and one bedroom garage or one car garages and they learn to | 02:39:26 | |
| live under their means. I understand that there are so many times when a family wants to go to Disneyland and wants nice things | 02:39:34 | |
| and wants to go through and do things and, and, and I understand that there are needs and times to do a tax rate increase. | 02:39:43 | |
| When we are prudent in everything that we're doing and the founders of the city that you're talking about set a Max height, a Max | 02:39:52 | |
| density, brought in an RVA, plan this out with me. I served on the council with them. They had anticipated this, that we would | 02:39:58 | |
| need to do this. This isn't the first time Laura Lewis came in here and gave this presentation. We knew it was coming and as we | 02:40:04 | |
| grew, we knew it was going to happen. So I know the people that you're talking about. I know what they planned. I read the tech | 02:40:09 | |
| documents. | 02:40:15 | |
| And just to state them as if they didn't anticipate or plan this, it's just not true. The facts actually lie in the minutes they | 02:40:22 | |
| are on record and what you're saying is not accurate. | 02:40:27 | |
| Let's end this conversation. We can have it in the future. Mayor, I'm allowed to have an opinion, yes, but you're talking about | 02:40:34 | |
| things that are not on the agenda. | 02:40:39 | |
| It is, it is first thing, you've been getting angry, you've been saying things that are not true on record. I sit here day-to-day | 02:40:44 | |
| watching as you do this. And now you're talking about how we are being fiscally irresponsible by stating random things that are | 02:40:50 | |
| not actually facts. And so I'm going to put it on the record. So as you state it on the record, I now state it on the record so | 02:40:56 | |
| that there's two points. | 02:41:02 | |
| We need a motion to end this meeting to end this agenda item. I move to adopt resolution 20/24/19, the final fiscal year 2024-2025 | 02:41:38 | |
| budget as presented. May I read the adjustments to the resolution from what was in the packet? So I've changed the title. It now | 02:41:47 | |
| reads a resolution of the City Council of Vineyard, Utah programming and adopting a budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025 and. | 02:41:57 | |
| Proposing a property tax rate. | 02:42:07 | |
| And then there is inserted a new Section 3 that says the property tax rate of 0.003369 for tax year 2000. | 02:42:10 | |
| 24 is hereby proposed. A truth and taxation hearing will be held August 14th, 2024 at 6:00 PM, after which the Council will | 02:42:21 | |
| deliberate and adopt the final property tax rate on August 28th, 2024. Excellent. So to clarify, this is a working budget so that | 02:42:28 | |
| we can function and we don't have a government shutdown on July 1st, correct? OK. We have a first by Amber that was clarified by | 02:42:35 | |
| Jamie and I have a second. | 02:42:43 | |
| All right. First by Amber, second by Marty. Any discussion? | 02:42:51 | |
| OK, we're going to go by name and roll call. Sarah. Marty. | 02:42:56 | |
| I am Amber. I Jake. All right, this moves us on to the discussion and action. Adopt adoption of an ordinance, ordinance for salary | 02:43:04 | |
| increases. This is the discussion that we had partially talked about before. Corey, do you have anything to add to this particular | 02:43:10 | |
| item or just that we have to make an approval? All right, as you discussed it before, you heard what Jake said, you guys had a | 02:43:16 | |
| little bit of deliberation. Now you need to make a choice. | 02:43:23 | |
| So I need a motion. | 02:43:29 | |
| I move to adopt the Audience Ordinance 202407 as presented. | 02:43:35 | |
| I have her first night Amber, can I get a second? | 02:43:41 | |
| I'll second it. All right. I have a second by Marty. I'm going to start with Sarah. Sarah. | 02:43:47 | |
| So. | 02:44:01 | |
| No. | 02:44:03 | |
| OK, Marty. | 02:44:04 | |
| Yeah, yeah. Amber, I think no, OK, we're going to 9.6 forms of government and I don't know who is presenting this particular item. | 02:44:06 | |
| I think we can table it. I don't think we have the support. | 02:44:13 | |
| Well, let's check really quick. Do we need to discuss this today? | 02:44:20 | |
| I think so. We've discussed it. We've come to the public, we've had some work sessions at this point, Jamie, maybe you could talk | 02:44:27 | |
| to us about processing the forms that are before us. | 02:44:33 | |
| A few slides, they're not lengthy that I'll go through and. | 02:44:42 | |
| Well, I was just saying that I, I've kind of removed my support for doing it. I don't think it's at the time that the right change | 02:44:47 | |
| of government. And so if, if there isn't support, I think we can just cancel it. OK, that's fine. If there are three votes, you'll | 02:44:52 | |
| have a vote at the end. | 02:44:58 | |
| Just to save time whether to continue it, table it, whatever you'd like to do. | 02:45:06 | |
| Give me just a moment. | 02:45:10 | |
| OK, my screen is up. | 02:45:24 | |
| When we have this topic on the agenda last, I gave a lengthier presentation that went through historically, the background on the | 02:45:26 | |
| different forms of government, how they came about, what they are. | 02:45:32 | |
| The a reminder that there's three core things the government does. We provide services, we build communities, control land use and | 02:45:38 | |
| then make laws that affect that. | 02:45:44 | |
| You currently the form of government and Vineyard is A5 member council form of government, your mayors elected directly, chairs | 02:45:50 | |
| the council, votes on all matters, is the chief executive officer and makes the key appointments with the council gratification. | 02:45:57 | |
| The council holds all the legislative functions within the city, the budgetary and appropriation functions, and then it provides | 02:46:05 | |
| the oversight for the performance of the executive and administrative. | 02:46:12 | |
| Within the city. | 02:46:20 | |
| A5 and six member council are very similar in almost every respect. The one key difference is that the mayor in A6 member council | 02:46:23 | |
| form of government. | 02:46:29 | |
| Does it? The mayor chairs the council but does not vote on most issues. They do vote on any ordinance changes that affect the | 02:46:35 | |
| mayoral duties they vote on. | 02:46:41 | |
| Tie to break tie boats and then they can vote on certain other matters, but on most matters on a day-to-day basis the mayor does | 02:46:49 | |
| not vote in that format and all other material respects the five and six member council are almost identical. | 02:46:57 | |
| There are slight variations in the language used in the code, but the functions are essentially the same. | 02:47:06 | |
| There are two slides in the packet. These you've seen before. I'm not going to go through them because the five and six member | 02:47:12 | |
| counselor are so similar. It's just an overview of what they are, how they came to be, what what some of the key advantages or | 02:47:17 | |
| disadvantages are. If you'd like to come back to these and talk through them, I'm happy to do it, but I think it's all information | 02:47:23 | |
| that you're familiar with. | 02:47:28 | |
| The process for changing to another form of government is and we're up in the top left corner where it's. | 02:47:35 | |
| Brown, a silver shape. The City Council adopts a resolution or voters file a petition. | 02:47:44 | |
| To change to another form of government. | 02:47:50 | |
| You will have before you today a resolution that you can adopt if you wish to change. | 02:47:53 | |
| To another form of government. Then within 45 days you have to hold at least two public hearings. | 02:47:58 | |
| On the topic so you'll be able to. | 02:48:04 | |
| Notice those and then hold those. Those hearings have to occur. | 02:48:07 | |
| Within that time frame, and then after those hearings are heard, you can rescind the resolution if you wish. | 02:48:13 | |
| And then if you do not rescind it. | 02:48:20 | |
| And have passed that resolution that it would go in an election would be held. | 02:48:23 | |
| Mayor Fulmer asked me to put together a slide that lists the fiscal impacts. There are one time costs and then there are ongoing | 02:48:29 | |
| expenses that would be related to this. They're pretty simple to understand. | 02:48:34 | |
| The one time cost relates to the election and the county charges the set rate. For an election, it's between 15 and $20,000. It | 02:48:40 | |
| depends on population number of registered voters, but it'll be within that range. | 02:48:48 | |
| And then? | 02:48:56 | |
| Any additional council member would be a salary of between 17 and $20,000. That's what I estimate that at, and that would be the | 02:48:58 | |
| ongoing cost annually. | 02:49:03 | |
| If you. | 02:49:10 | |
| Resolve to consider this. | 02:49:13 | |
| And to put it on the ballot and it's voted in here is essentially what happens. | 02:49:16 | |
| The new form of government does not take effect immediately. | 02:49:22 | |
| It would not affect any term of any sitting council member unless that Council member decided of their own will and volition to. | 02:49:26 | |
| Have their turn be affected. | 02:49:36 | |
| So everybody who's on the council now would continue on the council. | 02:49:38 | |
| Through the end of their term, the new mayor and the new council members will not be elected until the new municipal general | 02:49:43 | |
| election. That's fall of 2025. | 02:49:47 | |
| And then the effect would take place January 1, 2026, after those elections. | 02:49:53 | |
| There, the practical considerations we've talked about, there are many of the authorities and reasons for making a change in the | 02:50:00 | |
| form of government that have been discussed publicly that I think. | 02:50:06 | |
| Are available to you now, they're not dependent on a change to A6 member council form of government. | 02:50:13 | |
| And then I'll just show you. | 02:50:19 | |
| So you have the actual dates in front of you. | 02:50:22 | |
| The current term of everybody on the council right now is what you see on the screen there. This is taken from the resolution that | 02:50:26 | |
| you'll consider today, the Mayor and then council member Rasmussen and council member Sue Fuentes. | 02:50:33 | |
| Are serving times that expire at the end of calendar year 2025. | 02:50:42 | |
| Council Member Cameron and Council Member Holdaway are serving terms that expire at the end of calendar year 2027. | 02:50:47 | |
| Those terms would not be affected by a change. | 02:50:55 | |
| In the form of government. | 02:50:58 | |
| If you. | 02:51:00 | |
| Propose a change, and that change is voted on. | 02:51:02 | |
| The terms would stack as they show here on the screen, so council member Cameron. Council member Holdaway would continue to see. | 02:51:06 | |
| At the end of their term, the three additional council members would be elected with. | 02:51:12 | |
| A term horizon of the end of calendar year 2029 and the mayor would be elected with that same horizon. | 02:51:19 | |
| So it would be. | 02:51:27 | |
| I know it's only talked about 'cause it's kind of an imbalance. You'd have to up for election at once and then four up for | 02:51:30 | |
| election another time. You can modify that. The statute, what the statute requires is that roughly half of your council members | 02:51:36 | |
| are up each year clearly with. | 02:51:41 | |
| 5 voting members on the council, you can't get to an exact half, so it's 3:00 and 2:00. If you wanted to have one of the council | 02:51:48 | |
| members be a shorter term to 2027, you can modify that here. The way the statute provides that that's decided is by law. And So | 02:51:56 | |
| what would happen is you'd have your election for all the council seats and then after the election you would. | 02:52:04 | |