City Council Regular Meeting
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Mayor Fullmer opened the meeting at23 pm. PRESENTATIONS/RECOGNITIONS/AWARDS/PROCLAMATIONS2.1. PresentationofGFOADistinguishedBudgetPresentationAward FinanceDirectorKristieBayleswillpresentanawardtothecityfromtheGovernment Finance Officers Association. The GFOA's Distinguished Budget Presentation Award recognizes the city's "commitment to producing annual reports that evidence the spirit of full disclosure and transparency". | |
Finance Director Kristie Bayles presented the award from the Government Finance Officers Association. 2. FraudRiskAssessment Presentation FinanceDirectorKristieBayleswillpresenttheannualFraudRiskAssessment.This item is for discussion only, no action will be taken. | |
Ms. Bayles explained and presented the fraud risk assessment. WORK SESSION No items were submitted. PUBLICCOMMENTS | |
Resident Tim Blackburn, living in the Sleepy Ridge subdivision,expressed concern over weed overgrowth and bug infestation in the development areas of Goodboro and Cadence. | |
Resident Daria Evans, living in The Villas subdivision, expressed her disappointment with the Juneth meeting and wanted to know more about the settlement agreement that was presented during the special session. She also expressed concern that having the Redevelopment Agency meeting before the City Council meeting discouraged public participation. | |
Resident Karen Cornelius, living in The Villas subdivision, stated that she felt the two minute time frame given for public comment was not fair. She also expressed concern with the time frame in which comments were responded to. She asked that acronyms not be used in the descriptions of agenda items. | |
Resident JaNae Riley, living on0 South, requested that the city address parking concerns in the Orem Lakeside Park area. She stated that overflow for large events has resulted in people parking in front of her property or on her lawn. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES MOVED TO APPROVE THE CONSENT ITEMS AS PRESENTED. COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN SECONDED THE MOTION. MAYOR FULLMER, COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES, AND RASMUSSEN VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBER HOLDAWAY VOTED NO. THE MOTION CARRIED FOUR TO ONE | |
Mayor Fullmer responded to a question raised by councilmember Holdaway, during the previous motion, regarding answering questions raised during public comment. | |
Mayor Fullmer stated that because of the potential for a longer than normal meeting she would be emailing residents responses to their concerns at a later time. MAYORANDCOUNCILMEMBERS'REPORTS/DISCLOSURES/RECUSALSSTAFF,COMMISSION, ANDCOMMITTEE REPORTS CONSENT ITEMS1. Approvalof the Juneth, City Council Meeting Minutes.2. TuckerRowHomeownersAssociationPropertyConveyance3. BusinessLicenseandRegulationAmendment | |
City Attorney Jayme Blakesley gave details on the settlement agreement signed during the June,24, special session. Councilmember Holdaway had questions on the plats in question that instigated that settlement. APPOINTMENTS No appointments were made during this meeting. BUSINESSITEMS8.1. ParkingPermit Program SeniorPlannerCacheHanceywillpresentonaParkingPermitProgramfor300Wand Vineyard Loop Road near the Lakefront at Town Center Neighborhood | |
Senior Planner Cache Hancey presented the details of the parking permit program and resolution24-17. | |
Councilmember Rasmussen and Mayor Fullmer had questions about item and Homeowners Association enforcement. A discussion ensued. | |
Councilmember Cameron asked to have the item continued so that they could bring proposed changes to the HOA before approval by the City Council. The decision was made to not make a motion on the resolution until after those meetings.2. PUBLICHEARING–AdoptionoftheVineyardCityFY24BudgetFinal Amendment #5 (Resolution24-18) Finance Director Kristie Bayles will present proposed amendments to the Fiscal Year23-2024Budget.Themayorandcitycouncilwillacttoadopt(ordeny)thisrequest by resolution. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES MOVED TO ENTER A PUBLIC HEARING at53 PM. COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN SECONDED THE MOTION. MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES, RASMUSSEN AND HOLDAWAY VOTED YES. THE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. | |
Ms. Bayles presented the amendments to the FY24 budget. Councilmember Sifuentes initiated a discussion on the presentation and how the final budget had been presented in past meetings. | |
Ms. Cornelius commented that she felt a full presentation where the changes were outlined would be better for the public. | |
Resident Darlene Price, living in The Villas, wanted clarification on last year’s budget and what she saw as overspending. | |
Ms. Evans stated what she believed to be the deficit that Ms. Price spoke to during her comment. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN MOVED TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING AT01 PM. COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES SECONDED THE MOTION. MAYOR FULLMER, COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES, RASMUSSEN AND HOLDAWAY VOTED YES. THE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY. | |
Councilmember Holdway initiated a discussion regarding budget processes. | |
Councilmember Cameron had questions about the Fiscal Year24-2025 budget. Ms. Bayles along with Mayor Fullmer explained that those questions would be answered during that discussion, later in the meeting. | |
Councilmember Holdaway initiated a discussion regarding increases in certain budget items. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN MOVED TO ADOPT RESOLUTION24-18 AS PRESENTED. COUNCILMEMBER CAMERON SECONDED THE MOTION. THE ROLL CALL VOTE WAS AS FOLLOWS: MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS RASMUSSEN, SIFUENTES, AND CAMERON VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBER HOLDAWAY VOTED NO. THE MOTION CARRIED FOUR TO ONE. 3. PUBLICHEARING-ProposedSalaryIncreasesforElectiveandStatutory Officials. PerStateCode10-3-818,apublichearingisrequiredtobeheldforthesettingofany elected and statutory staff salaries or increases. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES MOVED TO ENTER INTO A PUBLIC HEARING AT19 PM. COUNCILMEMBER CAMERON SECONDED THE MOTION. MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES AND RASMUSSEN VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBER HOLDAWAY WAS PRESENT BUT DID NOT VOTE. THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY WITH FOUR VOTING. | |
Mr. Blakesly explained the purpose for the hearing and the statutory reasoning for the ordinance. | |
Human Resources Director Corrie Steeves presented the proposed changes to employee salaries. | |
Mayor Fullmer called for public comment, seeing none, she called for a motion to close public comment. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES MOVED TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING AT21 PM. COUNCILMEMBER CAMERON SECONDED THE MOTION. MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES, RASMUSSEN, AND HOLDAWAY ALL VOTED YES. THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY. | |
Councilmember Holdaway wanted clarification on what was being voted on. There was a discussion regarding the new statute. | |
Councilmember Cameron expressed her concern about the timing of the increases coinciding with budget discussions. | |
Councilmember Sifuentes and Rasmussen expressed support for the idea of a salary increase. A discussion ensued with Ms. Steeves offering clarification. | |
Councilmember Holdaway shared his concerns about cost of living adjustments and overall spending. 4. DISCUSSIONANDACTION-AdoptionoftheFinalFiscalYear2025Budget (Resolution24-19) Finance Director Kristie Bayles will present the final Fiscal Year24-2025 Budget andthecertifiedtaxrate.ThemayorandCityCouncilwillacttoadopt(ordeny)this request by resolution. (A public hearing was held on the adopted tentative budget during the Maynd City Council meeting.) | |
Ms. Bayles introduced Laura Lewis with Lewis Robertson and Burningham. | |
Ms. Lewis gave a presentation on tax rates. | |
Councilmember Cameron had questions on yearly adjustments. | |
Mr. Blakesley initiated a discussion on Truth in Taxation, the process and what was required by statute. | |
Orem Fire Chief Marc Sanderson spoke in support of the budget. | |
Lt. Holden Rockwell, with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, spoke in support of the budget and gave a brief explanation on response times. | |
Ms. Bayles presented the final fiscal year24-2025 budget. | |
Councilmember Cameron stressed the importance of education and asked if scheduling town halls would be beneficial to educating the public. | |
Councilmember Holdaway initiated a discussion about projects and funding. | |
Councilmember Sifuentes expressed support for finding ways to reduce spending but stated that it shouldn’t be at the expense of capital projects. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN MOVED TO ADOPT RESOLUTION24-19 TO ADOPT THE FINAL FISCAL YEAR24-2025 BUDGET AS PRESENTED. COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES SECONDED THE MOTION. THE ROLL CALL VOTE WAS AS FOLLOWS: MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON, SIFUENTES AND RASMUSSEN VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBER HOLDAWAY VOTED NO. THE MOTION CARRIED FOUR TO ONE. 5. DISCUSSIONANDACTION-AdoptionofOrdinanceforsalaryincreases (Ordinance24-07) HumanResourceManagerCorrieSteeveswillpresentanordinanceproposingsalary increases for elected and statutory staff as required per State Code-3-818. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN MOVED TO ADOPT ORDINANCE24-07 AS PRESENTED. COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES SECONDED THE MOTION. THE ROLL CALL VOTE WAS AS FOLLOWS: MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS SIFUENTES AND RASMUSSEN VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON AND HOLDAWAY VOTED NO. THE MOTION CARRIED THREE TO TWO. 6. Formsof Government Themayorandcitycouncilwillcontinuethediscussionregardingformsof government and possibly act to adopt (or deny) resolution24-21. | |
Councilmember Holdaway wanted to table the item. This initiated a discussion with the council and the city attorney regarding the resolution as well as the processes and timelines associated with passage of the resolution. | |
Councilmember Sifuentes asked for clarification on the modified terms for council seats. She also made a statement explaining her support for the change of government. | |
Councilmember Holdaway initiated a discussion on what he thought were the benefits of a Mayor-Council form of government. | |
Motion: COUNCILMEMBER SIFUENTES MOVED TO ADOPT RESOLUTION24-21 WITH THE STIPULATION THAT ONE OF THE COUNCILMEMBERS TERMS WOULD END DECEMBERST27. COUNCILMEMBER RASMUSSEN SECONDED THE MOTION. THE ROLL CALL VOTE WAS AS FOLLOWS. MAYOR FULLMER AND COUNCILMEMBERS SIFUENTES AND RASMUSSEN VOTED YES. COUNCILMEMBERS CAMERON AND HOLDAWAY VOTED NO. THE MOTION CARRIED THREE TO TWO. CLOSEDSESSION No Closed Session was held. . ADJOURNMENT Mayor Fullmer adjourned the meeting at:30 pm. MINUTES APPROVED ON: June,24 CERTIFIED CORRECT BY: TONY LARA, DEPUTY CITY RECORDER |
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 going to | 00:00:30 | |
start with a presentation for the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by Christy Bayless, our Finance Director. | 00:00:40 | |
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 | 00:01:07 | |
have added our 2023 medallion to that. | 00:01:14 | |
I just wanted to read a little bit about what the award is for and entails. | 00:01:21 | |
So DFOA is the Government Finance Officers Association. The Distinguished Budget Award is a prestigious recognition given to | 00:01:26 | |
government entities that demonstrate excellence in budgeting practices. It is a national award that acknowledges organizations for | 00:01:32 | |
their commitment to meeting the highest standards of governmental budgeting. | 00:01:38 | |
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 | 00:02:01 | |
enhances its reputation among stakeholders, including citizens, investors, and rating agencies. | 00:02:09 | |
It demonstrates the organization's dedication to sound financial practices and provides assurance to the public that their tax | 00:02:17 | |
dollars are being managed responsibly. Just as a side note, this is the sixth year in a row that Vineyard has received this | 00:02:24 | |
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 of | 00:02:31 | |
this team, so we really appreciate it. That brings you to your second item, 2.2, which is the fraud risk assessment presentation. | 00:02:39 | |
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 395 points. The high points shows that you have low risk and we did get the 395 out | 00:02:58 | |
of the 395 indicating that we are our fraud risk is very low. It it really is about asking a lot of questions and questions | 00:03:05 | |
regarding accounting. | 00:03:13 | |
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. | 00:03:27 | |
Thank you so much. Great work on that. We really appreciate learning more about that and that we got a 395. You must feel like an | 00:03:35 | |
A+ student right now. It's exciting. OK, we'll have our public comments and what this time is for anything you want to talk to the | 00:03:42 | |
council about that is not on the agenda. So if this is something separate from the other items, please come up, state your name | 00:03:48 | |
and where you're from, and we will take those comments for you. | 00:03:54 | |
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 | 00:04:43 | |
weeds growing in the area because it's not being plowed and we have a humongous infestation of what commonly is called Clover | 00:04:51 | |
mites. There are other names for that. | 00:04:58 | |
And they are breathing and nesting in all the weeds that are there. And because of the high temperatures, which we kind of have a | 00:05:07 | |
perfect storm occurring right now. We have the weeds growing, we have high temperatures and they are infesting now the homes that | 00:05:14 | |
are on the southern end of that development and starting to move toward the northern end of the development. It needs immediate | 00:05:22 | |
attention from the developers and city. And I know that there's been a commitment made to do that. And I just want to under score. | 00:05:30 | |
The fact that several of the residents asked me to speak for them tonight. Barbara couldn't stay and we haven't personally been | 00:05:37 | |
infested yet, but we're just across the street. So we're anxiously awaiting the cities attention to that problem. Thank you. Thank | 00:05:43 | |
you just for the council so that you're aware of it. | 00:05:49 | |
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. So Nissan's all over it and he's making, he's working with the abatement team and the weed mitigation | 00:06:03 | |
group. So we'll be working on that. So any other comments from the public? | 00:06:11 | |
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. I would like to state that | 00:06:38 | |
I'm disappointed that I did not know about the June 14th special session of City Council. I'm disappointed that it was not posted | 00:06:45 | |
on the Vineyard City Facebook. | 00:06:51 | |
Because that's what I look at. And that it was held on a Friday morning when I'm used to Wednesday evening City Council meetings. | 00:06:58 | |
So I'd like to know why the special session was not live streamed and available to watch in Transcorp. Available to read? | 00:07:05 | |
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 | 00:07:21 | |
the complaint and lawsuit about? What was the when was the complaint lawsuit filed? What is the resolution settlement amount? What | 00:07:28 | |
course correction? | 00:07:36 | |
Will Vineyard City make to ensure that these types of issues no longer happen? | 00:07:43 | |
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 the 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 June | 00:08:46 | |
14th special session or tonight's June 26th City Council agenda. It was on the original June 12th meeting that was cancelled. | 00:08:55 | |
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 | 00:09:13 | |
Redevelopment agency, RDA first and then City Council not having adequate time to review the agenda, only 24 hours is | 00:09:21 | |
disheartening. Tonight's agenda is 209, excuse me, 109 pages. | 00:09:28 | |
Not having complete minutes limits our ability as citizens to know what is happening in our city. Referencing that. Jamie Blake, | 00:09:36 | |
please. 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. | 00:10:07 | |
I personally don't feel that it's fair. We give of our time and our service to be here. We have elected people that we want to | 00:10:12 | |
hear and we want to know what they, what they are doing for the people of Vineyard. And I also feel I have a real problem with you | 00:10:20 | |
closing the public comments and then you may or may not discuss what it was that we asked. We may wait months for an answer to our | 00:10:28 | |
question. I would like you to answer our questions as our questions are asked. | 00:10:36 | |
Rather than to close the public comments. | 00:10:44 | |
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. | 00:11:21 | |
We are trying to sell people on our opinions and I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about people up there. | 00:11:30 | |
And I feel like sometimes words are put in people's mouths and. | 00:11:37 | |
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 parking lot is full, the school parking lots full, and sometimes the church | 00:12:22 | |
parking lots full. So the next thing is to start parking on the grass of our front yards. And the strip in front of our house is | 00:12:30 | |
not painted red from the corner of where Holdaway. | 00:12:38 | |
Road turns down to the park either on the it's painted to. | 00:12:46 | |
Partway down the 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 | 00:13:02 | |
place. And I feel bad about that. I've asked them, I've been told them just come park on my driveway, but don't leave any garbage | 00:13:09 | |
this time just because. So I guess my concern is twofold. | 00:13:17 | |
Number one, can we have a little communication with Orem about the amount of of events that are happening down at the park? And | 00:13:25 | |
then #2 if we could paint the front, the finished painting, the extension from the park up to the corner around in red with red | 00:13:32 | |
paint 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, thank | 00:13:54 | |
you for 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 | |
I think that sometimes I think it's nice that sometimes we are able to answer those questions, but from what I've seen in other | 00:16:19 | |
cities, we might even be a little unique to that degree. | 00:16:23 | |
And sometimes I know that it feels like pretty usual because sometimes I'll open it up and we'll talk back and forth for like 40 | 00:16:28 | |
minutes sometimes. But I'm watching the agenda and I'm making sure that we can get through it. And tonight we've got some other | 00:16:33 | |
important things on. So we're going to move forward. But we do. We did listen and we are paying attention. Mayor, would you like | 00:16:39 | |
me to give a short answer to the question about the settlement agreement? Oh, yeah, that would be nice. But I do have a question | 00:16:45 | |
about that in general is. | 00:16:50 | |
Maybe you can address that if it wasn't in our minutes for the statement that you did make publicly, we would want to. | 00:16:58 | |
You could add that supplement in the minutes. OK, sure. Yeah. And you could even hold the minutes and approve them at a later | 00:17:04 | |
meeting if you want with that supplement. So the special meeting was driven by the timing of. | 00:17:09 | |
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 | 00:17:23 | |
then you scuttle your ability to come to any kind of resolution. | 00:17:30 | |
And so the fact scenario is essentially this. There are. | 00:17:38 | |
Some communities in the city that when they were created in the plat, the platen included a note that prohibited | 00:17:42 | |
telecommunications from being put within the public utility easement in those communities. It wasn't uniform across the city. It | 00:17:50 | |
was in certain plots and not in others. It was put in there, we believe by the developer those kinds of restrictions are unlawful. | 00:17:58 | |
There's a federal law that prohibits that. The reason they prohibited is so that. | 00:18:05 | |
Residents of the city over apparel. It was the only choice and it wasn't always the best choice. They wanted options. | 00:18:49 | |
Comcast came in and requested a permit to enter that public utility easement. We had to sort out legally whether we had the right | 00:18:57 | |
to give them that. | 00:19:03 | |
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. We agree with Comcast on the | 00:19:14 | |
reading of the federal law that prohibits that kind of plant restriction. | 00:19:20 | |
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. | 00:19:34 | |
Telecommunications provider that 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 in | 00:20:04 | |
their view, unlawfully granting access to Comcast, contrary to what's in that platinum and that platinum, we expect that kind of | 00:20:12 | |
lawsuit might come. And so we wanted to be sure we were backstopped. So the. | 00:20:21 | |
The bottom line of it all is. | 00:20:30 | |
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 | |
Binding on Comcast and we could be backstop and kept safe. | 00:21:23 | |
In 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 an | 00:21:27 | |
explanation and as the mayor noted, we'll make sure the minutes are supplemented. You'll also have this recording that provides a | 00:21:33 | |
little bit of an overview, overview of what that litigation was and what we did. Are we, are we now allowed to say who the | 00:21:38 | |
developer was? | 00:21:44 | |
What's that? Are we reading out loud now? By law, to be able to say who the developer was? Oh, I don't think you ever were | 00:21:51 | |
prohibited. 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. | 00:22:13 | |
I don't have all the plants in front of them, so they're they're. | 00:22:16 | |
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 one 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. You guys held a settlement meeting. You didn't contact me. You held a City Council meeting. You agreed upon | 00:22:53 | |
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 | |
And everybody was noticed this same exact way. | 00:23:51 | |
OK. We're going to go ahead and move on to our business items 9.1 permit parking program and our senior planner, Cast Handsy 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 | 00:24:03 | |
this litigation. We, I can't discuss an open session, the contents of what we talked about during a closed session, but we did | 00:24:10 | |
hold 2 closed sessions about this litigation and Council Member Holdaway was present during that. | 00:24:18 | |
And the settlement agreement is consistent with what was discussed in those closed sessions. There's not anything in the agreement | 00:24:27 | |
that should be surprised. That's good to know about. Thank you. And if you have questions for how you want to be noticed in the | 00:24:33 | |
future, you can talk to Eric and our recorders office as well. OK, go ahead. Pass. OK, great. I'm here to present a resolution | 00:24:40 | |
20/24/17, which is regarding. | 00:24:46 | |
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 | |
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 that. On | 00:26:10 | |
number 11, is there something that you need to say like the city has the reserves the right to withhold something if if that isn't | 00:26:17 | |
upheld or 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 | |
So I should be looking on my laptop, It's a little easier to read. | 00:26:37 | |
Line 6, where we're asking them that if they need additional parking beyond what is being allowed on 300 W Engineered Loop Rd. | 00:27:55 | |
that the HOA is responsible for providing at least 25 stalls at a minimum of at least 25. And then the other wording we just got | 00:28:02 | |
rid of by restriping, where the city can come in and improve the number of parking stalls just because there's other methods to | 00:28:08 | |
increase the number of parking stalls and we didn't want to limit us to just restriping. | 00:28:15 | |
Sir, does this reflect what you wanted it to be? I know that you've been working a lot with HOA board. Yeah, I think it's, I think | 00:28:24 | |
it's a huge improvement. But we're not actually voting on this tonight, right, Because I'd like to take it back to the if you want | 00:28:30 | |
to continue it, we can. I just wanted to make sure we got it on here for you. Yeah. I really appreciate your work with me. Thank | 00:28:36 | |
you. I, I do want to say though, that if we did kind of have a goal to get started on the parking permit program by, I think | 00:28:42 | |
August, the first week of August. | 00:28:48 | |
The sooner we can get approval on that, the sooner we can get these permits in residence hands and, and I, I just want to go over | 00:28:54 | |
it with the HOA and make sure that everyone's good and I'd be happy to join you with them as well. OK, great. Thank you. Are we | 00:29:00 | |
allowed to have an open meeting and invite them here so that we can have a council? | 00:29:06 | |
But this gives him an option and we could also, if we do push this to another date, we can reach out to HOA and tell them to let | 00:29:46 | |
their residents know and that way that their residents can also come to council meeting. And you do have a meeting before the | 00:29:52 | |
August? Yes. And I'd like to get it resolved so we can pass it for sure. And our next City Council. And August isn't necessarily a | 00:29:58 | |
deadline. That's just when we thought would be a good time with school starting and more, you know, students moving in to try to | 00:30:04 | |
get it before that. OK, well then. | 00:30:10 | |
Do you? 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. Yeah, | 00:30:16 | |
thank you. 9.2 is a public hearing adoption of the Vineyard City FY24 Budget Final Amendment Resolution 2024, Dash 18. | 00:30:25 | |
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. And this is very common practice. So this would be budget | 00:31:03 | |
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, | 00:31:10 | |
we're OK to just go ahead unless there's questions. OK. Are there any questions from the public on this item? | 00:31:17 | |
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. I would like to know the differences too. | 00:31:45 | |
Can you just speak to the microphone and just say that it's in the packet and then we have it? Yeah, just reminding that this is | 00:31:55 | |
what was provided in the package so that everybody could take a look at that and review that. No, I think it's great. I was able | 00:32:02 | |
to read through it and I feel comfortable with the changes. I wanted a preview for the public. Usually what happens and we can | 00:32:09 | |
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 slideshow 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. | 00:32:27 | |
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 can come on up and state your name and where from where your condom is. | 00:32:53 | |
I think that'd be helpful. | 00:33:40 | |
The final budget for fiscal year 24 with any questions that you have? | 00:34:13 | |
Do 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, 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 | 00:34:56 | |
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 we | 00:35:05 | |
overspent meaning we didn't have a balanced budget or what? What exactly are you asking? | 00:35:14 | |
In in my household I have to balance my budget every month. | 00:35:23 | |
And make sure that I don't overspend if I do have a credit card. | 00:35:27 | |
That I put my excess on and then that next month that has to be paid off. So if we are having City Council that has been given an | 00:35:32 | |
award for transparency and for balancing the budget, my understanding was that we didn't balance the budget last year, that we | 00:35:40 | |
overspent. And so this year we have to make up for what we overspent. Is that correct? | 00:35:48 | |
Yeah. No, that's not correct. Sorry. I think what you're, you're confusing balancing the budget with having using fund balance to | 00:35:58 | |
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 | 00:36:05 | |
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. | 00:36:13 | |
We'll 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, where you're from and everything. I'm sorry. Did you get it? I think that. OK, hold on. Before we | 00:36:30 | |
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 | 00:36:36 | |
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 | 00:37:07 | |
with people who have said please don't do this. And you just went ahead and did it anyway. So I guess. | 00:37:15 | |
I'm just frustrated and and I'm getting to the point of being angry that you are not representing us for some reason. | 00:37:23 | |
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, tonight we can approve to go into debt like that, the 2 million or whatever. I think we just need to | 00:38:55 | |
be very 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 dramatically that needs society but we have put | 00:39:11 | |
the council last year approved to do so is what she wants. | 00:39:17 | |
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 | |
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 to stay | 00:39:46 | |
within because it improves bond ratings and things like that. You get dinged by your on your audit if you go above that 35% And so | 00:39:56 | |
we try to stay in between that. So each year as we set set forth our budget. | 00:40:05 | |
A portion of our budget is utilization of that carryover general fund so that it stays within that range. The use of fund balance | 00:40:15 | |
is perfectly common. Every year you you bet you budget for it so that by the end of the year. | 00:40:23 | |
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 | 00:41:03 | |
a phenomenal job and is usually as history goes, our, our finance directors have been very good at getting close to that. | 00:41:11 | |
The approval of our end of year is simply the corrections that we're a little bit plus here and a little bit minus here within the | 00:41:19 | |
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 | |
It would be irresponsible. And so you want to pay your life bills and you want to make sure that you are saving and only spending | 00:42:30 | |
between those two percentages. And that's what we're that that's what is happening inside of this budget. And and one more | 00:42:36 | |
addition is that that the purpose behind that isn't so much so that you have a savings account on an ongoing basis. A big purpose | 00:42:42 | |
of that is so that when the year begins and you have yet to collect, you know, your first tranche of, of sales tax or property | 00:42:48 | |
tax. | 00:42:54 | |
You have a buffer so that the city continues to operate seamlessly between fiscal years. | 00:43:01 | |
And so that is why there's a recommended amount to stay within so that you don't have, you know, critical task flow problems | 00:43:07 | |
during that transition from one planet fiscal year to the next. OK. I'm actually, I'm really happy to hear you explain it that way | 00:43:15 | |
because some of the concerns that were brought up to me were that if if we're looking at you know, last year, we're one the the | 00:43:22 | |
budgets have changed a little bit, 1.1 million use of the prior fund balance. | 00:43:30 | |
Up from 26,000 from the year before. | 00:43:38 | |
So some of the comments that I heard was that will take us above the safe mark to be able to get good bond financing. So I'm happy | 00:43:42 | |
to hear you say that you guys maintain that 17% that I. | 00:43:49 | |
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. | 00:44:05 | |
What's what's in there now and how, how did we go from 26,000 needing to use 26,000 to needing to use 1.1 million? And then this | 00:44:10 | |
year it changed from needing 465, which I felt OK about, to going back up. The new one is like 900. The one that came back last | 00:44:19 | |
night at like 10:00. I went all through this with Kim Olson yesterday. | 00:44:28 | |
So it's like I have three different. | 00:44:37 | |
Quite, quite in depth. | 00:45:12 | |
During the conversation about the fiscal year 25 budget and talking about this very thing, we are not headed into the direction in | 00:45:13 | |
the amount of fund balance that we are using in order to keep Vineyard growing and having our services at the same level that we | 00:45:21 | |
currently have them. And so our goal tonight later is we'll be talking about what we're looking at in fiscal year 25 budget. It is | 00:45:28 | |
to help course correct this action. | 00:45:35 | |
That has not been previously addressed. We are going to be trying to do small increments to at least get us on the right | 00:45:43 | |
trajectory to be where we need to be. And Chrissy, I would I would like clarity in that for the minutes. You're not talking about | 00:45:52 | |
course correcting how fiscally aware the council has been, rather what we're bringing into the city with tax revenue. | 00:46:00 | |
Is that right? | 00:46:10 | |
Yes, and inflated costs. I mean, everything's going up, right? | 00:46:12 | |
Which 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 | 00:48:15 | |
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 | 00:48:23 | |
getting this on the right trajectory. And just so you know, I like Julie likes to say we need to put skin in the game. | 00:48:31 | |
I'm even willing you can take off one of my months of income. | 00:48:39 | |
To help. I'm totally willing to do that, actually, for the next three years. It's mine's more like a penny compared to your spot, | 00:48:44 | |
but I'm willing. Jake would probably do it too. | 00:48:49 | |
So there's that. But I think if we all just really looked at it, we would live in a really nice community. And I feel like if we | 00:48:55 | |
just, if we just posted 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 | 00:49:01 | |
too hard to get us back where we need to be. | 00:49:08 | |
So, OK, so just to make sure I understand everything that you're saying, I felt like inside of that conversation we talked about | 00:49:14 | |
taxes, the 25 budget and did you have your questions on the 24 budget amendment? | 00:49:24 | |
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 with closing up. No, that's OK. Let's wrap that portion up. And I believe I went | 00:49:41 | |
out of 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 | 00:49:50 | |
one is 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 on transportation. What was that? | 00:50:08 | |
We know. | 00:50:19 | |
I don't have the detail right off hand, but I'm OK and. | 00:50:22 | |
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 bad messages to the to the public | 00:50:59 | |
specifically for Rd. closures and so forth. And now we're able to put them up. And then the equipment went from 22 to 65. | 00:51:08 | |
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 | |
But it helps. Every little bit helps. But I'm saying that's an awful well. And I think we need to be clear when you're talking | 00:52:08 | |
about paying your bills and going and keeping A level of service, when you say something like we can pull back, that's the duty of | 00:52:15 | |
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 assess is | 00:52:22 | |
do we want to get these services? Do we want the road crossing? Do we want that petition for the crossing across the street? | 00:52:29 | |
We went inside of here and we looked and we said we're not seeing a return of investment on here. Let's go ahead and pull that. | 00:53:07 | |
And that's this, that's this group. So, but let's go ahead and pull up the numbers, OK? And we're just talking about the 22 to 65. | 00:53:14 | |
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 | 00:53:22 | |
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. | 00:53:30 | |
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 | 00:53:38 | |
transportation and water, like retirement and taxes it seems like is there consistent from 36 to 60 is that? | 00:53:46 | |
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 AI 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 of July 1st for this this upcoming year. | 00:54:53 | |
Contract services in wastewater went from 970 to 1.3 million. Contact services and wastewater increased that we saw for sewer a | 00:55:04 | |
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 emotion? | 00:55:50 | |
I move to adopt Resolution 20/24/18, the amendment to the fiscal year 2023-2024 budget as presented. Alright, we have a first time | 00:55:56 | |
Amber, 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 | |
Go ahead and move to 9.3 public hearing proposed salary increases for elective and statutory officials. This requires a motion to | 00:56:18 | |
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 | |
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 | 00:57:59 | |
to that, there's a 0.7% recommended increase for Tier 2 retirement staff, and that was included in the budget that I missed | 00:58:07 | |
including that on the spreadsheet for the director salary increases. So that's what I added to that. And the 5% is the cost of | 00:58:16 | |
living adjustment. It's 3.5% cost of living and 1.5% merit. | 00:58:24 | |
Merit. | 00:58:32 | |
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? Second. We're not going to talk about | 00:58:45 | |
it. | 00:58:48 | |
Talking about OK, aye aye, aye, all right, and now the council can discuss. | 00:58:53 | |
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 this is required, you have to annually adopt the salaries | 00:59:08 | |
for those positions and state what they are so. | 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 where they go hand in | 01:00:42 | |
glove, we're approving the policy and then they would get the increase. We would and they would. | 01:00:50 | |
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 | |
Yes. | 01:01:31 | |
Who started this initiative? That's curious. | 01:01:32 | |
I don't, I don't remember who the sponsor was. I can pull that up and tell you in a few minutes if you want. No, no, not from the | 01:01:36 | |
state. I'm saying within the city, like who asked that we do an increase for us. | 01:01:41 | |
For the first time hearing it like I thought when the packet came out, the increase you're you're referring to, yeah, that is also | 01:01:48 | |
part of the statute is that. | 01:01:53 | |
Elected officials are listed among that group of of. | 01:02:00 | |
Select director level staff within the city. | 01:02:06 | |
And the policy says that if. | 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 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. | 01:03:53 | |
Yeah, I don't care if I get another $400.00 a year or not. That to me we're talking such a small percentage in my family's budget | 01:03:59 | |
and the city's budget. | 01:04:04 | |
What, what I'm more interested in, like to me that's it doesn't matter if if we need to cut that out or whatever we need to do, | 01:04:10 | |
but rejecting the salary increases for the staff. I've been thinking a lot about it. | 01:04:16 | |
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 | 01:04:32 | |
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 | 01:04:39 | |
we cater to that and help show our staff that we acknowledge the work they're doing. Dewey try to help with. | 01:04:47 | |
The intention of employees. | 01:04:55 | |
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 | 01:05:11 | |
husband's company is in a struggling field and they're still working on cola for them as well. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, how | 01:05:17 | |
long was it? | 01:05:23 | |
When we so we did an adjustment before, but it had been years. | 01:05:31 | |
Since that, an adjustment had been made for the City Council and the mayor, and I think it's excellent that we have this | 01:05:36 | |
opportunity to. | 01:05:39 | |
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 | 01:06:29 | |
the SB 91 that we're referring to doesn't indicate that we have to give. | 01:06:37 | |
City Council, the COLA. So we'd have to go back and look at whether whether that city ordinance required that you get one or | 01:06:45 | |
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 out | 01:06:52 | |
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. | 01:07:10 | |
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 herb, we can do it during that time allowing the COLA because | 01:07:25 | |
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 | 01:07:33 | |
question before you. We're definitely going to give you the COLA in my opinion, where I stand, I'm voting for that you guys. | 01:07:42 | |
Umm, we heard it from our residents and we heard it from our council. I think that's important for me. Either way, however the | 01:07:50 | |
council feels about a COLA for you guys. The idea is just taking small steps versus huge increases over time. And so whatever you | 01:07:57 | |
guys want to do, I feel comfortable with. | 01:08:03 | |
OK, but I need a motion. | 01:08:11 | |
Yeah. Are you making a motion? No, I'm gonna comment on this. | 01:08:13 | |
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 went 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 the down economy, so one gets out one of them. I'm not sure what you're saying. Well, when there's a | 01:08:43 | |
bad economy and inflation, what are we combining the private sector and the public sector at the same time? And so us as a council | 01:08:51 | |
just voting that the inflation and everything in the down economy isn't going to affect it is what I'm saying. So. | 01:08:58 | |
But at the same rate I, you know, at the beginning of this January, February, when we did meet that one time. | 01:09:07 | |
It was bringing us a budget that doesn't go into debt or have us raise rates on our taxes and we haven't been great. We have | 01:09:15 | |
spent. | 01:09:20 | |
We don't need the name World 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. And I just don't | 01:09:39 | |
think it's the so we're going to 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 stock? For both? OK. | 01:09:56 | |
Any further closing comments that looks like there was a closing comments 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 | 01:10:50 | |
thought it would be prudent to have someone who is very well versed in this to come and to speak to us. | 01:10:58 | |
Solor Lewis is going to be speaking with us. She was one of the original founders of Lewis and Young, which is now Lewis, | 01:11:06 | |
Robertson and Birmingham. She has served as a financial advisor on over 1.5 billion in tax exempt and taxable municipal bond | 01:11:13 | |
transactions for numerous local governments here in the state of Utah. In addition to serving Vineyard for approximately 20 years, | 01:11:21 | |
she personally serves as a financial advisor to West Valley West Jordan. | 01:11:28 | |
Forum, Ogden, South Jordan, Layton, Lehigh, Eagle Mountain and several others. | 01:11:36 | |
And so with that, I'm going to turn the time over to Miss Lewis for a presentation. | 01:11:43 | |
It's nice being with you tonight. I have been with the city of Vineyard. I've been having 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 | 01:12:07 | |
winning. And I've seen all this phenomenal growth. I worked with Norm Holdaway. I'm assuming he is late uncle to you, so I've got | 01:12:14 | |
some. | 01:12:21 | |
Two laws here, deep roots here. | 01:12:29 | |
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, you know, a lot of the economy's wheels were | 01:13:08 | |
falling off and cities were in a lot of financial stress at that time after the 2008 and 9 recession. And we actually presented to | 01:13:16 | |
the League of Cities and Towns. | 01:13:24 | |
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, the way it works in some | 01:13:47 | |
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 little | 01:13:52 | |
pieces because when I was making. | 01:13:57 | |
This populates. | 01:14:02 | |
There you go. OK, so just yesterday and I was working on this presentation over the past little while. | 01:14:06 | |
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 is how people | 01:14:21 | |
think and they think it applies to taxes on how they're set 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 here. 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 | 01:15:01 | |
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. | 01:16:38 | |
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 | |
My goodness, that is microscopic. So here, believe it or not not to believe me, I've got it in a little bit bigger thing 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. | 01:17:06 | |
With your microscopic reading eyes just you can see 123 fourth column over the 2023 tax rate. That top one for the school district | 01:17:17 | |
basic levy is 001408. How did I do? | 01:17:26 | |
OK, not bad from here. | 01:17:35 | |
Of the second one down. | 01:17:40 | |
The second one, thank you. | 01:17:41 | |
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 | 01:18:39 | |
tax? I'm Murray. I can give you a pretty good estimate of what that check is for. What is your total property tax in for your | 01:18:47 | |
condo in Saint George? I can tell you what that tax bill is. | 01:18:55 | |
Even being in this industry. | 01:19:04 | |
I cannot tell you. I mean, I could look this up and find it out. I cannot tell you how much of that money goes to the city. It's | 01:19:06 | |
not. It's not what's planted in my head. What's planted in my head is my total tax bill. So when any jurisdiction goes to, you | 01:19:14 | |
know, raise property taxes and the state law requires that you have to, you know, show and have a hearing and show what the | 01:19:21 | |
percentage increase is people naturally. | 01:19:28 | |
Do the math in their head of oh, and I'm just making up a number now, right? They naturally do the math and say, oh, a 5% tax | 01:19:36 | |
increase. If my tax bill, my total tax bill, because that's how they think of it. My total tax bill is $1000 and a 5% increase. I | 01:19:42 | |
can do that math, right? I know that's going to be $50. | 01:19:48 | |
So when each jurisdiction raises taxes, it's important that you understand and that you educate your constituents that what you | 01:19:56 | |
get to control is the taxes for that 30% line, OK? So we'll talk in a minute about, well, OK. | 01:20:08 | |
But my tax bill as a whole is still going up. It's very likely so because everyone of those entities, school district, the state, | 01:20:20 | |
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? | 01:21:55 | |
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. | 01:22:15 | |
So if you take no action, right, you'll get probably some more money in the real world because you do have some new growth. But | 01:22:19 | |
what comes with new growth? | 01:22:24 | |
Cost, cost Exactly, Jacob, Absolutely. So it's important to understand that. | 01:22:31 | |
I talk about new growth, OK, but that is not an increase in existing home value. It does not capture anything related to the home | 01:22:40 | |
valuation. As a matter of fact, it it's and the rating agencies love our tax law. Why do they love it? So let's go back mentally | 01:22:47 | |
to 2010. What was happening 2008 and 9 with. | 01:22:54 | |
Properties in Nevada. | 01:23:02 | |
Right. Property values are going up and they don't have this law. So tax revenues were just skyrocketing, right? But then here | 01:23:05 | |
comes 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, right in Utah. Guess what? Property values went | 01:23:26 | |
down some. Now that you know this brilliant 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 | |
Going on, there's one page that things come up right. The last one comes further. So it's it's a little bit of a hot mess. So | 01:23:52 | |
sorry about that. | 01:23:56 | |
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 were trying to educate the | 01:24:15 | |
legislators about the same kind of thing and they said, oh, OK, so how is the general fund budget number set? Well, they look at | 01:24:21 | |
what the whatever city they pulled, I don't know, they didn't reference it. | 01:24:28 | |
So if your general fund budget last year from property taxes generated $7,400,000, they went, oh, what is the current taxable | 01:24:34 | |
value of the city? It's two billion, 155 in this example. And it is relatively simple math in this example. | 01:24:43 | |
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 it, | 01:25:26 | |
right, He said power plant, yeah, sorry, power plant and it's every five years. I think it is every five years. So it's centrally | 01:25:33 | |
assessed, right And depending upon what the state sets that rate for, for all you know, centrally assessed kind of railroads | 01:25:41 | |
power. | 01:25:48 | |
Gas. Those type of facilities are what gets centrally assessed. | 01:25:56 | |
They go in and, you know, argue that their taxes need to be lower and the state says, OK, sure, we agree with that, which they do. | 01:26:01 | |
Sometimes it impacts this math calculation. But again, you get to say nothing about it. I mean, you can go to the hearing, right? | 01:26:08 | |
But the city that you don't have to approach the city to do that. So the actual calculation is more complicated than this example | 01:26:16 | |
that the state presented the legislature because I do take into account new growth. | 01:26:23 | |
They do take into account changes in centrally assessed taxes. | 01:26:31 | |
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, OK, 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 are Speaking of like the revenues to the local government from market fluctuations. | 01:27:12 | |
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 parks 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. | 01:28:07 | |
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. | 01:29:08 | |
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 one. I know West Valley looks at it every year. | 01:31:39 | |
So just now see if they should hold their rate constant. Fine, Alden 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 | 01:31:53 | |
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 | 01:31:59 | |
of years they hadn't raised taxes. Same thing for years and years and years when we went and did their look at their analysis and | 01:32:05 | |
I didn't think to do this for you. | 01:32:11 | |
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 had just done what Central Utah did and | 01:32:32 | |
held that rate constant every year, just like clockwork, they would have had $8 million more a year in their budget. So you can | 01:32:39 | |
see the compounding impact of just letting that rate slide, right? I mean, it's, it's going the wrong direction when inflation is | 01:32:47 | |
going to the direction, which I'll show you in a minute. So I do can see yours is dropping, dropping, dropping. | 01:32:54 | |
Alpine my again a guess is that reason that did drop in in that one year is my guess is they had AGO 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 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's 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 | 01:34:06 | |
podium noted earlier, I've got a slide that, you know, had has some shocking numbers relative to inflationary increases over the | 01:34:13 | |
past same period that seven years. | 01:34:20 | |
But no while yes. | 01:34:29 | |
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, 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 | 01:35:04 | |
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 | 01:35:37 | |
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, the main annual firefighter wage in Utah. Because again, that's something that hits you as a | 01:35:50 | |
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've just given 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 to the right. So you got the year, you got the | 01:36:33 | |
inflation rate. | 01:36:39 | |
And you can see that that increases sometimes a little, sometimes 2022 a lot. Thankfully, it's coming back down. I think this year | 01:36:46 | |
will 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% | 01:37:08 | |
increase and that inflation index over that period from 2017 to 2023. Now let's look at the. | 01:37:17 | |
Percentage rate change and Vineyard Cities tax rate. Oh look, there are lots of negatives. Went down 1.4%, it went down 14.8%, it | 01:37:28 | |
went down 3.5%. So you can, you can see it right there. | 01:37:35 | |
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 revenues, 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 am I actually was texting one earlier tonight before my phone started playing really loud | 01:39:14 | |
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 there. | 01:39:50 | |
Getting over a sinus infection. | 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 air quotes, but just because it's the word feel. But it's like, OK, what is the most essential thing | 01:40:11 | |
that you provide? | 01:40:18 | |
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 to | 01:40:26 | |
pay police and fire OK, so if you look at. | 01:40:32 | |
Where your revenues are coming from and where your expenditures are going. Big sea of blue is public safety. Why didn't think | 01:40:40 | |
about blue being like, you know, in blue line kind of thing. So big sea of blue public safety. | 01:40:46 | |
So in an ideal world, it would be lovely if the property taxes on the revenue source covered that Dixie of blue. But you can see | 01:40:53 | |
it's not right. So by my calculation, it might be on this page as you keep clicking, it might be on the next one. | 01:41:04 | |
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 cost 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 revenue. 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 | 01:43:20 | |
the inflationary numbers that I showed on that other page, like one percent, 1.21.8, whatever they were, we add that, compound | 01:43:27 | |
that over time and bring it up to today. | 01:43:35 | |
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 no quote UN quote your | 01:46:23 | |
neighbors. | 01:46:30 | |
Locally assessed property has to be valued every five years. | 01:46:38 | |
Now, do I think they run around and appraise all of our homes? No, I do not know by what method they they do. All I know is that | 01:46:44 | |
some years it's like, oh, your property is now worth it and you can go in and, you know, fight against that if you think it's | 01:46:49 | |
overvalued. | 01:46:54 | |
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 5 segments of your city and they're gonna do one of those | 01:47:14 | |
segments every year. So if you're in segment one and it was a year where property values went up a lot, right? Because you have to | 01:47:24 | |
think of the total tie when they're, when they're coming up with whatever that same revenue is for you from year to year to year. | 01:47:33 | |
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 five of you, 12345. So your area gets reappraised, right? So you're now a | 01:47:51 | |
bigger piece of 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 | |
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, | 01:49:50 | |
can't do that. close the rec center, close all of the things that they came up with that they that they knew were hard political | 01:49:57 | |
asks weren't even much of A needle mover, quite frankly, right. Most cities we work with South Jordan years and years ago. I still | 01:50:05 | |
work 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 apply that business sense to a city, your largest is probably payroll. Your second | 01:50:41 | |
is, you know, I think of rent, I think of your cost to operate City Hall, right? So those are the big needle movers. Anything | 01:50:49 | |
else? You know, so when you're talking about reducing level of services as your alternative. | 01:50:56 | |
Who you gonna fire? Who and how many? Because that's going to be the fastest way to reduce your level of services. And it's not | 01:51:05 | |
fun. Citizens do not like their taxes raised, but they do not want their services hit. So put you in a conundrum. But those are | 01:51:12 | |
your two levers that you can move. Now think of your teeter totter, right? I can either raise taxes, I can lower services. That's | 01:51:19 | |
it all you can move. Now I think it's time for questions. I'm so psyched. | 01:51:27 | |
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 | |
It was they educated them, they saw it. It wasn't a huge increase as opposed to, I mean, I got war stories coming out my ears as | 01:52:56 | |
opposed to West Valley City. Before they built their rec center, they hadn't raised property taxes for a long time. They needed to | 01:53:03 | |
raise property taxes so that they could pay for that building. And it was. | 01:53:10 | |
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 a big whopping one, right. So my question is, if you start to do that | 01:53:24 | |
consistently, are there years that it could possibly go down? Absolutely, absolutely. Because if you educated the people to to | 01:53:31 | |
understand that we want that tax. | 01:53:38 | |
Neutrality, right? Is that what you called it? | 01:53:45 | |
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 gonna | 01:53:47 | |
be years that it could go down a little. But we wanna maintain that consistency so. | 01:53:54 | |
Ogden's in my hips. We're working with a big water deal right now, but I know specifically with their water rates, So I don't know | 01:54:01 | |
that they apply the exact same thing to property tax rates. I do know they look at adjusting them every year, but specifically | 01:54:08 | |
their water rates. They actually have a a stated thing in their ordinance. | 01:54:15 | |
Your tax rate and it it might, you know, you might not need to hold it constant like central Utah, 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 addition to Laurae | 01:55:04 | |
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, that as a percentage increase. | 01:56:42 | |
That holds your rate at that percentage. It will be communicated to residents as a larger it will be communicated as a percentage | 01:56:49 | |
increase over the dollar amount they've been paying, not a rate increase in the way we would traditionally think of that. | 01:56:58 | |
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 or projected to raise the tax rate, when did our truth and taxation notice go out for the first time to our | 01:57:51 | |
citizens? There will be So in the resolution that you'll consider today. It lays that out so that it it, I have added a section to | 01:57:57 | |
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 spot where you | 01:58:03 | |
can fill that in. | 01:58:09 | |
For the tax year 2024 is hereby proposed, a Truth in 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 you decide not to not to adopt that tax rate, then you would have to make a budget amendment right to to match whatever that is | 01:58:45 | |
because your projected revenues would change. Is it normal for a city to do that reverse? Why wouldn't we do that in May and March | 01:58:53 | |
not. I don't know why state law doesn't have all the timing aligned. It's a difficult thing for every city. I was in a meeting | 01:59:00 | |
last night where the they were having the same conversation because. | 01:59:08 | |
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 | |
The total revenue amount that the city would. | 02:00:41 | |
Receive and if that and so to hold the certified tax rate means that your revenue would be dollar value equal as to what you | 02:00:44 | |
collected in the last year. | 02:00:50 | |
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 | 02:01:02 | |
get people that can test that valuation. And so it changes and there's some adjustment even there. And so it's not uncommon for | 02:01:08 | |
City Council members to get calls from people saying, hey, my what I thought my rate was going to be is not exactly what it ended | 02:01:14 | |
up being. | 02:01:20 | |
And part of that is that reconciliation process with the county and how that all plays out. | 02:01:26 | |
My my two comments are. | 02:01:31 | |
They don't. That's not unique to Vineyard. | 02:02:08 | |
That's the same everywhere. But notice this will go out. A hearing will have to occur. | 02:02:11 | |
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 | 02:02:35 | |
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 | 02:02:42 | |
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. We | 02:02:48 | |
would then. | 02:02:54 | |
Approve an actual final after the taxation hearing and. | 02:03:01 | |
August, it has to be submitted to state by the end of August. So that's when we would do our final budget and that's not | 02:03:05 | |
considered a budget amendment. That would be our final budget budget that we would then go forward with. | 02:03:12 | |
I'll let that answer your question. With that, we are getting to the close of the evening, so I want to run through the budget and | 02:03:19 | |
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 it houses completed. There's still going to be | 02:04:16 | |
phase two. Phase three, we're starting with six employees and we're going to end up with 18. | 02:04:23 | |
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 called and say anything about our police. I asked him if he wanted to so. | 02:05:34 | |
Are you sent it? | 02:05:41 | |
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 buy that same level of service, we we have to be able to fund that. | 02:07:15 | |
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, you | 02:07:22 | |
said the national average per per citizen for deputy. Can you just state that so people have it? | 02:07:30 | |
Understand that you are being very careful with the money. One of the metrics that the fire department uses, correct me if I'm | 02:07:38 | |
wrong, but there's kind of standard level of services response times. They need to be able to get to somewhere in 5 minutes. | 02:07:45 | |
Currently in Vineyard we fall below that standard where like a 7 minute time frame. The national standard for police services is | 02:07:52 | |
how many police officers do you have per per thousand residents. The national standard generally is one per thousand. | 02:07:59 | |
And 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 | 02:08:41 | |
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 should be at one per 1500 to maintain the | 02:09:04 | |
level of service that you have asked and I feel the citizens have asked as well have come to expect from us. | 02:09:12 | |
I perceive down the road, as soon as we get more commercial, more business, more people, different types of calls, that that | 02:09:20 | |
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 see | 02:09:27 | |
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 I hope that | 02:09:35 | |
answers the question. Any other questions for Lieutenant Rockwell? | 02:09:42 | |
Thank you. | 02:09:51 | |
All right, Christy. | 02:09:54 | |
OK, so. | 02:09:59 | |
OK, so now that I've got it turned on. | 02:10:02 | |
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 a council members and we've been able to ask questions about what's in the line items and what what | 02:10:49 | |
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 law we | 02:10:55 | |
are required. | 02:11:00 | |
To adopt A final budget. Now again, if we do the truth and 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 auditor's | 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 | 02:12:31 | |
January. So we are trying to be. | 02:12:39 | |
Fiscally conservative as much as we can. | 02:12:47 | |
Just wanted to make sure you were aware of that. Employee health insurance has gone up by 6.2% and then as we were talking earlier | 02:12:49 | |
about the cost of living adjustment and the merit increase, that is also an assumption that was put into this budget. | 02:12:56 | |
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 | 02:14:12 | |
in 626,000 of the 1.1 to $1.2 million that we need. | 02:14:19 | |
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 | 02:14:56 | |
anywhere maxing out our capacity to tax. We are trying to be fiscally conservative and are aware that prices are going up for | 02:15:03 | |
everyone everywhere. | 02:15:11 | |
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 feel free to interrupt. | 02:15:33 | |
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. | 02:15:57 | |
So this pie chart shows of our total expenditures, which department and have those have those funds are allocated. | 02:16:05 | |
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 | 02:16:24 | |
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 be 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 | |
I think, I think that needs to happen in the next town hall and I'm happy to help if we could get some of the slides from Laura | 02:20:21 | |
and help people understand, right? Because this I mean, there's a lot of money in capital projects and maybe I. | 02:20:28 | |
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. | 02:21:33 | |
Well, I was at the last one and it was more open house style. | 02:21:39 | |
What number is 937 now $937,000? | 02:22:56 | |
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 | 02:23:05 | |
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 | 02:23:24 | |
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. | 02:23:32 | |
But I, I see a lot of these projects up here if you go back there. | 02:23:40 | |
Hey, what are things? What are things that you think you know? How do you how would you like us to make up to? This would be | 02:24:21 | |
great. | 02:24:24 | |
And what we've been doing and I think who we could talk to a few of them. I mean, people have to listen 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. | 02:24:51 | |
I mean, I kind of went through a list, Christine, I don't know. I asked you, Eric, to kind of bring them up. Um. | 02:24:52 | |
You know, uh. | 02:24:59 | |
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 motivosity? 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 to | 02:25:17 | |
staff. | 02:25:24 | |
Through a variety of. | 02:25:32 | |
Of programs that enhance Wellness and provide. | 02:25:34 | |
OK, 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 | 02:25:40 | |
need 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, I think if you're gonna ask me about the idea that we're having to increase | 02:25:59 | |
taxes right now, and that is an economic thing that can diversify our tax base and lower property taxes. | 02:26:06 | |
I disagree but anybody else have any comments for him? So I don't have 3. | 02:27:20 | |
I want to reevaluate that one later. I don't see Harman 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 onto the agenda for you to reevaluate having worked there, I know they're easy to get out of. | 02:27:45 | |
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 | 02:27:56 | |
get a budget to go through correct. But you're talking about $130,000 on a, you know, 900 gets us what? OK, but 11 percent, 11% | 02:28:02 | |
more. | 02:28:08 | |
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. | 02:28:48 | |
It's not done or people don't do it. It's actually quite regular in government when cutting things. I think what Christy is | 02:28:56 | |
suggesting is just that. | 02:29:01 | |
Like evaluating those scheduled. I thought, OK, I'm not sure what you're asking. I know that the mayor is chair of the council | 02:30:30 | |
keeps. | 02:30:34 | |
Running list of things that are agenda for future meetings. I know an evaluation of the qualitative agreement is slated for a | 02:30:40 | |
future meeting. It's not slated for today. And I I can't speak for the rest of staff, but I can't speak for myself that I | 02:30:47 | |
structure my work to lead up to the meeting. And so it's not work I've done yet, but when that meeting occurs. | 02:30:54 | |
I'll look at the contract and if there are options for modifying or changing it, we can talk through whether those are prudent or | 02:31:02 | |
wanted by the council, right? It's just timers of the essence with a, with 100, with a like a Qualtrics contract, $74,000, it's | 02:31:09 | |
$1000 a week. So every week we wait, it's just another $1000, right? It's actually a $1500 a week just waiting and waiting and | 02:31:16 | |
waiting $3000 every between every other meeting, right? And so are we getting $3000 between every meeting on Qualtrics? You know, | 02:31:22 | |
it's just it, it delays out. | 02:31:29 | |
What about the point, I think you have to prioritize your work and the mayor leads those discussions that it's, it's on your | 02:31:36 | |
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 it. | 02:31:43 | |
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 bottom | 02:31:49 | |
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've got | 02:32:13 | |
to know what that agreement. And I know that power line transmission line study 50,000. There's no way I will back out of that | 02:32:21 | |
one. Nope. That one is so important to our city. The idea of taking those huge power lines down and burying them underground would | 02:32:28 | |
be such a 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 I have another client city that is in the process of burying above ground lines similar to vineyards. It's not | 02:32:55 | |
the same 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. | 02:33:21 | |
Also get some more people on board and potentially we could get more costs down if we kept going along the line and it was | 02:34:39 | |
meaningful to other people. But like I said, the right of way is turned over to the city. So it's going to be who's looking at the | 02:34:46 | |
the views that really dips into that. But we recognize it looks like you don't have three votes, so go to the next one. | 02:34:53 | |
I guess I would just close with just saying I have zero issues with the extra public safety and services being provided by fire | 02:35:02 | |
and by police, But I I expected this to be offsetting and finding reductions. You know, we increase our city manager's pay this | 02:35:10 | |
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. | 02:35:27 | |
My pay is is contingent upon the passing of a COLA and a fight in the No, no, I know, but you're you're paid more than what Ezra | 02:35:31 | |
was. | 02:35:35 | |
I didn't see what Ezra was paid, 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 | 02:35:46 | |
time in my budget, right? But again, with downtime, we're just increasing it, right? We're just splitting it. We had a deputy | 02:35:53 | |
recorder before. We have a deputy recorder now. | 02:36:00 | |
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 I what I feel | 02:36:29 | |
obviously 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 900,000. So that's my comments. Thank you. Any | 02:36:43 | |
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 | 02:36:52 | |
residents money. I understand that. I look at the budget, I feel like we have main content contingent, contingent, contingent. | 02:37:01 | |
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. 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 | 02:37:32 | |
had to be cut from this budget already. And sure are there a few things that. | 02:37:38 | |
I would like to revive it, yes, but most of those things are contracted out. And so it would be something later that we have to | 02:37:45 | |
reevaluate and we can make amendments in the budget like we do throughout the year. The other aspect of it, I do not find it | 02:37:52 | |
prudent to go through and cut, take capital budgets to pay for our day-to-day. I think that if you need, if you're not making the | 02:37:59 | |
cut, you don't cut out, you don't take from your savings. | 02:38:06 | |
Like we are taking from the general fund, but the capital projects are not meant to be for public safety or day-to-day. And so | 02:38:14 | |
agreed that we're coming off of a year where we've been traveling the world and the optics right now are not good. No, you're just | 02:38:20 | |
you're just stating that. And we've already had this discussion multiple times that that money, it's just, it's just not a good | 02:38:25 | |
time. | 02:38:31 | |
I don't agree. That's not what's causing us to have to. You saw the graphs of it going down and it coming up and the one thing | 02:38:37 | |
that the city needs is economic development. | 02:38:42 | |
The founders of our city all have really small homes and one bedroom garage and one bedroom garage or one car garages and they | 02:39:26 | |
learn to live under their means. I understand that there are so many times when a family wants to go to Disneyland and wants nice | 02:39:33 | |
things 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 | 02:39:40 | |
when we are prudent in everything that we're doing. | 02:39:47 | |
The facts actually lie in the minutes they are on record, and what you're saying is not accurate. I. | 02:40:27 | |
Let's end this conversation. We can have it in the future. I'm allowed to have an opinion, yes, but you're talking about things | 02:40:34 | |
that are not on the agenda. | 02:40:39 | |
You've been saying things that are not true on record. I sit here day-to-day watching as you do this and now you're talking about | 02:40:47 | |
how we are being fiscally irresponsible by stating random things that are not actually facts. And so I'm going to put it on the | 02:40:53 | |
record. So as you stated on the record, I now state it on the record so that there's two points. No one needs to get offended or | 02:41:00 | |
saying anything. It's not about being offended. It is about putting the facts on the record because you are stating things. | 02:41:06 | |
The adjustments to the resolution from what was in the packet, so I've changed the title. It now reads a resolution of the City | 02:41:51 | |
Council of Vineyard, Utah programming and adopting a budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025 and proposing a property tax rate. And | 02:42:00 | |
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. | 02:42:21 | |
In truth and taxation hearing will be held August 14, 2024 at 6:00 PM, after which the Council will deliberate and adopt the final | 02:42:23 | |
property tax rate on August 28th, 2024. Excellent. So to clarify, this is a working budget so that we can function and we don't | 02:42:31 | |
have a government shutdown on July 1st, correct. OK. We have a first by Amber. That was clarified by Jamie and I have a second. | 02:42:39 | |
I'll second it. All right, first by Amber, second by Marty. Any discussion? | 02:42:47 | |
OK, we're going to go by name and roll call. Sarah. Marty. | 02:42:56 | |
I, Amber, Hi, 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 | 02:43:17 | |
little bit of deliberation. Now you need to make a choice so. | 02:43:23 | |
I need a motion. | 02:43:30 | |
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 no. | 02:44:01 | |
OK, Marty. | 02:44:04 | |
Yeah, Yeah. Amber, Hi, Jake. No, OK. We're going to 9.6 forms of government and I don't know who is presenting this particular | 02:44:06 | |
item. I think we can table it. I don't think we have the support. | 02:44:13 | |
Umm, let's check really quick. Do we need to discuss this today? | 02:44:22 | |
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 | 02:44:28 | |
to us about process and the the forms that are before us. | 02:44:34 | |
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 | 02:44:53 | |
have a vote at the end. There's a question prepared and just to save time. | 02:45:00 | |
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. | 02:45:58 | |
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 duties within the city. | 02:46:13 | |
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 | |
Slight variations in the language used in the code that the functions are essentially the same. | 02:47:07 | |
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, 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 on the topic so you'll be able | 02:47:58 | |
to. | 02:48:02 | |
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. | 02:48:40 | |
County charges the set rate for an election. It's between 15 and $20,000. It depends on population. Number of registered voters | 02:48:43 | |
will be within that range. | 02:48:49 | |
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 up and that would be the | 02:48:58 | |
ongoing cost annually. | 02:49:03 | |
If you. | 02:49:10 | |
Resolved 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 tongue be affected. | 02:49:35 | |
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 because 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 three and two. 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 | |
By some form of lot you could choose what that is. Two of them would get longer terms, one would get a two year term. | 02:52:13 | |
As you guys know, I'm the one that's been pushing for this change. There's a few reasons why I've been interested in increasing | 02:52:23 | |
our council to A6 member council and one of the reasons is I believe it would be better to have a good. | 02:52:30 | |
A line drawn between the executive and legislative in the sense that the mayor is there to conduct and help move things forward, | 02:52:40 | |
while the legislative body to council would be the ones handling the voting. | 02:52:45 | |
I also think it would be a benefit to the council to be able to have more than one council member meeting with the mayor at a | 02:52:51 | |
time. I think that we have lapses in communication as we're going through meetings where it's constantly just, you know, one of us | 02:52:59 | |
in the mayor would be able to have three people without it being an illegal quorum or a publicly noticed quorum. | 02:53:06 | |
I think this is a great form where I know that there's been a discussion with the council mayor forum being pushed by some people. | 02:53:15 | |
I was surprised by that. I've looked around and all the other cities that have a council mayor form are large cities like Sandy | 02:53:24 | |
and Provo and Salt Lake City where their mayors have 6 figure salaries and their residents. | 02:53:33 | |
Are substantially the population is substantially higher. I also believe that it is more expensive in the addition that from my | 02:53:43 | |
understanding and Jamie please correct me, we would have to have additional staff that would cover the council side of things | 02:53:49 | |
specifically an attorney and an attorney that would cover the mayor slash City side of things. That is accurate. So most of the | 02:53:56 | |
most of the cities that have that form of government have two sets of. | 02:54:03 | |
I'll call them executive staff. One would be for the council, one would be for the executive side. So Salt Lake City, for example, | 02:54:11 | |
has. | 02:54:15 | |
Legislative Council that works with their City Council. | 02:54:20 | |
And then they have a city attorney that advises on the executive side and the mayor's branch. They similarly have a legislative | 02:54:23 | |
budget officer, city budget officer. And you kind of run down the stack, right communications is split and the like. So you do | 02:54:30 | |
have some significant differences in cost and and my own view of those forms of government is there a little bit antiquated and | 02:54:36 | |
they tend to pit the. | 02:54:42 | |
Executive and the council against each other. They're not. They don't foster collaboration. The other thought I had is I don't | 02:54:50 | |
like that. It would. To me, it creates an imbalance of power that depending on the politics and everything, they could vote to | 02:54:56 | |
strip away. Could they vote to strip away powers of the mayor? They change legislation to make it so. I mean, I've heard of | 02:55:03 | |
councils basically making their mayor just a ribbon cutter or something. | 02:55:10 | |
There are certain statutory things that they cannot take away. | 02:55:18 | |
Utah law the reason you have. | 02:55:23 | |
They have distilled the options down to where each of them have some balance between. | 02:55:26 | |
The different authorities and you don't have. | 02:55:31 | |
The same kind of latitude that maybe you hear about councils and mayors having in other states. So I don't know that it could be | 02:55:34 | |
as dramatic as taking away all of the power of the mayor so that they're just a figurehead and a a public official. | 02:55:43 | |
Well the other power that it does give the mayor is the mayor could withhold staff from the council, correct? Like if we wanted to | 02:55:52 | |
meet with staff, the mayor would have to approve it. That's correct. In fact you're prohibited by statute from liaising with the | 02:55:58 | |
executive staff without the mayors consent. And then a council mayor for. | 02:56:04 | |
Mayor Forum would give veto powers to the mayor. Is that correct? That's accurate, yes. So to me, I don't understand how council, | 02:56:10 | |
Mayor Corn would be worthwhile for our city, for our small city. So I, I, this is important to me and I understand if the council | 02:56:18 | |
is not interested. But just to reiterate, this would be a process that would start. We could have our public hearing, see how the | 02:56:26 | |
community responds. We could decide to put it on the ballot and then again, see how the community response. | 02:56:34 | |
But I think it's worth starting this process if you guys are all interested. So if anyone wants to say anything else. | 02:56:42 | |
OK, Take you seem to not be interested. Were you interested in a different form or are you interested in not changing the form of | 02:56:50 | |
government anymore? Yeah, I just if, if it's not a mayor council form of government, I don't think it behooves us of the time and | 02:56:58 | |
energy and trying to focus on some of the objectives that we have and how it wouldn't go into effect for quite some time. I would | 02:57:06 | |
more rather wait to see if there was a council that would be open to a council mayor form of government. | 02:57:14 | |
Them trying to persuade why do you want a council mariform? I believe that with this, with the unique nature of the size of the | 02:57:22 | |
RDA and the way in which our the smallness of our city in meeting with the county clerk and bringing a very large group of people | 02:57:29 | |
to study out the pros and cons of all. It was a very large group that we went through and studied it out and it was. I saw your | 02:57:37 | |
post, you said you had five people on that committee. | 02:57:45 | |
I believe one of the meetings we had 50 people that went through the presentation of the five people that put the working order of | 02:57:53 | |
the leadership. Yeah, there were five leaders of the group. | 02:57:58 | |
We did that sleepy Ridge. It held a. | 02:58:03 | |
It was a big room, so yeah. And the appetite was that. | 02:58:06 | |
You know, Jamie, I can respect your. | 02:58:13 | |
Desire to not like gridlock in certain forms of government gridlock, especially by the framers of our Constitution set it up so | 02:58:16 | |
that there was separations of power and bicameral and and and the history of the last just four few years, especially just with | 02:58:23 | |
our own. | 02:58:29 | |
Experience on the council having a separation protects many, so it's just a it's a preference after studying. I think you're | 02:58:38 | |
making my influence enough larger, right? I mean it is. I don't vote on this. | 02:58:46 | |
I do not have a preference for what the city does on this. | 02:58:56 | |
Consider if you want to make that change, but please don't convey or communicate it as that's my preference. It's not I I'm happy | 02:59:38 | |
to serve the city in whatever form of government or capacity. I just want to know how you can how you can justify. | 02:59:46 | |
The increase in spending to do that one. So that's an opinion of you can still choose how much staff or what staff and you can you | 02:59:55 | |
can still say, hey, have part time. It doesn't mean they need to be full time people. You can just take that one person and split | 03:00:01 | |
up the time and say these are two-part time people that handle that. So it doesn't need to be an increase. We studied that out. | 03:00:08 | |
Sorry, did you have any comments? But it does take, you're right. It does separate the powers say, hey, I do need two. That | 03:00:15 | |
doesn't mean you need two full time. It just means they could be half. When we when we I was really proud about the group that | 03:00:23 | |
contacted every city. They did multiple times of different governments and every city they contacted every single every city in | 03:00:31 | |
the so they did a they did a group of I don't think we did Wellington and Fairview and. | 03:00:39 | |
But of those sides that were that were a relative to us, we didn't look at Provo, several cities in the state that were similar to | 03:00:47 | |
our size of our county. So we did Lehigh Alpine, American Fork. | 03:00:54 | |
We did Saratoga Springs, we contacted Orem. Yeah, there were some great interviews of hey, what do you think about your roles and | 03:01:03 | |
responsibilities, form of government, where the pros and cons. And we invited you to the meetings, Marty, I don't need to go | 03:01:08 | |
through. And if you want to reach the thing. | 03:01:13 | |
Told you that I don't, I don't attend your political campaign group parties, but I'm happy to meet with people in your group. | 03:01:18 | |
Right. But but I mean, you're asking me about what they studied. So I'm like, yeah, you could ask all of them. I sat down with one | 03:01:24 | |
of your campaign managers and he explained it. So. OK. Sarah, did you have any comments? | 03:01:30 | |
I'm I'm OK with just waiting. It's not going to make a difference in in light of the budget I just assume. | 03:01:38 | |
Not spend more money, yeah. | 03:01:44 | |
I've been a fan of the operation of the five member council. I think it's been incredibly collaborative and allowed us to do | 03:01:48 | |
extraordinary things. I would support the people if they wanted to change the form of government that are comfortable with what it | 03:01:54 | |
is right now. I'm happy to wait. | 03:01:59 | |
On this particular item, let's say we vote for it to go in, We have to hold the two public hearings. Can we pull it away from | 03:02:06 | |
having it go on the ballot at some point during that process? | 03:02:11 | |
Yes, OK. I have no problem giving the public time to come and meet. And I'll say this, sitting in this position, I don't really | 03:02:18 | |
think there's a significant difference between them. There are lots of costs that are different. | 03:02:24 | |
If we're all going into this wondering how to make it more fair, I think that the five member, the six member and the council, | 03:02:34 | |
mayor forum all offer the executive seat to have a very separate big separations from the legislative body. | 03:02:41 | |
But I do know we are growing and having another person I think is meaningful, I think. | 03:02:49 | |
Offering offering that up and discussing it and and viewing it out. I'm I'm supportive of it. So I don't know if we need a | 03:02:57 | |
tiebreaker. So before you vote on it, there's there are a few details you need to pin down before you vote on the resolution. The | 03:03:04 | |
one I've highlighted on the screen is if you want to make. | 03:03:12 | |
If you're worried about having three council members and the mayor elected at the same time, it would be, you know, four of your | 03:03:20 | |
six. You could take one of the council seats and make it a shorter initial term so that you have some staggering there. I think | 03:03:27 | |
there's some wisdom in that. And so you would change one of the terms of 2027. The other choice you can make, but I, I don't think | 03:03:33 | |
this was something that you had discussed or was on the table, was to have council members be elected by district instead of at | 03:03:40 | |
large. | 03:03:47 | |
But I understood from everybody was that at large was the preference. Just know that if you don't put districts in this | 03:03:54 | |
resolution, then you you can't consider that as you move forward. If we put it in this resolution, can we change it in the public | 03:04:00 | |
hearings and put. | 03:04:05 | |
On the resolution, so you you the requirement in the statute is to draw districts and have them be of roughly equal population, | 03:04:13 | |
and so you would. | 03:04:18 | |
You choose one, and then that one goes forward. | 03:04:57 | |
OK, OK. Do we have a tiebreaker? | 03:05:01 | |
We've got two and two. | 03:05:04 | |
No, no. | 03:05:08 | |
I tried. | 03:05:11 | |
So I mean, I'll make a motion. I mean, I'm willing to support. | 03:05:13 | |
It's an opportunity to present it to the people. | 03:05:17 | |
OK, well then I make a motion. | 03:05:21 | |
I move to adopt Resolution 2024 Dash 21 to change to A6 Member Council in accordance with the requirements and procedures of Title | 03:05:28 | |
10, Chapter 3 being part of Part six of Utah Code as presented with sorry, the stipulation standing. | 03:05:37 | |
One of the Council members terms would end at December 31st 2027 and it would be at large for all council members and as written | 03:05:48 | |
as at large. So the only amendment you'll need is that change in date that's reflected on the screen now. | 03:05:55 | |
OK. | 03:06:04 | |
I have a first name, Marty. Second. OK, Amber gave you your second and we'll go down. We'll do this by roll call, Sarah. | 03:06:05 | |
If you don't want to do it, it's me. You don't want to kiss me? No. OK. | 03:06:16 | |
Marty, I will go with yes, Amber, hi. | 03:06:21 | |
All right. That's the adjournment of our meeting. Thanks. | 03:06:28 |
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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 going to | 00:00:30 | |
start with a presentation for the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award by Christy Bayless, our Finance Director. | 00:00:40 | |
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 | 00:01:07 | |
have added our 2023 medallion to that. | 00:01:14 | |
I just wanted to read a little bit about what the award is for and entails. | 00:01:21 | |
So DFOA is the Government Finance Officers Association. The Distinguished Budget Award is a prestigious recognition given to | 00:01:26 | |
government entities that demonstrate excellence in budgeting practices. It is a national award that acknowledges organizations for | 00:01:32 | |
their commitment to meeting the highest standards of governmental budgeting. | 00:01:38 | |
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 | 00:02:01 | |
enhances its reputation among stakeholders, including citizens, investors, and rating agencies. | 00:02:09 | |
It demonstrates the organization's dedication to sound financial practices and provides assurance to the public that their tax | 00:02:17 | |
dollars are being managed responsibly. Just as a side note, this is the sixth year in a row that Vineyard has received this | 00:02:24 | |
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 of | 00:02:31 | |
this team, so we really appreciate it. That brings you to your second item, 2.2, which is the fraud risk assessment presentation. | 00:02:39 | |
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 395 points. The high points shows that you have low risk and we did get the 395 out | 00:02:58 | |
of the 395 indicating that we are our fraud risk is very low. It it really is about asking a lot of questions and questions | 00:03:05 | |
regarding accounting. | 00:03:13 | |
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. | 00:03:27 | |
Thank you so much. Great work on that. We really appreciate learning more about that and that we got a 395. You must feel like an | 00:03:35 | |
A+ student right now. It's exciting. OK, we'll have our public comments and what this time is for anything you want to talk to the | 00:03:42 | |
council about that is not on the agenda. So if this is something separate from the other items, please come up, state your name | 00:03:48 | |
and where you're from, and we will take those comments for you. | 00:03:54 | |
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 | 00:04:43 | |
weeds growing in the area because it's not being plowed and we have a humongous infestation of what commonly is called Clover | 00:04:51 | |
mites. There are other names for that. | 00:04:58 | |
And they are breathing and nesting in all the weeds that are there. And because of the high temperatures, which we kind of have a | 00:05:07 | |
perfect storm occurring right now. We have the weeds growing, we have high temperatures and they are infesting now the homes that | 00:05:14 | |
are on the southern end of that development and starting to move toward the northern end of the development. It needs immediate | 00:05:22 | |
attention from the developers and city. And I know that there's been a commitment made to do that. And I just want to under score. | 00:05:30 | |
The fact that several of the residents asked me to speak for them tonight. Barbara couldn't stay and we haven't personally been | 00:05:37 | |
infested yet, but we're just across the street. So we're anxiously awaiting the cities attention to that problem. Thank you. Thank | 00:05:43 | |
you just for the council so that you're aware of it. | 00:05:49 | |
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. So Nissan's all over it and he's making, he's working with the abatement team and the weed mitigation | 00:06:03 | |
group. So we'll be working on that. So any other comments from the public? | 00:06:11 | |
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. I would like to state that | 00:06:38 | |
I'm disappointed that I did not know about the June 14th special session of City Council. I'm disappointed that it was not posted | 00:06:45 | |
on the Vineyard City Facebook. | 00:06:51 | |
Because that's what I look at. And that it was held on a Friday morning when I'm used to Wednesday evening City Council meetings. | 00:06:58 | |
So I'd like to know why the special session was not live streamed and available to watch in Transcorp. Available to read? | 00:07:05 | |
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 | 00:07:21 | |
the complaint and lawsuit about? What was the when was the complaint lawsuit filed? What is the resolution settlement amount? What | 00:07:28 | |
course correction? | 00:07:36 | |
Will Vineyard City make to ensure that these types of issues no longer happen? | 00:07:43 | |
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 the 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 June | 00:08:46 | |
14th special session or tonight's June 26th City Council agenda. It was on the original June 12th meeting that was cancelled. | 00:08:55 | |
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 | 00:09:13 | |
Redevelopment agency, RDA first and then City Council not having adequate time to review the agenda, only 24 hours is | 00:09:21 | |
disheartening. Tonight's agenda is 209, excuse me, 109 pages. | 00:09:28 | |
Not having complete minutes limits our ability as citizens to know what is happening in our city. Referencing that. Jamie Blake, | 00:09:36 | |
please. 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. | 00:10:07 | |
I personally don't feel that it's fair. We give of our time and our service to be here. We have elected people that we want to | 00:10:12 | |
hear and we want to know what they, what they are doing for the people of Vineyard. And I also feel I have a real problem with you | 00:10:20 | |
closing the public comments and then you may or may not discuss what it was that we asked. We may wait months for an answer to our | 00:10:28 | |
question. I would like you to answer our questions as our questions are asked. | 00:10:36 | |
Rather than to close the public comments. | 00:10:44 | |
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. | 00:11:21 | |
We are trying to sell people on our opinions and I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about people up there. | 00:11:30 | |
And I feel like sometimes words are put in people's mouths and. | 00:11:37 | |
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 parking lot is full, the school parking lots full, and sometimes the church | 00:12:22 | |
parking lots full. So the next thing is to start parking on the grass of our front yards. And the strip in front of our house is | 00:12:30 | |
not painted red from the corner of where Holdaway. | 00:12:38 | |
Road turns down to the park either on the it's painted to. | 00:12:46 | |
Partway down the 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 | 00:13:02 | |
place. And I feel bad about that. I've asked them, I've been told them just come park on my driveway, but don't leave any garbage | 00:13:09 | |
this time just because. So I guess my concern is twofold. | 00:13:17 | |
Number one, can we have a little communication with Orem about the amount of of events that are happening down at the park? And | 00:13:25 | |
then #2 if we could paint the front, the finished painting, the extension from the park up to the corner around in red with red | 00:13:32 | |
paint 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, thank | 00:13:54 | |
you for 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 | |
I think that sometimes I think it's nice that sometimes we are able to answer those questions, but from what I've seen in other | 00:16:19 | |
cities, we might even be a little unique to that degree. | 00:16:23 | |
And sometimes I know that it feels like pretty usual because sometimes I'll open it up and we'll talk back and forth for like 40 | 00:16:28 | |
minutes sometimes. But I'm watching the agenda and I'm making sure that we can get through it. And tonight we've got some other | 00:16:33 | |
important things on. So we're going to move forward. But we do. We did listen and we are paying attention. Mayor, would you like | 00:16:39 | |
me to give a short answer to the question about the settlement agreement? Oh, yeah, that would be nice. But I do have a question | 00:16:45 | |
about that in general is. | 00:16:50 | |
Maybe you can address that if it wasn't in our minutes for the statement that you did make publicly, we would want to. | 00:16:58 | |
You could add that supplement in the minutes. OK, sure. Yeah. And you could even hold the minutes and approve them at a later | 00:17:04 | |
meeting if you want with that supplement. So the special meeting was driven by the timing of. | 00:17:09 | |
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 | 00:17:23 | |
then you scuttle your ability to come to any kind of resolution. | 00:17:30 | |
And so the fact scenario is essentially this. There are. | 00:17:38 | |
Some communities in the city that when they were created in the plat, the platen included a note that prohibited | 00:17:42 | |
telecommunications from being put within the public utility easement in those communities. It wasn't uniform across the city. It | 00:17:50 | |
was in certain plots and not in others. It was put in there, we believe by the developer those kinds of restrictions are unlawful. | 00:17:58 | |
There's a federal law that prohibits that. The reason they prohibited is so that. | 00:18:05 | |
Residents of the city over apparel. It was the only choice and it wasn't always the best choice. They wanted options. | 00:18:49 | |
Comcast came in and requested a permit to enter that public utility easement. We had to sort out legally whether we had the right | 00:18:57 | |
to give them that. | 00:19:03 | |
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. We agree with Comcast on the | 00:19:14 | |
reading of the federal law that prohibits that kind of plant restriction. | 00:19:20 | |
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. | 00:19:34 | |
Telecommunications provider that 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 in | 00:20:04 | |
their view, unlawfully granting access to Comcast, contrary to what's in that platinum and that platinum, we expect that kind of | 00:20:12 | |
lawsuit might come. And so we wanted to be sure we were backstopped. So the. | 00:20:21 | |
The bottom line of it all is. | 00:20:30 | |
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 | |
Binding on Comcast and we could be backstop and kept safe. | 00:21:23 | |
In 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 an | 00:21:27 | |
explanation and as the mayor noted, we'll make sure the minutes are supplemented. You'll also have this recording that provides a | 00:21:33 | |
little bit of an overview, overview of what that litigation was and what we did. Are we, are we now allowed to say who the | 00:21:38 | |
developer was? | 00:21:44 | |
What's that? Are we reading out loud now? By law, to be able to say who the developer was? Oh, I don't think you ever were | 00:21:51 | |
prohibited. 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. | 00:22:13 | |
I don't have all the plants in front of them, so they're they're. | 00:22:16 | |
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 one 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. You guys held a settlement meeting. You didn't contact me. You held a City Council meeting. You agreed upon | 00:22:53 | |
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 | |
And everybody was noticed this same exact way. | 00:23:51 | |
OK. We're going to go ahead and move on to our business items 9.1 permit parking program and our senior planner, Cast Handsy 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 | 00:24:03 | |
this litigation. We, I can't discuss an open session, the contents of what we talked about during a closed session, but we did | 00:24:10 | |
hold 2 closed sessions about this litigation and Council Member Holdaway was present during that. | 00:24:18 | |
And the settlement agreement is consistent with what was discussed in those closed sessions. There's not anything in the agreement | 00:24:27 | |
that should be surprised. That's good to know about. Thank you. And if you have questions for how you want to be noticed in the | 00:24:33 | |
future, you can talk to Eric and our recorders office as well. OK, go ahead. Pass. OK, great. I'm here to present a resolution | 00:24:40 | |
20/24/17, which is regarding. | 00:24:46 | |
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 | |
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 that. On | 00:26:10 | |
number 11, is there something that you need to say like the city has the reserves the right to withhold something if if that isn't | 00:26:17 | |
upheld or 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 | |
So I should be looking on my laptop, It's a little easier to read. | 00:26:37 | |
Line 6, where we're asking them that if they need additional parking beyond what is being allowed on 300 W Engineered Loop Rd. | 00:27:55 | |
that the HOA is responsible for providing at least 25 stalls at a minimum of at least 25. And then the other wording we just got | 00:28:02 | |
rid of by restriping, where the city can come in and improve the number of parking stalls just because there's other methods to | 00:28:08 | |
increase the number of parking stalls and we didn't want to limit us to just restriping. | 00:28:15 | |
Sir, does this reflect what you wanted it to be? I know that you've been working a lot with HOA board. Yeah, I think it's, I think | 00:28:24 | |
it's a huge improvement. But we're not actually voting on this tonight, right, Because I'd like to take it back to the if you want | 00:28:30 | |
to continue it, we can. I just wanted to make sure we got it on here for you. Yeah. I really appreciate your work with me. Thank | 00:28:36 | |
you. I, I do want to say though, that if we did kind of have a goal to get started on the parking permit program by, I think | 00:28:42 | |
August, the first week of August. | 00:28:48 | |
The sooner we can get approval on that, the sooner we can get these permits in residence hands and, and I, I just want to go over | 00:28:54 | |
it with the HOA and make sure that everyone's good and I'd be happy to join you with them as well. OK, great. Thank you. Are we | 00:29:00 | |
allowed to have an open meeting and invite them here so that we can have a council? | 00:29:06 | |
But this gives him an option and we could also, if we do push this to another date, we can reach out to HOA and tell them to let | 00:29:46 | |
their residents know and that way that their residents can also come to council meeting. And you do have a meeting before the | 00:29:52 | |
August? Yes. And I'd like to get it resolved so we can pass it for sure. And our next City Council. And August isn't necessarily a | 00:29:58 | |
deadline. That's just when we thought would be a good time with school starting and more, you know, students moving in to try to | 00:30:04 | |
get it before that. OK, well then. | 00:30:10 | |
Do you? 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. Yeah, | 00:30:16 | |
thank you. 9.2 is a public hearing adoption of the Vineyard City FY24 Budget Final Amendment Resolution 2024, Dash 18. | 00:30:25 | |
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. And this is very common practice. So this would be budget | 00:31:03 | |
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, | 00:31:10 | |
we're OK to just go ahead unless there's questions. OK. Are there any questions from the public on this item? | 00:31:17 | |
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. I would like to know the differences too. | 00:31:45 | |
Can you just speak to the microphone and just say that it's in the packet and then we have it? Yeah, just reminding that this is | 00:31:55 | |
what was provided in the package so that everybody could take a look at that and review that. No, I think it's great. I was able | 00:32:02 | |
to read through it and I feel comfortable with the changes. I wanted a preview for the public. Usually what happens and we can | 00:32:09 | |
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 slideshow 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. | 00:32:27 | |
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 can come on up and state your name and where from where your condom is. | 00:32:53 | |
I think that'd be helpful. | 00:33:40 | |
The final budget for fiscal year 24 with any questions that you have? | 00:34:13 | |
Do 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, 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 | 00:34:56 | |
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 we | 00:35:05 | |
overspent meaning we didn't have a balanced budget or what? What exactly are you asking? | 00:35:14 | |
In in my household I have to balance my budget every month. | 00:35:23 | |
And make sure that I don't overspend if I do have a credit card. | 00:35:27 | |
That I put my excess on and then that next month that has to be paid off. So if we are having City Council that has been given an | 00:35:32 | |
award for transparency and for balancing the budget, my understanding was that we didn't balance the budget last year, that we | 00:35:40 | |
overspent. And so this year we have to make up for what we overspent. Is that correct? | 00:35:48 | |
Yeah. No, that's not correct. Sorry. I think what you're, you're confusing balancing the budget with having using fund balance to | 00:35:58 | |
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 | 00:36:05 | |
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. | 00:36:13 | |
We'll 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, where you're from and everything. I'm sorry. Did you get it? I think that. OK, hold on. Before we | 00:36:30 | |
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 | 00:36:36 | |
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 | 00:37:07 | |
with people who have said please don't do this. And you just went ahead and did it anyway. So I guess. | 00:37:15 | |
I'm just frustrated and and I'm getting to the point of being angry that you are not representing us for some reason. | 00:37:23 | |
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, tonight we can approve to go into debt like that, the 2 million or whatever. I think we just need to | 00:38:55 | |
be very 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 dramatically that needs society but we have put | 00:39:11 | |
the council last year approved to do so is what she wants. | 00:39:17 | |
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 | |
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 to stay | 00:39:46 | |
within because it improves bond ratings and things like that. You get dinged by your on your audit if you go above that 35% And so | 00:39:56 | |
we try to stay in between that. So each year as we set set forth our budget. | 00:40:05 | |
A portion of our budget is utilization of that carryover general fund so that it stays within that range. The use of fund balance | 00:40:15 | |
is perfectly common. Every year you you bet you budget for it so that by the end of the year. | 00:40:23 | |
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 | 00:41:03 | |
a phenomenal job and is usually as history goes, our, our finance directors have been very good at getting close to that. | 00:41:11 | |
The approval of our end of year is simply the corrections that we're a little bit plus here and a little bit minus here within the | 00:41:19 | |
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 | |
It would be irresponsible. And so you want to pay your life bills and you want to make sure that you are saving and only spending | 00:42:30 | |
between those two percentages. And that's what we're that that's what is happening inside of this budget. And and one more | 00:42:36 | |
addition is that that the purpose behind that isn't so much so that you have a savings account on an ongoing basis. A big purpose | 00:42:42 | |
of that is so that when the year begins and you have yet to collect, you know, your first tranche of, of sales tax or property | 00:42:48 | |
tax. | 00:42:54 | |
You have a buffer so that the city continues to operate seamlessly between fiscal years. | 00:43:01 | |
And so that is why there's a recommended amount to stay within so that you don't have, you know, critical task flow problems | 00:43:07 | |
during that transition from one planet fiscal year to the next. OK. I'm actually, I'm really happy to hear you explain it that way | 00:43:15 | |
because some of the concerns that were brought up to me were that if if we're looking at you know, last year, we're one the the | 00:43:22 | |
budgets have changed a little bit, 1.1 million use of the prior fund balance. | 00:43:30 | |
Up from 26,000 from the year before. | 00:43:38 | |
So some of the comments that I heard was that will take us above the safe mark to be able to get good bond financing. So I'm happy | 00:43:42 | |
to hear you say that you guys maintain that 17% that I. | 00:43:49 | |
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. | 00:44:05 | |
What's what's in there now and how, how did we go from 26,000 needing to use 26,000 to needing to use 1.1 million? And then this | 00:44:10 | |
year it changed from needing 465, which I felt OK about, to going back up. The new one is like 900. The one that came back last | 00:44:19 | |
night at like 10:00. I went all through this with Kim Olson yesterday. | 00:44:28 | |
So it's like I have three different. | 00:44:37 | |
Quite, quite in depth. | 00:45:12 | |
During the conversation about the fiscal year 25 budget and talking about this very thing, we are not headed into the direction in | 00:45:13 | |
the amount of fund balance that we are using in order to keep Vineyard growing and having our services at the same level that we | 00:45:21 | |
currently have them. And so our goal tonight later is we'll be talking about what we're looking at in fiscal year 25 budget. It is | 00:45:28 | |
to help course correct this action. | 00:45:35 | |
That has not been previously addressed. We are going to be trying to do small increments to at least get us on the right | 00:45:43 | |
trajectory to be where we need to be. And Chrissy, I would I would like clarity in that for the minutes. You're not talking about | 00:45:52 | |
course correcting how fiscally aware the council has been, rather what we're bringing into the city with tax revenue. | 00:46:00 | |
Is that right? | 00:46:10 | |
Yes, and inflated costs. I mean, everything's going up, right? | 00:46:12 | |
Which 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 | 00:48:15 | |
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 | 00:48:23 | |
getting this on the right trajectory. And just so you know, I like Julie likes to say we need to put skin in the game. | 00:48:31 | |
I'm even willing you can take off one of my months of income. | 00:48:39 | |
To help. I'm totally willing to do that, actually, for the next three years. It's mine's more like a penny compared to your spot, | 00:48:44 | |
but I'm willing. Jake would probably do it too. | 00:48:49 | |
So there's that. But I think if we all just really looked at it, we would live in a really nice community. And I feel like if we | 00:48:55 | |
just, if we just posted 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 | 00:49:01 | |
too hard to get us back where we need to be. | 00:49:08 | |
So, OK, so just to make sure I understand everything that you're saying, I felt like inside of that conversation we talked about | 00:49:14 | |
taxes, the 25 budget and did you have your questions on the 24 budget amendment? | 00:49:24 | |
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 with closing up. No, that's OK. Let's wrap that portion up. And I believe I went | 00:49:41 | |
out of 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 | 00:49:50 | |
one is 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 on transportation. What was that? | 00:50:08 | |
We know. | 00:50:19 | |
I don't have the detail right off hand, but I'm OK and. | 00:50:22 | |
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 bad messages to the to the public | 00:50:59 | |
specifically for Rd. closures and so forth. And now we're able to put them up. And then the equipment went from 22 to 65. | 00:51:08 | |
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 | |
But it helps. Every little bit helps. But I'm saying that's an awful well. And I think we need to be clear when you're talking | 00:52:08 | |
about paying your bills and going and keeping A level of service, when you say something like we can pull back, that's the duty of | 00:52:15 | |
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 assess is | 00:52:22 | |
do we want to get these services? Do we want the road crossing? Do we want that petition for the crossing across the street? | 00:52:29 | |
We went inside of here and we looked and we said we're not seeing a return of investment on here. Let's go ahead and pull that. | 00:53:07 | |
And that's this, that's this group. So, but let's go ahead and pull up the numbers, OK? And we're just talking about the 22 to 65. | 00:53:14 | |
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 | 00:53:22 | |
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. | 00:53:30 | |
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 | 00:53:38 | |
transportation and water, like retirement and taxes it seems like is there consistent from 36 to 60 is that? | 00:53:46 | |
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 AI 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 of July 1st for this this upcoming year. | 00:54:53 | |
Contract services in wastewater went from 970 to 1.3 million. Contact services and wastewater increased that we saw for sewer a | 00:55:04 | |
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 emotion? | 00:55:50 | |
I move to adopt Resolution 20/24/18, the amendment to the fiscal year 2023-2024 budget as presented. Alright, we have a first time | 00:55:56 | |
Amber, 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 | |
Go ahead and move to 9.3 public hearing proposed salary increases for elective and statutory officials. This requires a motion to | 00:56:18 | |
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 | |
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 | 00:57:59 | |
to that, there's a 0.7% recommended increase for Tier 2 retirement staff, and that was included in the budget that I missed | 00:58:07 | |
including that on the spreadsheet for the director salary increases. So that's what I added to that. And the 5% is the cost of | 00:58:16 | |
living adjustment. It's 3.5% cost of living and 1.5% merit. | 00:58:24 | |
Merit. | 00:58:32 | |
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? Second. We're not going to talk about | 00:58:45 | |
it. | 00:58:48 | |
Talking about OK, aye aye, aye, all right, and now the council can discuss. | 00:58:53 | |
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 this is required, you have to annually adopt the salaries | 00:59:08 | |
for those positions and state what they are so. | 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 where they go hand in | 01:00:42 | |
glove, we're approving the policy and then they would get the increase. We would and they would. | 01:00:50 | |
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 | |
Yes. | 01:01:31 | |
Who started this initiative? That's curious. | 01:01:32 | |
I don't, I don't remember who the sponsor was. I can pull that up and tell you in a few minutes if you want. No, no, not from the | 01:01:36 | |
state. I'm saying within the city, like who asked that we do an increase for us. | 01:01:41 | |
For the first time hearing it like I thought when the packet came out, the increase you're you're referring to, yeah, that is also | 01:01:48 | |
part of the statute is that. | 01:01:53 | |
Elected officials are listed among that group of of. | 01:02:00 | |
Select director level staff within the city. | 01:02:06 | |
And the policy says that if. | 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 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. | 01:03:53 | |
Yeah, I don't care if I get another $400.00 a year or not. That to me we're talking such a small percentage in my family's budget | 01:03:59 | |
and the city's budget. | 01:04:04 | |
What, what I'm more interested in, like to me that's it doesn't matter if if we need to cut that out or whatever we need to do, | 01:04:10 | |
but rejecting the salary increases for the staff. I've been thinking a lot about it. | 01:04:16 | |
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 | 01:04:32 | |
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 | 01:04:39 | |
we cater to that and help show our staff that we acknowledge the work they're doing. Dewey try to help with. | 01:04:47 | |
The intention of employees. | 01:04:55 | |
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 | 01:05:11 | |
husband's company is in a struggling field and they're still working on cola for them as well. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, how | 01:05:17 | |
long was it? | 01:05:23 | |
When we so we did an adjustment before, but it had been years. | 01:05:31 | |
Since that, an adjustment had been made for the City Council and the mayor, and I think it's excellent that we have this | 01:05:36 | |
opportunity to. | 01:05:39 | |
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 | 01:06:29 | |
the SB 91 that we're referring to doesn't indicate that we have to give. | 01:06:37 | |
City Council, the COLA. So we'd have to go back and look at whether whether that city ordinance required that you get one or | 01:06:45 | |
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 out | 01:06:52 | |
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. | 01:07:10 | |
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 herb, we can do it during that time allowing the COLA because | 01:07:25 | |
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 | 01:07:33 | |
question before you. We're definitely going to give you the COLA in my opinion, where I stand, I'm voting for that you guys. | 01:07:42 | |
Umm, we heard it from our residents and we heard it from our council. I think that's important for me. Either way, however the | 01:07:50 | |
council feels about a COLA for you guys. The idea is just taking small steps versus huge increases over time. And so whatever you | 01:07:57 | |
guys want to do, I feel comfortable with. | 01:08:03 | |
OK, but I need a motion. | 01:08:11 | |
Yeah. Are you making a motion? No, I'm gonna comment on this. | 01:08:13 | |
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 went 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 the down economy, so one gets out one of them. I'm not sure what you're saying. Well, when there's a | 01:08:43 | |
bad economy and inflation, what are we combining the private sector and the public sector at the same time? And so us as a council | 01:08:51 | |
just voting that the inflation and everything in the down economy isn't going to affect it is what I'm saying. So. | 01:08:58 | |
But at the same rate I, you know, at the beginning of this January, February, when we did meet that one time. | 01:09:07 | |
It was bringing us a budget that doesn't go into debt or have us raise rates on our taxes and we haven't been great. We have | 01:09:15 | |
spent. | 01:09:20 | |
We don't need the name World 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. And I just don't | 01:09:39 | |
think it's the so we're going to 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 stock? For both? OK. | 01:09:56 | |
Any further closing comments that looks like there was a closing comments 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 | 01:10:50 | |
thought it would be prudent to have someone who is very well versed in this to come and to speak to us. | 01:10:58 | |
Solor Lewis is going to be speaking with us. She was one of the original founders of Lewis and Young, which is now Lewis, | 01:11:06 | |
Robertson and Birmingham. She has served as a financial advisor on over 1.5 billion in tax exempt and taxable municipal bond | 01:11:13 | |
transactions for numerous local governments here in the state of Utah. In addition to serving Vineyard for approximately 20 years, | 01:11:21 | |
she personally serves as a financial advisor to West Valley West Jordan. | 01:11:28 | |
Forum, Ogden, South Jordan, Layton, Lehigh, Eagle Mountain and several others. | 01:11:36 | |
And so with that, I'm going to turn the time over to Miss Lewis for a presentation. | 01:11:43 | |
It's nice being with you tonight. I have been with the city of Vineyard. I've been having 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 | 01:12:07 | |
winning. And I've seen all this phenomenal growth. I worked with Norm Holdaway. I'm assuming he is late uncle to you, so I've got | 01:12:14 | |
some. | 01:12:21 | |
Two laws here, deep roots here. | 01:12:29 | |
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, you know, a lot of the economy's wheels were | 01:13:08 | |
falling off and cities were in a lot of financial stress at that time after the 2008 and 9 recession. And we actually presented to | 01:13:16 | |
the League of Cities and Towns. | 01:13:24 | |
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, the way it works in some | 01:13:47 | |
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 little | 01:13:52 | |
pieces because when I was making. | 01:13:57 | |
This populates. | 01:14:02 | |
There you go. OK, so just yesterday and I was working on this presentation over the past little while. | 01:14:06 | |
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 is how people | 01:14:21 | |
think and they think it applies to taxes on how they're set 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 here. 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 | 01:15:01 | |
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. | 01:16:38 | |
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 | |
My goodness, that is microscopic. So here, believe it or not not to believe me, I've got it in a little bit bigger thing 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. | 01:17:06 | |
With your microscopic reading eyes just you can see 123 fourth column over the 2023 tax rate. That top one for the school district | 01:17:17 | |
basic levy is 001408. How did I do? | 01:17:26 | |
OK, not bad from here. | 01:17:35 | |
Of the second one down. | 01:17:40 | |
The second one, thank you. | 01:17:41 | |
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 | 01:18:39 | |
tax? I'm Murray. I can give you a pretty good estimate of what that check is for. What is your total property tax in for your | 01:18:47 | |
condo in Saint George? I can tell you what that tax bill is. | 01:18:55 | |
Even being in this industry. | 01:19:04 | |
I cannot tell you. I mean, I could look this up and find it out. I cannot tell you how much of that money goes to the city. It's | 01:19:06 | |
not. It's not what's planted in my head. What's planted in my head is my total tax bill. So when any jurisdiction goes to, you | 01:19:14 | |
know, raise property taxes and the state law requires that you have to, you know, show and have a hearing and show what the | 01:19:21 | |
percentage increase is people naturally. | 01:19:28 | |
Do the math in their head of oh, and I'm just making up a number now, right? They naturally do the math and say, oh, a 5% tax | 01:19:36 | |
increase. If my tax bill, my total tax bill, because that's how they think of it. My total tax bill is $1000 and a 5% increase. I | 01:19:42 | |
can do that math, right? I know that's going to be $50. | 01:19:48 | |
So when each jurisdiction raises taxes, it's important that you understand and that you educate your constituents that what you | 01:19:56 | |
get to control is the taxes for that 30% line, OK? So we'll talk in a minute about, well, OK. | 01:20:08 | |
But my tax bill as a whole is still going up. It's very likely so because everyone of those entities, school district, the state, | 01:20:20 | |
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? | 01:21:55 | |
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. | 01:22:15 | |
So if you take no action, right, you'll get probably some more money in the real world because you do have some new growth. But | 01:22:19 | |
what comes with new growth? | 01:22:24 | |
Cost, cost Exactly, Jacob, Absolutely. So it's important to understand that. | 01:22:31 | |
I talk about new growth, OK, but that is not an increase in existing home value. It does not capture anything related to the home | 01:22:40 | |
valuation. As a matter of fact, it it's and the rating agencies love our tax law. Why do they love it? So let's go back mentally | 01:22:47 | |
to 2010. What was happening 2008 and 9 with. | 01:22:54 | |
Properties in Nevada. | 01:23:02 | |
Right. Property values are going up and they don't have this law. So tax revenues were just skyrocketing, right? But then here | 01:23:05 | |
comes 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, right in Utah. Guess what? Property values went | 01:23:26 | |
down some. Now that you know this brilliant 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 | |
Going on, there's one page that things come up right. The last one comes further. So it's it's a little bit of a hot mess. So | 01:23:52 | |
sorry about that. | 01:23:56 | |
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 were trying to educate the | 01:24:15 | |
legislators about the same kind of thing and they said, oh, OK, so how is the general fund budget number set? Well, they look at | 01:24:21 | |
what the whatever city they pulled, I don't know, they didn't reference it. | 01:24:28 | |
So if your general fund budget last year from property taxes generated $7,400,000, they went, oh, what is the current taxable | 01:24:34 | |
value of the city? It's two billion, 155 in this example. And it is relatively simple math in this example. | 01:24:43 | |
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 it, | 01:25:26 | |
right, He said power plant, yeah, sorry, power plant and it's every five years. I think it is every five years. So it's centrally | 01:25:33 | |
assessed, right And depending upon what the state sets that rate for, for all you know, centrally assessed kind of railroads | 01:25:41 | |
power. | 01:25:48 | |
Gas. Those type of facilities are what gets centrally assessed. | 01:25:56 | |
They go in and, you know, argue that their taxes need to be lower and the state says, OK, sure, we agree with that, which they do. | 01:26:01 | |
Sometimes it impacts this math calculation. But again, you get to say nothing about it. I mean, you can go to the hearing, right? | 01:26:08 | |
But the city that you don't have to approach the city to do that. So the actual calculation is more complicated than this example | 01:26:16 | |
that the state presented the legislature because I do take into account new growth. | 01:26:23 | |
They do take into account changes in centrally assessed taxes. | 01:26:31 | |
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, OK, 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 are Speaking of like the revenues to the local government from market fluctuations. | 01:27:12 | |
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 parks 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. | 01:28:07 | |
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. | 01:29:08 | |
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 one. I know West Valley looks at it every year. | 01:31:39 | |
So just now see if they should hold their rate constant. Fine, Alden 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 | 01:31:53 | |
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 | 01:31:59 | |
of years they hadn't raised taxes. Same thing for years and years and years when we went and did their look at their analysis and | 01:32:05 | |
I didn't think to do this for you. | 01:32:11 | |
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 had just done what Central Utah did and | 01:32:32 | |
held that rate constant every year, just like clockwork, they would have had $8 million more a year in their budget. So you can | 01:32:39 | |
see the compounding impact of just letting that rate slide, right? I mean, it's, it's going the wrong direction when inflation is | 01:32:47 | |
going to the direction, which I'll show you in a minute. So I do can see yours is dropping, dropping, dropping. | 01:32:54 | |
Alpine my again a guess is that reason that did drop in in that one year is my guess is they had AGO 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 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's 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 | 01:34:06 | |
podium noted earlier, I've got a slide that, you know, had has some shocking numbers relative to inflationary increases over the | 01:34:13 | |
past same period that seven years. | 01:34:20 | |
But no while yes. | 01:34:29 | |
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, 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 | 01:35:04 | |
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 | 01:35:37 | |
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, the main annual firefighter wage in Utah. Because again, that's something that hits you as a | 01:35:50 | |
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've just given 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 to the right. So you got the year, you got the | 01:36:33 | |
inflation rate. | 01:36:39 | |
And you can see that that increases sometimes a little, sometimes 2022 a lot. Thankfully, it's coming back down. I think this year | 01:36:46 | |
will 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% | 01:37:08 | |
increase and that inflation index over that period from 2017 to 2023. Now let's look at the. | 01:37:17 | |
Percentage rate change and Vineyard Cities tax rate. Oh look, there are lots of negatives. Went down 1.4%, it went down 14.8%, it | 01:37:28 | |
went down 3.5%. So you can, you can see it right there. | 01:37:35 | |
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 revenues, 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 am I actually was texting one earlier tonight before my phone started playing really loud | 01:39:14 | |
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 there. | 01:39:50 | |
Getting over a sinus infection. | 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 air quotes, but just because it's the word feel. But it's like, OK, what is the most essential thing | 01:40:11 | |
that you provide? | 01:40:18 | |
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 to | 01:40:26 | |
pay police and fire OK, so if you look at. | 01:40:32 | |
Where your revenues are coming from and where your expenditures are going. Big sea of blue is public safety. Why didn't think | 01:40:40 | |
about blue being like, you know, in blue line kind of thing. So big sea of blue public safety. | 01:40:46 | |
So in an ideal world, it would be lovely if the property taxes on the revenue source covered that Dixie of blue. But you can see | 01:40:53 | |
it's not right. So by my calculation, it might be on this page as you keep clicking, it might be on the next one. | 01:41:04 | |
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 cost 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 revenue. 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 | 01:43:20 | |
the inflationary numbers that I showed on that other page, like one percent, 1.21.8, whatever they were, we add that, compound | 01:43:27 | |
that over time and bring it up to today. | 01:43:35 | |
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 no quote UN quote your | 01:46:23 | |
neighbors. | 01:46:30 | |
Locally assessed property has to be valued every five years. | 01:46:38 | |
Now, do I think they run around and appraise all of our homes? No, I do not know by what method they they do. All I know is that | 01:46:44 | |
some years it's like, oh, your property is now worth it and you can go in and, you know, fight against that if you think it's | 01:46:49 | |
overvalued. | 01:46:54 | |
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 5 segments of your city and they're gonna do one of those | 01:47:14 | |
segments every year. So if you're in segment one and it was a year where property values went up a lot, right? Because you have to | 01:47:24 | |
think of the total tie when they're, when they're coming up with whatever that same revenue is for you from year to year to year. | 01:47:33 | |
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 five of you, 12345. So your area gets reappraised, right? So you're now a | 01:47:51 | |
bigger piece of 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 | |
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, | 01:49:50 | |
can't do that. close the rec center, close all of the things that they came up with that they that they knew were hard political | 01:49:57 | |
asks weren't even much of A needle mover, quite frankly, right. Most cities we work with South Jordan years and years ago. I still | 01:50:05 | |
work 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 apply that business sense to a city, your largest is probably payroll. Your second | 01:50:41 | |
is, you know, I think of rent, I think of your cost to operate City Hall, right? So those are the big needle movers. Anything | 01:50:49 | |
else? You know, so when you're talking about reducing level of services as your alternative. | 01:50:56 | |
Who you gonna fire? Who and how many? Because that's going to be the fastest way to reduce your level of services. And it's not | 01:51:05 | |
fun. Citizens do not like their taxes raised, but they do not want their services hit. So put you in a conundrum. But those are | 01:51:12 | |
your two levers that you can move. Now think of your teeter totter, right? I can either raise taxes, I can lower services. That's | 01:51:19 | |
it all you can move. Now I think it's time for questions. I'm so psyched. | 01:51:27 | |
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 | |
It was they educated them, they saw it. It wasn't a huge increase as opposed to, I mean, I got war stories coming out my ears as | 01:52:56 | |
opposed to West Valley City. Before they built their rec center, they hadn't raised property taxes for a long time. They needed to | 01:53:03 | |
raise property taxes so that they could pay for that building. And it was. | 01:53:10 | |
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 a big whopping one, right. So my question is, if you start to do that | 01:53:24 | |
consistently, are there years that it could possibly go down? Absolutely, absolutely. Because if you educated the people to to | 01:53:31 | |
understand that we want that tax. | 01:53:38 | |
Neutrality, right? Is that what you called it? | 01:53:45 | |
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 gonna | 01:53:47 | |
be years that it could go down a little. But we wanna maintain that consistency so. | 01:53:54 | |
Ogden's in my hips. We're working with a big water deal right now, but I know specifically with their water rates, So I don't know | 01:54:01 | |
that they apply the exact same thing to property tax rates. I do know they look at adjusting them every year, but specifically | 01:54:08 | |
their water rates. They actually have a a stated thing in their ordinance. | 01:54:15 | |
Your tax rate and it it might, you know, you might not need to hold it constant like central Utah, 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 addition to Laurae | 01:55:04 | |
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, that as a percentage increase. | 01:56:42 | |
That holds your rate at that percentage. It will be communicated to residents as a larger it will be communicated as a percentage | 01:56:49 | |
increase over the dollar amount they've been paying, not a rate increase in the way we would traditionally think of that. | 01:56:58 | |
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 or projected to raise the tax rate, when did our truth and taxation notice go out for the first time to our | 01:57:51 | |
citizens? There will be So in the resolution that you'll consider today. It lays that out so that it it, I have added a section to | 01:57:57 | |
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 spot where you | 01:58:03 | |
can fill that in. | 01:58:09 | |
For the tax year 2024 is hereby proposed, a Truth in 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 you decide not to not to adopt that tax rate, then you would have to make a budget amendment right to to match whatever that is | 01:58:45 | |
because your projected revenues would change. Is it normal for a city to do that reverse? Why wouldn't we do that in May and March | 01:58:53 | |
not. I don't know why state law doesn't have all the timing aligned. It's a difficult thing for every city. I was in a meeting | 01:59:00 | |
last night where the they were having the same conversation because. | 01:59:08 | |
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 | |
The total revenue amount that the city would. | 02:00:41 | |
Receive and if that and so to hold the certified tax rate means that your revenue would be dollar value equal as to what you | 02:00:44 | |
collected in the last year. | 02:00:50 | |
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 | 02:01:02 | |
get people that can test that valuation. And so it changes and there's some adjustment even there. And so it's not uncommon for | 02:01:08 | |
City Council members to get calls from people saying, hey, my what I thought my rate was going to be is not exactly what it ended | 02:01:14 | |
up being. | 02:01:20 | |
And part of that is that reconciliation process with the county and how that all plays out. | 02:01:26 | |
My my two comments are. | 02:01:31 | |
They don't. That's not unique to Vineyard. | 02:02:08 | |
That's the same everywhere. But notice this will go out. A hearing will have to occur. | 02:02:11 | |
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 | 02:02:35 | |
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 | 02:02:42 | |
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. We | 02:02:48 | |
would then. | 02:02:54 | |
Approve an actual final after the taxation hearing and. | 02:03:01 | |
August, it has to be submitted to state by the end of August. So that's when we would do our final budget and that's not | 02:03:05 | |
considered a budget amendment. That would be our final budget budget that we would then go forward with. | 02:03:12 | |
I'll let that answer your question. With that, we are getting to the close of the evening, so I want to run through the budget and | 02:03:19 | |
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 it houses completed. There's still going to be | 02:04:16 | |
phase two. Phase three, we're starting with six employees and we're going to end up with 18. | 02:04:23 | |
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 called and say anything about our police. I asked him if he wanted to so. | 02:05:34 | |
Are you sent it? | 02:05:41 | |
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 buy that same level of service, we we have to be able to fund that. | 02:07:15 | |
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, you | 02:07:22 | |
said the national average per per citizen for deputy. Can you just state that so people have it? | 02:07:30 | |
Understand that you are being very careful with the money. One of the metrics that the fire department uses, correct me if I'm | 02:07:38 | |
wrong, but there's kind of standard level of services response times. They need to be able to get to somewhere in 5 minutes. | 02:07:45 | |
Currently in Vineyard we fall below that standard where like a 7 minute time frame. The national standard for police services is | 02:07:52 | |
how many police officers do you have per per thousand residents. The national standard generally is one per thousand. | 02:07:59 | |
And 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 | 02:08:41 | |
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 should be at one per 1500 to maintain the | 02:09:04 | |
level of service that you have asked and I feel the citizens have asked as well have come to expect from us. | 02:09:12 | |
I perceive down the road, as soon as we get more commercial, more business, more people, different types of calls, that that | 02:09:20 | |
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 see | 02:09:27 | |
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 I hope that | 02:09:35 | |
answers the question. Any other questions for Lieutenant Rockwell? | 02:09:42 | |
Thank you. | 02:09:51 | |
All right, Christy. | 02:09:54 | |
OK, so. | 02:09:59 | |
OK, so now that I've got it turned on. | 02:10:02 | |
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 a council members and we've been able to ask questions about what's in the line items and what what | 02:10:49 | |
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 law we | 02:10:55 | |
are required. | 02:11:00 | |
To adopt A final budget. Now again, if we do the truth and 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 auditor's | 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 | 02:12:31 | |
January. So we are trying to be. | 02:12:39 | |
Fiscally conservative as much as we can. | 02:12:47 | |
Just wanted to make sure you were aware of that. Employee health insurance has gone up by 6.2% and then as we were talking earlier | 02:12:49 | |
about the cost of living adjustment and the merit increase, that is also an assumption that was put into this budget. | 02:12:56 | |
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 | 02:14:12 | |
in 626,000 of the 1.1 to $1.2 million that we need. | 02:14:19 | |
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 | 02:14:56 | |
anywhere maxing out our capacity to tax. We are trying to be fiscally conservative and are aware that prices are going up for | 02:15:03 | |
everyone everywhere. | 02:15:11 | |
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 feel free to interrupt. | 02:15:33 | |
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. | 02:15:57 | |
So this pie chart shows of our total expenditures, which department and have those have those funds are allocated. | 02:16:05 | |
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 | 02:16:24 | |
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 be 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 | |
I think, I think that needs to happen in the next town hall and I'm happy to help if we could get some of the slides from Laura | 02:20:21 | |
and help people understand, right? Because this I mean, there's a lot of money in capital projects and maybe I. | 02:20:28 | |
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. | 02:21:33 | |
Well, I was at the last one and it was more open house style. | 02:21:39 | |
What number is 937 now $937,000? | 02:22:56 | |
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 | 02:23:05 | |
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 | 02:23:24 | |
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. | 02:23:32 | |
But I, I see a lot of these projects up here if you go back there. | 02:23:40 | |
Hey, what are things? What are things that you think you know? How do you how would you like us to make up to? This would be | 02:24:21 | |
great. | 02:24:24 | |
And what we've been doing and I think who we could talk to a few of them. I mean, people have to listen 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. | 02:24:51 | |
I mean, I kind of went through a list, Christine, I don't know. I asked you, Eric, to kind of bring them up. Um. | 02:24:52 | |
You know, uh. | 02:24:59 | |
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 motivosity? 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 to | 02:25:17 | |
staff. | 02:25:24 | |
Through a variety of. | 02:25:32 | |
Of programs that enhance Wellness and provide. | 02:25:34 | |
OK, 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 | 02:25:40 | |
need 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, I think if you're gonna ask me about the idea that we're having to increase | 02:25:59 | |
taxes right now, and that is an economic thing that can diversify our tax base and lower property taxes. | 02:26:06 | |
I disagree but anybody else have any comments for him? So I don't have 3. | 02:27:20 | |
I want to reevaluate that one later. I don't see Harman 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 onto the agenda for you to reevaluate having worked there, I know they're easy to get out of. | 02:27:45 | |
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 | 02:27:56 | |
get a budget to go through correct. But you're talking about $130,000 on a, you know, 900 gets us what? OK, but 11 percent, 11% | 02:28:02 | |
more. | 02:28:08 | |
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. | 02:28:48 | |
It's not done or people don't do it. It's actually quite regular in government when cutting things. I think what Christy is | 02:28:56 | |
suggesting is just that. | 02:29:01 | |
Like evaluating those scheduled. I thought, OK, I'm not sure what you're asking. I know that the mayor is chair of the council | 02:30:30 | |
keeps. | 02:30:34 | |
Running list of things that are agenda for future meetings. I know an evaluation of the qualitative agreement is slated for a | 02:30:40 | |
future meeting. It's not slated for today. And I I can't speak for the rest of staff, but I can't speak for myself that I | 02:30:47 | |
structure my work to lead up to the meeting. And so it's not work I've done yet, but when that meeting occurs. | 02:30:54 | |
I'll look at the contract and if there are options for modifying or changing it, we can talk through whether those are prudent or | 02:31:02 | |
wanted by the council, right? It's just timers of the essence with a, with 100, with a like a Qualtrics contract, $74,000, it's | 02:31:09 | |
$1000 a week. So every week we wait, it's just another $1000, right? It's actually a $1500 a week just waiting and waiting and | 02:31:16 | |
waiting $3000 every between every other meeting, right? And so are we getting $3000 between every meeting on Qualtrics? You know, | 02:31:22 | |
it's just it, it delays out. | 02:31:29 | |
What about the point, I think you have to prioritize your work and the mayor leads those discussions that it's, it's on your | 02:31:36 | |
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 it. | 02:31:43 | |
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 bottom | 02:31:49 | |
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've got | 02:32:13 | |
to know what that agreement. And I know that power line transmission line study 50,000. There's no way I will back out of that | 02:32:21 | |
one. Nope. That one is so important to our city. The idea of taking those huge power lines down and burying them underground would | 02:32:28 | |
be such a 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 I have another client city that is in the process of burying above ground lines similar to vineyards. It's not | 02:32:55 | |
the same 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. | 02:33:21 | |
Also get some more people on board and potentially we could get more costs down if we kept going along the line and it was | 02:34:39 | |
meaningful to other people. But like I said, the right of way is turned over to the city. So it's going to be who's looking at the | 02:34:46 | |
the views that really dips into that. But we recognize it looks like you don't have three votes, so go to the next one. | 02:34:53 | |
I guess I would just close with just saying I have zero issues with the extra public safety and services being provided by fire | 02:35:02 | |
and by police, But I I expected this to be offsetting and finding reductions. You know, we increase our city manager's pay this | 02:35:10 | |
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. | 02:35:27 | |
My pay is is contingent upon the passing of a COLA and a fight in the No, no, I know, but you're you're paid more than what Ezra | 02:35:31 | |
was. | 02:35:35 | |
I didn't see what Ezra was paid, 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 | 02:35:46 | |
time in my budget, right? But again, with downtime, we're just increasing it, right? We're just splitting it. We had a deputy | 02:35:53 | |
recorder before. We have a deputy recorder now. | 02:36:00 | |
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 I what I feel | 02:36:29 | |
obviously 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 900,000. So that's my comments. Thank you. Any | 02:36:43 | |
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 | 02:36:52 | |
residents money. I understand that. I look at the budget, I feel like we have main content contingent, contingent, contingent. | 02:37:01 | |
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. 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 | 02:37:32 | |
had to be cut from this budget already. And sure are there a few things that. | 02:37:38 | |
I would like to revive it, yes, but most of those things are contracted out. And so it would be something later that we have to | 02:37:45 | |
reevaluate and we can make amendments in the budget like we do throughout the year. The other aspect of it, I do not find it | 02:37:52 | |
prudent to go through and cut, take capital budgets to pay for our day-to-day. I think that if you need, if you're not making the | 02:37:59 | |
cut, you don't cut out, you don't take from your savings. | 02:38:06 | |
Like we are taking from the general fund, but the capital projects are not meant to be for public safety or day-to-day. And so | 02:38:14 | |
agreed that we're coming off of a year where we've been traveling the world and the optics right now are not good. No, you're just | 02:38:20 | |
you're just stating that. And we've already had this discussion multiple times that that money, it's just, it's just not a good | 02:38:25 | |
time. | 02:38:31 | |
I don't agree. That's not what's causing us to have to. You saw the graphs of it going down and it coming up and the one thing | 02:38:37 | |
that the city needs is economic development. | 02:38:42 | |
The founders of our city all have really small homes and one bedroom garage and one bedroom garage or one car garages and they | 02:39:26 | |
learn to live under their means. I understand that there are so many times when a family wants to go to Disneyland and wants nice | 02:39:33 | |
things 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 | 02:39:40 | |
when we are prudent in everything that we're doing. | 02:39:47 | |
The facts actually lie in the minutes they are on record, and what you're saying is not accurate. I. | 02:40:27 | |
Let's end this conversation. We can have it in the future. I'm allowed to have an opinion, yes, but you're talking about things | 02:40:34 | |
that are not on the agenda. | 02:40:39 | |
You've been saying things that are not true on record. I sit here day-to-day watching as you do this and now you're talking about | 02:40:47 | |
how we are being fiscally irresponsible by stating random things that are not actually facts. And so I'm going to put it on the | 02:40:53 | |
record. So as you stated on the record, I now state it on the record so that there's two points. No one needs to get offended or | 02:41:00 | |
saying anything. It's not about being offended. It is about putting the facts on the record because you are stating things. | 02:41:06 | |
The adjustments to the resolution from what was in the packet, so I've changed the title. It now reads a resolution of the City | 02:41:51 | |
Council of Vineyard, Utah programming and adopting a budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025 and proposing a property tax rate. And | 02:42:00 | |
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. | 02:42:21 | |
In truth and taxation hearing will be held August 14, 2024 at 6:00 PM, after which the Council will deliberate and adopt the final | 02:42:23 | |
property tax rate on August 28th, 2024. Excellent. So to clarify, this is a working budget so that we can function and we don't | 02:42:31 | |
have a government shutdown on July 1st, correct. OK. We have a first by Amber. That was clarified by Jamie and I have a second. | 02:42:39 | |
I'll second it. All right, first by Amber, second by Marty. Any discussion? | 02:42:47 | |
OK, we're going to go by name and roll call. Sarah. Marty. | 02:42:56 | |
I, Amber, Hi, 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 | 02:43:17 | |
little bit of deliberation. Now you need to make a choice so. | 02:43:23 | |
I need a motion. | 02:43:30 | |
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 no. | 02:44:01 | |
OK, Marty. | 02:44:04 | |
Yeah, Yeah. Amber, Hi, Jake. No, OK. We're going to 9.6 forms of government and I don't know who is presenting this particular | 02:44:06 | |
item. I think we can table it. I don't think we have the support. | 02:44:13 | |
Umm, let's check really quick. Do we need to discuss this today? | 02:44:22 | |
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 | 02:44:28 | |
to us about process and the the forms that are before us. | 02:44:34 | |
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 | 02:44:53 | |
have a vote at the end. There's a question prepared and just to save time. | 02:45:00 | |
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. | 02:45:58 | |
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 duties within the city. | 02:46:13 | |
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 | |
Slight variations in the language used in the code that the functions are essentially the same. | 02:47:07 | |
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, 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 on the topic so you'll be able | 02:47:58 | |
to. | 02:48:02 | |
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. | 02:48:40 | |
County charges the set rate for an election. It's between 15 and $20,000. It depends on population. Number of registered voters | 02:48:43 | |
will be within that range. | 02:48:49 | |
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 up and that would be the | 02:48:58 | |
ongoing cost annually. | 02:49:03 | |
If you. | 02:49:10 | |
Resolved 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 tongue be affected. | 02:49:35 | |
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 because 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 three and two. 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 | |
By some form of lot you could choose what that is. Two of them would get longer terms, one would get a two year term. | 02:52:13 | |
As you guys know, I'm the one that's been pushing for this change. There's a few reasons why I've been interested in increasing | 02:52:23 | |
our council to A6 member council and one of the reasons is I believe it would be better to have a good. | 02:52:30 | |
A line drawn between the executive and legislative in the sense that the mayor is there to conduct and help move things forward, | 02:52:40 | |
while the legislative body to council would be the ones handling the voting. | 02:52:45 | |
I also think it would be a benefit to the council to be able to have more than one council member meeting with the mayor at a | 02:52:51 | |
time. I think that we have lapses in communication as we're going through meetings where it's constantly just, you know, one of us | 02:52:59 | |
in the mayor would be able to have three people without it being an illegal quorum or a publicly noticed quorum. | 02:53:06 | |
I think this is a great form where I know that there's been a discussion with the council mayor forum being pushed by some people. | 02:53:15 | |
I was surprised by that. I've looked around and all the other cities that have a council mayor form are large cities like Sandy | 02:53:24 | |
and Provo and Salt Lake City where their mayors have 6 figure salaries and their residents. | 02:53:33 | |
Are substantially the population is substantially higher. I also believe that it is more expensive in the addition that from my | 02:53:43 | |
understanding and Jamie please correct me, we would have to have additional staff that would cover the council side of things | 02:53:49 | |
specifically an attorney and an attorney that would cover the mayor slash City side of things. That is accurate. So most of the | 02:53:56 | |
most of the cities that have that form of government have two sets of. | 02:54:03 | |
I'll call them executive staff. One would be for the council, one would be for the executive side. So Salt Lake City, for example, | 02:54:11 | |
has. | 02:54:15 | |
Legislative Council that works with their City Council. | 02:54:20 | |
And then they have a city attorney that advises on the executive side and the mayor's branch. They similarly have a legislative | 02:54:23 | |
budget officer, city budget officer. And you kind of run down the stack, right communications is split and the like. So you do | 02:54:30 | |
have some significant differences in cost and and my own view of those forms of government is there a little bit antiquated and | 02:54:36 | |
they tend to pit the. | 02:54:42 | |
Executive and the council against each other. They're not. They don't foster collaboration. The other thought I had is I don't | 02:54:50 | |
like that. It would. To me, it creates an imbalance of power that depending on the politics and everything, they could vote to | 02:54:56 | |
strip away. Could they vote to strip away powers of the mayor? They change legislation to make it so. I mean, I've heard of | 02:55:03 | |
councils basically making their mayor just a ribbon cutter or something. | 02:55:10 | |
There are certain statutory things that they cannot take away. | 02:55:18 | |
Utah law the reason you have. | 02:55:23 | |
They have distilled the options down to where each of them have some balance between. | 02:55:26 | |
The different authorities and you don't have. | 02:55:31 | |
The same kind of latitude that maybe you hear about councils and mayors having in other states. So I don't know that it could be | 02:55:34 | |
as dramatic as taking away all of the power of the mayor so that they're just a figurehead and a a public official. | 02:55:43 | |
Well the other power that it does give the mayor is the mayor could withhold staff from the council, correct? Like if we wanted to | 02:55:52 | |
meet with staff, the mayor would have to approve it. That's correct. In fact you're prohibited by statute from liaising with the | 02:55:58 | |
executive staff without the mayors consent. And then a council mayor for. | 02:56:04 | |
Mayor Forum would give veto powers to the mayor. Is that correct? That's accurate, yes. So to me, I don't understand how council, | 02:56:10 | |
Mayor Corn would be worthwhile for our city, for our small city. So I, I, this is important to me and I understand if the council | 02:56:18 | |
is not interested. But just to reiterate, this would be a process that would start. We could have our public hearing, see how the | 02:56:26 | |
community responds. We could decide to put it on the ballot and then again, see how the community response. | 02:56:34 | |
But I think it's worth starting this process if you guys are all interested. So if anyone wants to say anything else. | 02:56:42 | |
OK, Take you seem to not be interested. Were you interested in a different form or are you interested in not changing the form of | 02:56:50 | |
government anymore? Yeah, I just if, if it's not a mayor council form of government, I don't think it behooves us of the time and | 02:56:58 | |
energy and trying to focus on some of the objectives that we have and how it wouldn't go into effect for quite some time. I would | 02:57:06 | |
more rather wait to see if there was a council that would be open to a council mayor form of government. | 02:57:14 | |
Them trying to persuade why do you want a council mariform? I believe that with this, with the unique nature of the size of the | 02:57:22 | |
RDA and the way in which our the smallness of our city in meeting with the county clerk and bringing a very large group of people | 02:57:29 | |
to study out the pros and cons of all. It was a very large group that we went through and studied it out and it was. I saw your | 02:57:37 | |
post, you said you had five people on that committee. | 02:57:45 | |
I believe one of the meetings we had 50 people that went through the presentation of the five people that put the working order of | 02:57:53 | |
the leadership. Yeah, there were five leaders of the group. | 02:57:58 | |
We did that sleepy Ridge. It held a. | 02:58:03 | |
It was a big room, so yeah. And the appetite was that. | 02:58:06 | |
You know, Jamie, I can respect your. | 02:58:13 | |
Desire to not like gridlock in certain forms of government gridlock, especially by the framers of our Constitution set it up so | 02:58:16 | |
that there was separations of power and bicameral and and and the history of the last just four few years, especially just with | 02:58:23 | |
our own. | 02:58:29 | |
Experience on the council having a separation protects many, so it's just a it's a preference after studying. I think you're | 02:58:38 | |
making my influence enough larger, right? I mean it is. I don't vote on this. | 02:58:46 | |
I do not have a preference for what the city does on this. | 02:58:56 | |
Consider if you want to make that change, but please don't convey or communicate it as that's my preference. It's not I I'm happy | 02:59:38 | |
to serve the city in whatever form of government or capacity. I just want to know how you can how you can justify. | 02:59:46 | |
The increase in spending to do that one. So that's an opinion of you can still choose how much staff or what staff and you can you | 02:59:55 | |
can still say, hey, have part time. It doesn't mean they need to be full time people. You can just take that one person and split | 03:00:01 | |
up the time and say these are two-part time people that handle that. So it doesn't need to be an increase. We studied that out. | 03:00:08 | |
Sorry, did you have any comments? But it does take, you're right. It does separate the powers say, hey, I do need two. That | 03:00:15 | |
doesn't mean you need two full time. It just means they could be half. When we when we I was really proud about the group that | 03:00:23 | |
contacted every city. They did multiple times of different governments and every city they contacted every single every city in | 03:00:31 | |
the so they did a they did a group of I don't think we did Wellington and Fairview and. | 03:00:39 | |
But of those sides that were that were a relative to us, we didn't look at Provo, several cities in the state that were similar to | 03:00:47 | |
our size of our county. So we did Lehigh Alpine, American Fork. | 03:00:54 | |
We did Saratoga Springs, we contacted Orem. Yeah, there were some great interviews of hey, what do you think about your roles and | 03:01:03 | |
responsibilities, form of government, where the pros and cons. And we invited you to the meetings, Marty, I don't need to go | 03:01:08 | |
through. And if you want to reach the thing. | 03:01:13 | |
Told you that I don't, I don't attend your political campaign group parties, but I'm happy to meet with people in your group. | 03:01:18 | |
Right. But but I mean, you're asking me about what they studied. So I'm like, yeah, you could ask all of them. I sat down with one | 03:01:24 | |
of your campaign managers and he explained it. So. OK. Sarah, did you have any comments? | 03:01:30 | |
I'm I'm OK with just waiting. It's not going to make a difference in in light of the budget I just assume. | 03:01:38 | |
Not spend more money, yeah. | 03:01:44 | |
I've been a fan of the operation of the five member council. I think it's been incredibly collaborative and allowed us to do | 03:01:48 | |
extraordinary things. I would support the people if they wanted to change the form of government that are comfortable with what it | 03:01:54 | |
is right now. I'm happy to wait. | 03:01:59 | |
On this particular item, let's say we vote for it to go in, We have to hold the two public hearings. Can we pull it away from | 03:02:06 | |
having it go on the ballot at some point during that process? | 03:02:11 | |
Yes, OK. I have no problem giving the public time to come and meet. And I'll say this, sitting in this position, I don't really | 03:02:18 | |
think there's a significant difference between them. There are lots of costs that are different. | 03:02:24 | |
If we're all going into this wondering how to make it more fair, I think that the five member, the six member and the council, | 03:02:34 | |
mayor forum all offer the executive seat to have a very separate big separations from the legislative body. | 03:02:41 | |
But I do know we are growing and having another person I think is meaningful, I think. | 03:02:49 | |
Offering offering that up and discussing it and and viewing it out. I'm I'm supportive of it. So I don't know if we need a | 03:02:57 | |
tiebreaker. So before you vote on it, there's there are a few details you need to pin down before you vote on the resolution. The | 03:03:04 | |
one I've highlighted on the screen is if you want to make. | 03:03:12 | |
If you're worried about having three council members and the mayor elected at the same time, it would be, you know, four of your | 03:03:20 | |
six. You could take one of the council seats and make it a shorter initial term so that you have some staggering there. I think | 03:03:27 | |
there's some wisdom in that. And so you would change one of the terms of 2027. The other choice you can make, but I, I don't think | 03:03:33 | |
this was something that you had discussed or was on the table, was to have council members be elected by district instead of at | 03:03:40 | |
large. | 03:03:47 | |
But I understood from everybody was that at large was the preference. Just know that if you don't put districts in this | 03:03:54 | |
resolution, then you you can't consider that as you move forward. If we put it in this resolution, can we change it in the public | 03:04:00 | |
hearings and put. | 03:04:05 | |
On the resolution, so you you the requirement in the statute is to draw districts and have them be of roughly equal population, | 03:04:13 | |
and so you would. | 03:04:18 | |
You choose one, and then that one goes forward. | 03:04:57 | |
OK, OK. Do we have a tiebreaker? | 03:05:01 | |
We've got two and two. | 03:05:04 | |
No, no. | 03:05:08 | |
I tried. | 03:05:11 | |
So I mean, I'll make a motion. I mean, I'm willing to support. | 03:05:13 | |
It's an opportunity to present it to the people. | 03:05:17 | |
OK, well then I make a motion. | 03:05:21 | |
I move to adopt Resolution 2024 Dash 21 to change to A6 Member Council in accordance with the requirements and procedures of Title | 03:05:28 | |
10, Chapter 3 being part of Part six of Utah Code as presented with sorry, the stipulation standing. | 03:05:37 | |
One of the Council members terms would end at December 31st 2027 and it would be at large for all council members and as written | 03:05:48 | |
as at large. So the only amendment you'll need is that change in date that's reflected on the screen now. | 03:05:55 | |
OK. | 03:06:04 | |
I have a first name, Marty. Second. OK, Amber gave you your second and we'll go down. We'll do this by roll call, Sarah. | 03:06:05 | |
If you don't want to do it, it's me. You don't want to kiss me? No. OK. | 03:06:16 | |
Marty, I will go with yes, Amber, hi. | 03:06:21 | |
All right. That's the adjournment of our meeting. Thanks. | 03:06:28 |