Mayor & Council

Minutes of Special Mayor and Council Meeting of 03/26/2024 All right. Well, first off, I sent around copies yesterday. You got some information that is in summary information that I put together to try and convey, at least on one page, the high-level pieces of information impacting our budget. There’s two pieces to it. The first is a summary page, the 2nd page is me trying to basically just detail out some of the root causes that have created the gap that we currently have. I don’t know if you want to spend the time going over so I’d like to just start off with it to sort of like showcase what we’re currently at on both the operating and capital budgets we have. We have gaps for 2024, right? Now the operating budget that has been circulated around a few times has roughly a $2.6 million gap. We’ve talked about this a few times as a point of reference. The capital budget which was shared around with folks yesterday for 2024 also right now has about a $1.6 million gap. I’ll be told that’s just under $4.3 million in 2024 expenses that we don’t have revenue to cover. I also tried to lay out what the broad issues are and what the sort of the highest level issues that we’re facing are as well as what the 2024 numbers look like and what are necessary to cover those. Right now, as things sit in our budget with our capital budget and our operating budget intertwined, it is very difficult for people to be able to suss out what is what operating, what is capital and where funds are supposed to be allocated. I spent a lot of time trying to separate those out to get a good feeling about where we should be, when it comes down to it right now we need about $6 million of additional revenue in the town be using operating funds to cover operating expenses and to be adequately funding our capital needs out of our water, sewer and electric funds and our impact fees that is. The big gap that we have to deal with that you’re looking at about $5 million of increased tax revenue that’s necessary as well as the increased to the water and sewer fees that we’ve discussed. That totals up to about $6 million that we need to actually cover with this tax increase. Doubling where we’re at right now on the operating side just here in 2024 in order to cover the gap that we have, just the 2024 gap if we were to unfreeze the positions that we have, we have about a 19-cent tax increase that would be necessary, including that the water and sewer rate increase to cover the capital gap. The $1.6 million in capital gap that we currently have that is another $0.17 that would be needed in order to cover that so all tolled, we’re looking at roughly $0.36 worth of tax increases necessary to cover our operating and capital gaps that we have for 2024. I included a little bit of information on here as to give you a little bit of grounding, roughly every penny of tax rate is generating about $104,000 based on what we brought in last year and our tax rate there, we are 47 cent tax rate generated just under $5 million in total revenue in 2020. The most recent year that we actually have complete data based on the 44 cent tax rate we had property taxes, residential property taxes ranged from a low of about $292 a year to a high of $2700. So, the most expensive house in our town, multimillion dollar home, paying around two points or $2700 a year, the average municipal tax bill for a single family home is $852 and roughly residential properties make up about 72% of all of our taxes we collect. I think we know we’re high on residential and residential properties utilize more services per dollar than commercial services do but the reality of basically 72% of our tax dollars are coming in from residences at the moment, 28% or so from commercial. So that is the lay of the land that I want everybody to understand before we dig into the individual budget pieces. There’s a lot of money that is necessary to set the town on a footing that could allow us to be successful in the long term and until we are able to address these issues, things like finding more capital operating dollar or capital dollars in the way of bonds or loans become very, very difficult going out for federal earmarks, going out for Bond Bill funding. The types of things that we need, we are not in a position because we can’t have the matching funds necessary to do it or we don’t appear to have the financial responsibility that it would take for people to take us seriously. We have a big, big issue. It is not just operating; it is both operating and capital in my mind. Mayor Johnson said I don’t understand how we can have this deficit in the capital projects and the reason why I’m saying that is that if you don’t have the money for the project, then you can’t do it. The only way I see us having deficit if we have projects on the books already and we don’t have funding to completed and that was a case where we never shouldn’t put us in that position. That’s bad management. So, and I’m just going to take the water tower. The water tower store that $5.95 million. Now it’s $5.6 million. I know 260,000 was because there were some changes made for DelDot and talking with Jason, I was 400,000 off, you know, because of a change. So I really don’t understand how we have a deficit in the capital project and when I look at the numbers as far as increases, basically what we’re trying to do is eliminate, almost totally eliminate the transfer between water and electric, right? So basically the numbers that I ran, that 47 cent tax increase would still require $2 million a year from water, sewer and electric going into the operating funds. It does not. If we wanted to fully eliminate them, it would be even more but that is $2 million a year still being utilized right now This year, we’re projected to use, if we’re going to cover everything, it would end up being almost $5.5 million from water, sewer and electric funding operational expenses. It started out as 16 cents, the 25 cents and then we stayed at 25 cents demonstrated 25 and you know you and I talked today now we have the 47 cents and 49 cents. Now we’re going to come back to our 49 cents. Now you know, so I fully understand, I appreciate that you know everything here but I’m just, these are just my thoughts and I mean I understand that. I feel that it’s necessary for people to truly understand what the gap is, and you know no matter how we shake it we have a big number that we need to overcome. OK, now you said if we’ve taken $0.25, that’s been like $2 million. Will you normally transfer $6 million out of electric, back to the general fund? It’s gotten really bad over the past few years. So, then this year in the current budget including if we do the water and sewer increase would we be transferring approximately $5.4 million into the water and sewer or into the general fund from water and sewer? But the other issue too is right now, we’re three months into the year, so I don’t see the need to transfer all that. I don’t think you need to do all that. Also looking at the numbers are all based on January 1 right? So that is not based on April 1. I’m just saying, well, obviously now we’re three months into it already but it also means that our revenue would be decreased by those three months for the water and sewer because we don’t have the increased rates in place January 1st and Discount for any of the increases that we do with the impact fees and all that stuff. So, one of the problems that we’ve had and I sort of tried to call that out on the other side on these sort of root causes piece is that we have taken pretty much every penny of like what we would call one time funds. So, all the impact fees, all of our transfer taxes, right, our budget for this year includes utilizing the funds for that piece of property that we pursued selling. All of those onetime funds are not in the operating budget right now, we need Capital funds mixed into our operating budget. We have the debt our capital debt service and things like that, that are mixed into our operating budget. There are true water, sewer and electric costs in capital costs that are in our operating budget that have not been separated out. I did make the effort to try and separate those out and picture what it would look like if we were to extract all of those operating, or all of those capital costs from our operating budget including the debt which is the majority of it, what we’re paying there is debt service at this point in time. That’s something like, right now, our operating budget includes roughly $1.6 million in principle debt associated with water, sewer and electric costs as well as my best estimate close to a quarter million dollars of equipment costs that are in our operating budget that are capital expenses. So, if we’re trying to fully extract operating from capital into separate buckets, our operating budget would actually go down. If we fully extracted all those things, our operating budget would drop to about $4 million for the year. But if we extract the revenue associated with those things as well as operating revenue drops to $3.4 million, it’s shifting from one place the other doesn’t make the numbers any better. And looking at the financial statements, there was another factor that affected moving over today and that was appreciations that wasn’t like 23 years ago and depreciation of all our assets would run that, comes to over $1,000,000 every year. So, by that, budgeting that we really understanding our projection part of income. $1,000,000 almost every year and I know I’m going back 10 years. That has significant effects on where we all, I mean, it’s certainly a compounding effect if you were to look at this budget gap and how this happens, right? It’s not one big expense or something like that, that doesn’t just meditation or it’s an accumulation of a lot of things. So, to get some spending for many, many years. Councilman Brown said I have a question. All right, I don’t want to ever talk for anyone, but I understand it’s all the questions that I’ve gotten though I guess it’s easier for me just to tell you what I need so that I can support what we have to do. OK, so Robert sort of nailed it earlier when we said we sorted out at 16 cents, we went to 25 cents. What is the increase? How can we justify the increase to $0.49 within two weeks? That number has come about and really that justification is what I’m looking for. I blew up Torrie’s email earlier. If we are to do that, we really need to make sure that we are doing our due diligence as a Council, know what our obligation is to the community. We just can’t do it and say, we did it and we fixed it. I’d like confirmation of a commitment that we’re going to have what we need in the future to ensure we never end up here again. Councilman Rasmussen said what I can put together is the best that I can do. I cannot say that these are absolutely the most perfect numbers because I’m building off of the information that I have. I’m taking what we have and what we’ve seen for the last couple of years and working. I’m going to be the one advocating for doing this. People are going to be upset if we did $0.16, people are going to be upset if we did $0.25 or $0.36 and we need to go back and do it again next year. Absolutely. Councilwoman Gott said what is the difference in 0.25 and the 0.49 though? Because that’s a significant difference within a matter of a week. So that is fully extracting the capital funds. So, one of the biggest issues that we came up on in working in the capital side of this is that we have not been putting any money into capital planning for a very long time and we’ve ended up having to borrow lots of money every year. We have a sewer collapse. We have to borrow money. We have a project; we have to borrow money when we look at the years. So not just, you know, 2024, we’re looking at a gap of, you know, $1.6 million for the projects that the town would like to take on, that grows to many, many millions in the next 2, 3, or 4 years and our ability to address those things though is very, very difficult unless we put money into capital, right? Some of these are big projects, you’re talking about an electric substation, $15 million, a pump station, a new well house and pump station that’s $5.2 million. Potential cost for some of the utility extensions to the north side of town. You know, anything that we would want to put into our parks to sort of begin to build out based on the parks master plan, there are many, many millions of dollars’ worth of capital expenses that we have coming towards us that we are not prepared for and the reason why we’re not prepared is that we have taken all of that money that should have been going towards capital expenses and we’ve been paying operating expenses with it,right? Until we can stop doing that or get it down to a very manageable level, I picked $2 million out of a hat right. I can’t tell you that’s the right number or not, but it seems like a close number to where we would be that begins to allow us to put real money. You know you’re looking at 3 ½ ish million dollars a year that could be dedicated towards these capital projects. When we start to think about it, there are people going to trust us with their money, right? When if you’re going out for a bond, you’re asking people to trust you, you’re going out of federal earmark, we’re asking people to trust us but we’ve got no skin in the game and our track record is we haven’t put any skin in the game in a long time so that $0.47 is sort of that down payment on here is we start to be able to walk around and put our hands out and ask for money with our heads held high we just covered our gap this year. Councilwoman Gott said down the road does this give our staff the ability to do what they need to do and does it give us the flexibility to have stuff. Hire to fill the positions that we need, feel comfortable doing the jobs that need to be done, to serve the public? I couldn’t answer that question effectively. Councilman Rasmussen said it prelims what we have in our budget or what our current staffing things are. I think we instinctively know our staff has grown or not grown as our town has grown, we know we have staffing issues, this doesn’t include new staff positions. It includes unfreezing the positions that we froze as part of this budget this year, but it doesn’t include effectively looking at it and saying hey we actually need three more people in this area or two more people in this area. It doesn’t solve all of our budget problems forever right. It solves the major things that we have, and it puts us on a very different footing than we’re on right now. But two years from now, right, salary costs for our union contracts keep going up for the next couple of years and then they’re going to be renegotiated and they’re going to keep going up. Those are the reality of staffing costs isn’t going to change. It doesn’t mean that we can do this and then don’t have to do anything for 10 years. Councilwoman Gott said that was my next question. Does this change that dynamic of that three-year strategy that we had talked about? Councilman Rasmussen said, 3 year strategy is if we wanted to get there, you do 25, you know, 0.15, 0.10 or something like that, right? Basically, getting up towards that $0.50 then. The problem is that you were delaying, pushing those things further out. Somewhere you got to get a starting point. Councilman Brown said I have a question for Mike now. If we could raise this 0.47, are we still going into the rainy-day fund for money? Councilman Rasmussen said no. Councilman Brown said so that’s a concern right because again we talked about annexing in the Wawa, all these different things that’s not being funded. Somewhere, right, you know I’m saying, so again we can’t continue kicking a can down the road. Councilman Rasmussen said if we don’t want to touch that, this is built off of the idea this is what we would need to do to not use those funds. And naturally, we all need to know. To be clear it would also be the thing that we have not done, that extracting this, and this is specific to the one-time funds right? When we get real estate transfer taxes, in which one year can be really good and then next year, we’re really bad. We’re relying on those funds right now and we’re vulnerable to those market fluctuations. Mayor Johnson said what I would propose that we do is we move those funds into a strategic by separate account and that they are then for the kinds of things when there’s an investment that’s necessary that’s a onetime investment a piece of property comes on the market and we want to do that, there’s an economic development opportunity that takes resources, there’s an investment that we can make. Jeremy Rothwell said right now we have no ability to go after those sort of things because we have no strategic funds in order to do it. The example would be if you look at Middletown, right, they invested a lot of money doing transportation infrastructure. Districts cost a lot of money, took a lot of time but they don’t lose a project like the FedEx because DelDot pulls the strings out the last second because they invested in those things up front. We don’t have the money to do that. If we do this, we got it. Mayor Johnson said adopt some kind of savings plan as well whether you know if we take 2% of our budget or 3%, 5% of the budget, you put that into the budget reserve. We need to change how the budget reserve is written and do that. Basically, what we would have to do is create it. Wouldn’t call like another reserve fund on the books and you call like a budget statement or something like that. That's something, as a state, you create a separate fund, put it into what we call the special General Fund. The safe fund on the books below the line. That’s where that would have picked up But we will have to employ sometimes saving project saving as well you know this can’t be spending for you and our budget would have to be tight extremely tight and trim all the fat and everything that has fat in it and that’s when we would have to adopt that in order for me to even compose improvement of some type of savings. Councilman Pressley said we have to hold our employees to stay under budget and that’s it. Don’t spend no more on this, you spend any more on this you might not have a job because we as a council say that we’re going to do this, and we still let our staff run wild while we’re in trouble. Make sure we’re reviewing those reports and that our Finance Committee does not get the reports before we get the reports. We need to be ahead of what’s happening with being put out there to the public, as well. I would like to say one of the things that I shared with Torrie was you know we know that we have money that we have not collected, we have back taxes, we have utilities. I know that we’re in the process of making all that happen and we are moving forward. I’d like to see a report on that on a monthly basis of what is out there to be collected and what we’ve actually collected and what is actually going to munition sales because we aren’t able to collect it other than estates which are really tricky on collecting because there’s so many people sometimes. I mean the Butcher property you know. Enough said, right? Councilwoman Gott said we had a lot of people that were involved in that but when we have millions of dollars that we aren’t collecting, I think a good faith effort is to collect or have a plan moving forward to collect those monies and Torrie, I’m not and I don’t want to throw you under the bus because I can’t see you but I mean So now all you want to do is get the cash in to take care of our bank account. All right. But don’t we have an option to collect what is outstanding before we ask other people to pay more bills and it’s not to be difficult but as a resident my question is I know that we have $1,000,000 outstanding in monies that we could be collecting yet we’re increasing taxes and I have I understand I’m all about doing what we need to do because it’s the right thing because our staff shouldn’t have to struggle to do their jobs. Our town shouldn’t have to struggle to survive. I’m all about that. But at the same time, I can sit and listen to a finance meeting just like this meeting and hear all the money that we haven’t collected and know that if we had collected that it’s not going to save us, but it’s going to help us is my belief. Councilman Brown said my question also is that, again, the school, we know that the last council meeting we talked about deficit as far as the monies that we allotted for the school are we increasing the dollar amount that we supply the school board. But I’m just saying because again we all know I’m quite sure everybody received that notification that it’s going to be voted on again in June because people have a misconception that our utilities cause all these things that we’re talking about even if we agree or disagree with the 47%, we need to justify and understand and let people know what are we doing to fix the hole and what are we doing to let them know we’re not heading for another because, again, the things I look at the instructions everybody on council know that’s my forte with this because we still got an issue with Locust Street that’s going to hit us all right. It’s going to hit us all right? Let’s be realistic, North Main Street is okay, all these things we have to be we have to understand if we’re increasing it, what is our justification, where this money is going and as Bill just alluded to and value that who’s going to be accountable. Because that’s where it’s got to stop at. I mean I think part of this story is one. The impact fees, right, we may calculate we’ve made choices already we’ve changed how we’re going to have, how we’re calculating our permit fees in order to make sure that we’re capturing more adequate revenue from things like that. The pass through fees that we have, the impact fees that are passed through for the school district and the fire and ambulance right now and Kent County. So, we have passed through impact fees. We don’t have anything to Kent County sets their own right but we ultimately have to approve the increase pass through rates for school district and for water and sewer, those are things that help our community they don’t do anything for our budget but they’re not they’re, not pluses or minuses, they’re pass through but they make a difference when you put it out to people and want to talk about other people are also paying their fair share and that’s what we need to make sure that kind of notification is out to people because they saw us talk about how deep of a whole we went in, all right, and again so not everybody’s accounting with but when it comes down to dollars and cents, I’m a resident just like anyone else alright, and when we talk about increasing something, what am I getting, what bang am I getting? Well, I’m thinking more on the side I mean like if we’re not putting money real money into our water and sewer and electrical infrastructure the things that start happening is that we have failures that we can’t afford to fix and that’s my concern. We find ourselves in a position where we can’t afford to maintain the infrastructure for our utilities and then we have to sell it to somebody else who can afford to maintain it. We have to improve the customer service, we have our improvement operations of communications recovery. Councilman Pressley said if you have to do what we do in steps, to what we do in Police Department, that’s true for all our operations as part of it letting the public know voters in public really knows most of them don’t want to know it’s just like the ambulance, me being a board member, there as much as our departments go to the public and say this is not paid by your taxes. Think that their taxes from the county and the town pays for that damage right that you get and out of how much we go out here and help people. Most people know that their taxes don’t pay for it. It’s that they don’t want to know about it. Councilman Brown said I get that Bill. And again, it’s like a fine line. We have to understand that misinformation that goes out, all right, and what people think about this town, we already knew. And I’m going to put it out there. We knew that water and sewer was going up. We did not inform people in a timely manner. So now we’re getting blamed for everything and if that referendum isn’t passed again. All right, we’re going to take the hit for it unless we let people know. Councilman Brown said “That’s why I said we need to understand if we’re going to, as a council, agree to an increase. Okay, this is your increase. This has nothing to do with the school. That’s the message we have to get out there. It was going to go up regardless without the school board referendum. You know what I’m saying? Because we have to balance this. I mean, it’s complicated. And I’m, I mean, that’s really come to me as they build a tool. We had nothing to do with a lifetime steps that are, that’s the people that have moved here, because everywhere else they go online. So they just assume we do. Councilwoman Gott said Can we do two town halls afterwards? I’m sorry. At the same time, we have people that are moving from everywhere else. Everything being one thing, one bill taxes and Jersey were so high, because all that was included exactly. And it’s like, OK, where’s the taxes are low. But at the same time, people aren’t reading their bills. People aren’t reading the fine lines. If they don’t know that it’s a $500 assessment fee to be at an ambulance, I know I see the bill. I got it, you know. So this is not covered by insurance. So we need to be able to put that information out, like how we’re talking about it here. We need to make sure it’s in black and white, not only on our website, not on the bottom of the utility bill exactly. Looking at the number after this, can we do after everything is adopted? Councilwoman Gott said can we schedule two town halls where we share with the community what we’ve done? That way we’ve opened the door. We’ve allowed them to come visit and learn if they choose to. And if they don’t choose to, then you know what they keep their heads in the sand and they don’t know what just happens. That being number one and number two being, Jeremy Doug, Jason. Tory. You know, through this whole process, we have turned to you, and we’ve said, do you agree with this? I want to know now, what are your thoughts on this and how is it going to affect your department? Well, they may not deserve the ones that have to run the town because we could be out of office in a year. So, I need to know. We need to understand. We have to have a strategic plan. I want to know what they said. Let me finish, for us to present to the public in a regular council meeting. I guess this plan should not be done overnight. But we have to show progress in what has to be done because I went to impacts of obviously individuals that oldest town where we were voted in to do a job and again, we could always go back and say this wasn’t done that was we know all that what are we doing to fix it right that’s my point. What are we doing to fix it I mean the things that people see on a day-to-day basis right, when there’s construction going on right, even though they you know called our water tower an alien or martini glass or everything right. People see it when we’re replacing infrastructure and we’re doing projects like that. People see it right there’s a reason why they throw up those signs your tax dollars at work right on the side of the highway and things like that because ultimately that’s probably one of the most visible actually message the 2 most visual things there’s when we’re doing those capital projects and there’s when the police are driving around town right because I mean really, our the majority of the budget we’re talking about our public services and public works you know a lot of people will never walk through the door of town hall, they’ll never walk through Jeremy’s door into planning and inspections. Well, they hope they never see inspections but be like the things that are out there in the public are the things that people see all the time. There’s that Police car on the street, there are public works guys out there doing good stuff. If we don’t have a capital budget that can support that, people don’t see work happening. Like if we don’t invest in our parks, people don’t see the parks as a place that that something that they can be proud of like you want people to be proud of their community but it’s tough when they think about the community and they think about a failing sewer line or they think about, you know, a park that’s bathroom was trashed for a long time. Like we had to give people something to be proud of and some people will find that. In community history, a lot of people are going to see it in the physical things that they see around them and also like no because we have to look at not only the messaging that we supply but look at what’s going on. I’m quite sure a lot of individuals called Dover, Wilmington, the prime rate so again a lot of these things we’re talking about in this budget and as you said we may get to a point we have to farm out, I’m just using you as an example Torrie but the Police Department out we have to ask strategic plans to understand what we’re doing when we want to annex in. I understand about annexing but at the same time are we getting bonds to supplement some of these annexing ideas that we want to do because again it impacts our budget because of the system fails. That’s why you told me against going into rainy day fund because we have too many things to loose hanging out there and those people on Locust Street feel that they’re forgotten and, to be clear, we don’t have a rainy day fund for water, sewer and electric. Thank you. Yeah, we don’t have a dedicated capital budget associated with water, sewer and electric, which we should have. But again, we can’t go back to what we didn’t do. What are we doing going forward to try to fix the problem? And that’s what people want to hear. We just got to figure out a safe way to go to tell them. But I mean, we have got to have something to tell the citizens that this is what we’re doing. And we got to do something that they feel good, but that we aren’t coming back to this next year. We can’t make that promise. We can clean the places like E St without the drug addicts underground. They can tramp it out of the housing. Councilwoman Upshur said, people don’t know Kensington, but it’s like zombie land. Absolutely. So, it would be a snowball affected in other areas that we have that we can do. So, I mean I understand it. We’re fine and until we’ve made some dramatic changes, we will always be chasing. I mean I understand that there’s no way for a town to be perfect. Someone’s going to complain. There’s always additional resources that you should be putting to bear but we’re so far back right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s we’re in a spot where the reality of some of these projects and the things that we have going on, we have a big sewer failure or water failure like someplace like, yeah, the game changes again and we know we have infrastructure that we need to be thinking about for the future, not just the things that we need to do, the electric substation and those the those pieces but a lot of pipes underground here that aren't meant to be underground for as long as they have been. Councilman Pressley said it’s just like her shadows they need to be done maybe. And that money needs to go because this doesn’t. It goes back, it’s just made you know what we said with our taxes every 2 years you aren’t paid your taxes, we’re sending it to Barrett to go get it. We need to go get it even though it’s over. We’ve already counted for it. We still need to go get it and I understand that currently because of staffing based. We’re basically asking you more from everybody that includes us also. Alright we’re not doing the physical end of it but we’re responsible for setting up the game plan to get it done in 2025. So where are we moving? So is the recommendation to increase the property taxes to $0.94. I mean that’s if we want to, if we want to do this that’s what it looks like. It’s essentially, it’s a 100 percent increase from where we’re at right now or we will be in the top four highest municipalities in the state. So, to be clear, I’ve looked at all of those numbers, that comparison is not realistic because our rate is based on our assessment and everyone else's rates are based on their assessments. I’ve tried to run that comparison and it doesn’t exist a comparison for anything. People say let’s compare Smyrna to Milford and I say you can’t compare Smyrna Milford and they say well, what else we’re going to hear. I don’t care which is compared to, but you can’t compare Smyrna to Milford. So, in reality, it’s the same type of comparison you know same things there for assessment that’s not correct. So, for assessments we use a 2006 assessment whereas Milford is using in 1987 assessment which is a very, very different one. Right? So, if they’re using the county assessments, their number is going to be artificially low OK. What does the the median tax look like, right, we don’t have that number. I can’t pull that easily but the true impact is like what is the cost to live in Smyrna versus the cost to live in Middletown versus Dover, versus Milford, versus Georgetown, and all those other places and it’s a very hard comparison because none of them are 1 to 1 sort of things you know. I wish that there was a good way to easily pull that, you know, the median impact of property taxes on people in every municipality. Councilman Brown said alright because again those towns that you just mentioned, the crime rate is through the roof. I understand all right and we need, to amplify our positives. Tell our stories and that’s what I’m saying. What is our messaging? What are we telling people? Yes, we’re talking about the water tower, which we finally finished, after 14 years we finally got this water tower, alright, we’re projecting about even though it’s seven years down the road alright we’re talking about a substation but what did we do? We just did a circuit upgrade so when you turn your light switch your lights come on, alright, yes, the sewer is going up and I’m adamant about this because we need to, our messaging has been off. We’re not letting people know that it’s not us. It’s the water and sewer. We throw ourselves short on impact fees because we projected something that we didn’t act you know there’s a lot of things that we as a council because, I can’t speak for staff and that’s it. We as a council have to get them direction but then, as Billy you mentioned, they have to follow the direction and if they don’t follow it they be held accountable for it. Bottom line, it’s not personal, it’s business. We need to amplify as a unified voice as a council to let people know. Hey this is what we’re doing in the next three months, this is what we’re doing in 6 months. We’ll see comments online and we can stop in the street about different things and I kind of come down and that’s what I said, and you got three heated citizens like this that will have their whole community come out. We’ll have Hickory Hollow all like ones that we know that are sharing the word with the community and then we have others that will bash us online and first thing I say is hey this is the day, the time, we have a zoom link, here you go. I hate people. We talk about those things but there’s communicating. It’s a job, it’s an investment to tell that story. Some of those don’t want to listen yeah, I mean it’s true right you’re never going to get everybody happy but if no one is telling the good story. The only story that you hear is the bad one right because the people telling your story for you own your story. You tell your story, and you don't let somebody else do it for you unless they’re telling us but again, I’m thinking so. I’ve said before that if we do something, we need to send out a notice separately. It can’t be on the electric bill. It has to be a separate envelope that looks really important that says we’ll come in and take your house or something. The only way anybody’s going to pay attention to it is that, we’re right, you know if we can’t pay our police department we will contract out with Delaware State police and I won’t be able to leave my doors unlocked anymore. OK if we can’t pay our water plant operators or our electric company, then we’re going to contract that out to Artesian or Tidewater can set the rates. We won’t have any control over it. So as much as I’m opposed very much so to affording 7% increase that is the logic that goes with it and people have to understand that. If they don’t know everything that we do that is so dramatic, people have to know because one of the things that I believe it still says in our comprehensive plan that is absolutely wrong is that we’re going to give affordability. Councilwoman Forbes said I’ve said it’s for 16 years. There’s nothing affordable living in Smyrna, so we don’t provide affordable living so those people out there who, a long time ago, are raising their children alone like I did. This is going to kill them. This is going to be so dramatic because they’re already paying so much in rent where they are or even a mortgage you know that it’s going to be a big deal. Those people that are retired that don’t own a mortgage that pay their taxes annually they’re gonna blow a gasket, you know because I see it a little increase in my mortgage. My mortgage company says we need $50 more Valerie or we’re just going to come take your house so. Those that are retired and don’t have a mortgage see if there’s a bigger one lump sum and in that year and it’s devastating. so I don’t know how it’s gonna go but people have to be told some other way besides on the bottom of an electric bill. No. So you just see whatever it was last year. We’re going to have to put examples. If your house is this, then if you’re taxed to this and your house is this, now it's going to be this. I mean, some people don’t even know what they’re paying in taxes because they don’t see it. But a good thing, you know, good thing you can write it on. It is true. It is true. You do get to write versus. If we’ve been, we’ve been increasing our water, sewer, and electric rates for a long time to get away from having to increase our property taxes, right? And then we stopped paying some of our bills, like our legacy pension systems, so that we didn’t have to raise taxes and that we’ve been, you know, deferred, and borrowed money for tax projects so that we didn’t have to raise our taxes. I mean, unfortunately, people in this community have, they’ve lived for a very long time with really. Really low tax rates because we’ve hidden the costs in other places. We can’t hide them anymore, right? If we don’t fund our legacy pension system, it’s going to cost us even more money, right? Which already cost us, and it’s already going to cost us $5 billion more than it would have if we would have enhanced their whole time. That only gets worse in more election. So, the proposal that we looked at when we sat down with Chris and we looked at the numbers, we. Can do the rate increase of 20%. It raises the average person that would see about a $5 water and a $5 sewer increase because of that general. That generates one point or $8 million a year. So, these numbers include the idea that we’re going to do that. It doesn’t change our ranking because the people who are above us are actually pretty substantially above us in their rates above us. We’re kind of much account that we’re seeing the other like when you look at the rate comparisons between the other communities. So that’s why you mentioned Middletown in that at all as far as comparison Middletown is more expensive. Yeah. And there’s a reason for that. They don’t, they’re not in a budget deficit either. They have a very large scale public service. They have a lot of commercials and people are moving from Middletown too because it’s getting so crowded. The idea on this is much as it is a lot to swallow. Is it? It takes a lot of political will to do our taxes. It takes even more political will to do it two years in a row, right? Hold of tearing through with what we need, decreases every single year, right? They’ll be there could be different people sitting around this table next year, right? And that doesn’t mean that there would be the political will. So, the risk of not doing the hard thing right now is that you get halfway there, and the other half doesn’t have. And we don’t end up in a position where we can go out for the things that we need to go after to go after federal funding and state bond funding. Right. We don’t want to be the people that everyone looks at and thinks on Smyrna, you know, like it just won’t step up and fix their own problems. So why should we help them? But again, when we’re going forward, we need to look at it and say, hey, next year we might raise it up $0.02 but do something that that people can adjust to that. What we should have been doing 15 years ago, sure. And we wouldn’t be in this position yet. Gavin had we because the Council at that time, I don’t want to raise taxes well taxes. At the end of the day, it’s going to happen. I mean, the budget that we’re talking about 3 ½ million dollars Yeah, roughly three and a half million dollars is stuff that we wouldn’t have to be paying if we had been increasing taxes along the whole way right we wouldn’t have to be paying another million dollars in our legacy pension system had we continued to fund it when it was a much lower number we had the money that we didn’t have to take on all of this debt. Now our debt service payments to the capital project it’s a lot of money so but it’s really but that’s making the small smart decision all along the way like you’re talking about the unfortunate thing is that if you don’t do that eventually you have to make the big really hard right now and that’s where we’re at and we have to understand that we’re not the only ones that are impacted this way. Let’s be realistic all right this is across the nation alright everybody’s feeling the punch right now and over in Kent County are both freaking out around their budgets right now. OK so you know again it’s August all right you know. We have to be diligent but we have to follow it that’s something that we didn’t do and I’m not playing prior councils because again every decision that they made based on the information they’re getting we have all this information now what we going to do I don’t question about this for him. OK the capital budget right is that what you just held up I can’t get it. 3rd line from the very bottom. Master Park’s plan implementation$17 million 17 that is the estimate that the master parks plan is came up with and what it would cost to implement the master parks plan that we finished up last year is that included in this budget that you’re talking about no not a penny of this done because there’s no funding for and in 2024 that that line is blank but it is no money going into Hitler capital unfortunate we I did project I I’ve done the projections in terms of that build out what are you going to collect based on today’s dollars we’re going to collect a little over $11 million estimated in parks and rec impact fees so you know as long as you can extract your impact beef out of it but we got to make sure we were that money in that account. That’s just for that it’s not being used to balance your budget right so I mean. Because they don’t leave by federal there is some federal rates on that right as far as accounts for the impact keys to it’s very easy to just create 74 you have one I mean so that’s easy to keep track of that and Councilman reports I’m like there are some things in here like the residential pad mount Transformers right that’s something we have to do every couple of years we order a whole bunch of these and we bring them in. Yeah. So I mean just because they’re sick but when we get you know and to be frank with Josh and I were talking about this this this morning we’re likely going to have to buy like 600,000 next year you know working these path out Transformers But I mean this is what you had your capital reserve for your electric fund you wouldn’t have to worry about it but this is this is something that when we have a new development that’s coming in we have to be able to provide electric transformers if you want to collect that electric bill so and the lead time is over a year and Josh can talk about and unfortunately what’s the increase in cost for those vegetables. Hey guys I can’t hear with all the siblings. You shouldn’t be sitting in your sunroom enjoying it. Enjoying it. Sorry. I just want to know what’s going on and I can’t hear. I still haven’t heard what the staff has to say. So, until we hear that I’m a no just for the record. I want to know what the staff thinks. We’re going to hear from the staff. They’re here. They’re going to say get on with it. Well, that’s OK. But on record, we’ve had no up to this point. I want to hear yes at this point. I mean, I’m going through with Mike. You know, when I’m going through the Jason, through Josh, the capital especially you need everything in here. OK, this is really the park stuff you can defer in terms of when you want to do that. That’s like a nice optional thing. You know, the bonus for the community. You really don’t have an option when it comes to redoing the utilities towards me at that point. You’re your risky and catastrophic failure on your risky public health you need to be. You need to have a plan to do some of these things and many you just don’t have an option. So absolutely all these things rent cost bars or capital. Next year they will be in work. This will look a lot different next year. It will be in a workbook. Maybe a lot easier to sort of see if this is this is a summary of That is the operating budget, I believe I’m asking. OK, no, just as budget summary. But when I look at expense, it has town council and OK, that’s the summary of operating budget. Yeah. So, while the town council, we don’t have anything that’s in deficit here. So, the town council, portion of the operating bill is a catalog for a lot of different special things, like, you know, sperm at night comes out of operating the whole, there’s a whole series of things that’s. where? Well, it is. It’s detailed out in the rest of the document. Yeah. OK, right. It’s in this. Put it over here. Like the contributions to the police or to the fire company and to the ambulance company and to the community organizations. That’s what’s in the capital budget. But it’s in the full like O. K. Yeah. Thank you. So, the managers are here, and we would like to hear what them say about the budget. Tabi, can you hear what Valerie just said? Hello, hello. Can you hear me? This is Jason. I fully support this tax increase. It’s very important to our operations to keep up with the integrity of our utilities and services to provide the community. I fully recommend and support this. Thank you. Travis and Doug, I’d like to hear from you as well. And Torrie. My department doesn’t require much, so I support it. You know, for me on the police side of things, obviously I support it on the town side of things. I’m just kind of coming into this in the last couple of days and being involved. I definitely support that on the operating side. I think we’ve all met several, several times and have our budget down to compare bones. So, you really can’t support any other changes in the operation. Thank you And I mean, Gerald, to your point, you know earlier point, you know, one of the things that’s in our capital budget that should not done, but that actually you’re your solicitor actually wrote for the town of Middletown back in 200, 2006 and 2007. But the when he was in grad school we needed to pay a consultant to help us with a strategic plan for facilities for employees staffing and all of these things so that or you know just what you’re ready day function be and when your capital reserve function be so and it’s very important for you to be able to do that that way Jason or Josh or Toria aren’t coming with you in your swiveling whether or not they should be allowed first to another vehicle or you want to build a new building or something like that absolutely yes Josh. I agree with everything. I mean, we’re going to need that substation. We’re approaching the capacity at our industry substation. Do you. Industrial customer or all the development we’re going to need that online. And Barrett, how will this affect the charter debt limits? How will this impact that? Will 4947 and cents put us in a spot where we’re not in compliance? Or do we have to do something special for that? So this doesn’t impact the debt limits at all, because this is revenue generating. There’s no incurring debt. I mean, we recently looked at the debt limits with this recent bond that we did and we’re still well below. Let me look at it. If we’re going to do this, we are staffing. We’ve got to be held in county. And we do too. We need to know that meetings are going to communicate. You let me finish and that’s it. We just need to do what we said we were going to do, and everybody needs to do and everybody’s going to be a teamer. We’re in trouble again. Thank you. Again. It’s a hard decision and I understand your point. But it’s a hard decision. But we have to put on an excuse my analogy, but we have to put on our big boy pants, and we need to make sure we have to correct messaging so people know where their money is going. Because we didn’t do that. We’ve just been telling people we're raising. We're shortfall. We need to make sure they understand why this is happening. We can’t proclaim on any other council. That’s how that’s off the table That’s right. We have to deal with the facts and the bottom line. Am I warming fuzzy with all some of these things? No. Because again I look to the future. Are we going to need another bucket truck bet your life Am I right, Josh? Are we going to need another trash truck to our future plans bet your life. So, a lot of different things are coming up. So, we have to look to the future and we have to do something. I mean I’m a resident just like you all you know II hate to see it y’all Valerie’s point you know we’re going to be hurting people but guess what? You need to hurt them now; you’re going to hurt them later but you’re going to hurt them, and I think that there’s other things. So this came up a little bit in the last council meeting but there’s other conversations we need to have which is they aren’t obviously we have some folks who are on fixed incomes right? We do forgiveness, we wave up to a certain amount based on incoming, we probably need to look at those things you know really seriously against it in light of new stuff, like we know that those are pieces that we’re going to have to look at because there there’s a lot of people in this community that aren’t going to be adversely impacted by this and there are some people in the community that will be a person with that we have to think about what we can do in those situations I. don’t know I don’t have good answers for it but that’s the really hard part of this but again attack exemption I mean that would get to seniors track and say you got to look at that we have to look at every aspect on that information to run as well. But we have to have a strategic plan and work it out and follow through because again we cannot allow a resident or a commercial customer that has such a high bill that’s. debt into town because we didn’t hold anything in the into a line because they’re again II have to emphasize over a year ago we talked about certain thresholds we didn’t follow through all right and as accounts I hold its own council myself included response was because we didn’t hold people accountable for and if we’re going to pass a budget that’s going to impact people in the way where it impacted we’re going to hold everybody accountable. All of us and all of the staff and that’s the only way I will agree to anything that we’re planning on doing because again, if nobody sells accountable, you’re going to be back in this spot again. I mean I’ll be on council but I’m still a resident. Councilwoman Upshur said Question, I’m looking at this capital this sheet here from this week and once last week and it actually went up $10 million. Yeah. So, there was some numbers on here that we didn’t have. So, what’s new is the well house number for our treatment plant. Yeah, because I think we’re only holding $50,000 for soil testing. And we got the final numbers which was another final estimate or final estimate which was another $5.5 million or but some and then in the email that you sent in the summary. That shows parks and recreation with a 10,000% 105,000% increase 7 what is that Increase. That it’s $525,000 so what you’re looking at you’re having the revenue side so that is the potential sale of the property that is attached to but that backside of George Wright Park, that’s that money you all voted to that he would go towards. I just didn’t know what it was. Yeah. So it’s a huge increase in revenue from there but you know like that’s so it shows up as a massive outlier of that number because we don’t normally have parts revenue or very little parts revenue and in the expenses. On that same summary HR went up 145%. Just says summary yeah not great yeah it’s the operating budgets on it. Link was 54% increase to make sure I was 145% increase. We put basically that major payment we need to make for the legacy pension plan there is a split up between police and Town so there’s a $346,000 that are going in that went into HR to pay that legacy pension contribution for all. That is just the employees that are still on our legacy pension fund. You mean do we still have allocated throughout? We this is allocated in one spot for this because we have pension allocations in the other areas for the existing or ongoing if I don’t know from the accounting site how it should be broken up, but we wanted to make sure that number wasn’t lost and that we could call it out pretty easily. So, folks could look at it and say this is what we have to start contributing to this legacy pension system and you had the two numbers up in this $5 million to be allocated by employees where they are. He’s just some of the needs too. So from that 145% I need to move some of it needs to move down. Yeah. In the end it would be dispersed amongst other of whichever departments they happened on that it’s attached to the individual but from the perspective of trying to put it in the budget in someplace that clearly delineated it, we broke it out all of the town staff that went into one in the police staff is what I was. So again with this budget and Jeremy just mentioned if we where we get the funding to have an outside consultant arise us around how to restructure what we’re doing that’s where strategic funds come in that and that’s why I wanted because again you’re here I want people to understand everybody’s not going to understand what we’re doing but we have to have a plane you know I’m saying and what we’re going to follow with them right I mean if you wanted to dedicate a of $50,000 to facilities planning and 50,000 sheets by whatever the number ends of E right we have to have a pot of money that is it’s a onetime cost right it’s not ongoing operating cost it’s not a capital cost but so we need to have resources that we can target for those strategic things that are necessary for the planning and the health of the town and we that’s why we collect now a municipal facilities impact fee so that we need to increase you know we need to do things. Or do anything ready to sample we should in theory have a reserve and we can pull from if we need to do something like that so. How much is the tax rate going to generate the new tax rate. Recently $5 million last. Year last year at 47th century increases at 500 total over five increase. So, what will be the total about 10 for property tax on 11 for property taxes right here does say additional $5 million in check text revenue per year so I was. Working close to our limit on what we can generate I don’t know what is our so I was just looking this up so we have 1% of the total assessed property and so because we just recently went through this I have the number. So as of 2023 the total assessed value was basically $1 billion right and so 1% of one billion is 10 million. So, we’re getting maximum close and really, really clogging. So, it’s also that is a 20 year old assessed value that we need to look into updating well yeah well when you need more. But until we change it, but I’m set on the drop because our assessment would go up substantially look at the actual language on this so right. 1% of the total assessed valuation of all tax formal real estate so much essentially is $1 per 100 you know you know that’s essentially what that means yeah I mean and that’s what we’re we’d be coming up the opponent like anything about $1 per 100 is Mike is proposing 94 cents basically I’m not sure it’s unwise you know I’m just going to get closer to the next right so what it’s not the right to go right up to that but $0.05 instead of 47 we are at this point. I mean so. Basically this is going to get resolved one or two ways the tax issued tax limit issue right you know as soon as the if we have new assistance that come out and show a higher assessed values across the board which will happen I mean that’s one billion can easily go to like 1.4 or something like that and then close to 3 perhaps you know but then our tax limit how much we can collect goes from 10 million to 14 million or whatever it’s going to be right alternative we can always go to the General Assembly and have this increase from 1% to 2% of something like that That is not the end of the world and that’s and that’s part of the strategic plan on what we need to do going forth. So, we have to understand we have to understand these things because again I can’t emphasize enough decisions that were made prior that were made based on information you received and the information that we receiving here tonight clarifies for me a little bit more of what we need to do what we. Want to do what we need to do realistic you know and it’s disappearing it’s not fair. I know people are going to be hurt by it, but we’ve gotten to that point like and you know. I don’t know. You have any other questions because you know we don’t want to leave you in the dark back here no I think everything was and the reality for me is if we need to do this, we need to do this enough research has been done that we know what the answer is we can’t fix what’s been done in the past. We need to move forward, unfortunately moving forward comes with a cost and I have to believe that if we had increased taxes along the way we’d already be here or exceed this number so. We’re sort of talking in circles about what we think and what we feel, but when we look at what really needs to be done, we need to come to a conclusion as to whether we’re going to approve what’s been proposed or we’re going to mitigate that number. And I really think we’ve all made up our decision before we walked into the room. Councilwoman Forbes said I didn’t. What is the active surplus in the electric fund? What is the actual deficit? Prior transfers right now, water is generating about what water is projected to generate. So, this is the 2024 progressions about 1.45 million in additional revenue and electric is expected to generate about 2.933 for a total of about 4.388 that would be the budgeted surplus. So that is that is the budgeted surplus that is in water sewer electric and at the moment, the proposed budget moves every penny of that into operation. That is that’s the situation we’ve been in for a very long time. We have taken every penny generated from that and moved it into operations with the increase the proposed increase to the water and sewer rates it brings water up to 2.534 million electric doesn’t change from the 2.933 but a total of about 5.47 million is the additional is the surplus generated by our water sewer electric systems feeding because the border budget is about. Eight million seven million that’s included about 14 because the pastors and so 14 million expenses are only about 10. So just 34 O. K. Yeah. So, I mean those are part of the past through, the number is higher. So, you don’t need to consider the pass through amount correct. Sorry I don’t push it on the Spanish right yeah right so the expense in electric and the revenue on the town operation. So, it’s a net zero change. What are we talking about as far as the increase in I think you might have mentioned it before but I'm kind of slow I. 20% increase to the rate. Chris Sims projected that out that the average water bill would see a $5 increase in water and $5 in sewer. What about an electric? We’re not changing the electric rate. In addition to what we already had to do for the P. D. C. A. C. Or at the beginning of the period. Again, I’m saying these things because that’s the guy I’m messaging. We need to let people understand because when they hear all these numbers. And when we just whatever way we go with this on Monday night, they have to understand spelling out this is what we need to spell out. All right to a degree because it’s fluid. It’s going to be moving and it’s we can’t make a promise that we may not have to raise the taxes another $0.02 next year because again inflation is ignorant and some of the things that we pushed up now you’re going to come back up again my hope is that there is you know well and we honestly until we pass a budget we can’t start tracking against it so we can’t see where we’re at against our budget for the year until we have starting point to track against we’re three months into the year we need a budget immediately so that we can then begin to track against it and then make the decisions we need to make for the rest of you know how are we doing in these areas what’s high what’s low because everything is changed since January 1st we all know that but we’ve got no way to even sit and have those conversations until we have a budget on the books that we can track against and again we have to have a control mechanism in place so we don’t sit here or whoever sits here next year go through the same issue. Because again it’s a red flag it’s a red and I think mayor mentioning that we look bad sitting here going over this now when we should have done it three months in again, we’re not the only ones but we are the ones sitting in this room. So, I mean the right the items in front of us are three things right and that’s what’s on the agenda here adoption of 2024 capital budget adoption of the operating budget and adoption of the tax rate I. those are the things that we need to allow not none of them are perfect there. Right there. But we can’t let perfect be the enemy of getting something good done I that’s what it comes down to until we do these things, and we begin to actually live in this world. We’re not going to know where we’re higher, where we’re low. This is our best opportunity with what we know right now. I mean I’ll start making motions and you can vote them up and down. So, I’ll make the motion to adopt the recommended FY 2024 capital budget. Any further discussion. Is there one minute? I’m sorry. I was distracted. Making a motion to approve the capital budget Councilman Rasmussen: I will make a motion to adopt the recommended FY2024 capital budget. The motion was seconded by Councilman Pressley. Roll Call Vote: Councilman Pressley – Yes Councilwoman Forbes - Yes Councilman Brown - Yes Councilwoman Upshur – Yes Councilwoman Gott – Yes Councilman Rasmussen – Yes Mayor Johnson – No Passed: 6 Yes,1 No Do we need to vote on the tax rate before that or vote on them together? They were broken out separately, but I’m not sure. Barrett Edwards said so if we’re going to do one first, I think we would vote on the tax rate 1st. That’s great. Goes up to $0.96? correction – $0.94. OK, Bill – Yes, Council Upshur – Yes, Councilwoman Gott - Yes. Gerald - Yes. Councilwoman Forbes – Yes, Councilman Rasmussen – Yes, Mayor Johnson – No. Councilman Rasmussen: I will make a motion to approve the recommended FY 2024 tax rate. The motion was seconded by Councilman Pressley. Roll Call Vote: Councilwoman Forbes – Yes Councilwoman Upshur – Yes Councilman Brown – Yes Councilman Rasmussen – Yes Councilman Pressley – Yes Councilwoman Gott – Yes Passed: 6 Yes, 0 No. Councilman Rasmussen: I will make a motion to approve the FY2024 operating budget. The motion was seconded by Councilman Pressley. Roll Call Vote: Councilman Pressley – Yes Councilwoman Forbes – Yes Councilwoman Upshur – Yes Councilwoman Gott – Yes Councilman Brown – Yes Councilman Rasmussen – Yes Passed: 6 Yes, 0 No. Now, can I make a comment? You know, Councilwoman got I’m sure I made a comment. I. I would ask Barrett to formulate some time because we don’t have. Again, this is not against you, we really don’t have, quote Unquote, a town manager. All right. Is there a possibility I know this is short window, but Monday night just to give the council a draft of something that we can alert that we can put out consolidate this. Just like we’re talking like 2 or 3 sentences. Yeah, just a blunt in the in the coming months. I’m just. I can get together with you. We’re just talking about tipping everyone off that you’re going to see a significant taxing right. I really didn’t want to do this, but you know, it’s been long overdue and it’s unnecessary. These are the reasons why we don’t blurred to be enough. I know that’s still starting having a statement. I mean, I agree. I mean, I’m happy to help draft it as well, but I think we voted for put our signatures on it. And again, we’re formulating a plane and if and we keep going away from it and we need to do that. And he held the Congress. And again, I’m going to show up windows because April 30th. So I don’t know. But while I’m here, I’m still responsible to the resident, just like everyone applies and scratch something. I’m having I’m not happy. Isn’t that why we have a town manager? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but we’re crossing the lines of who should be willing to get together right up something. I mean, excluding Tory, we’re what we’re asking channel manager. It is not fair in my opinion. I’m only with myself. Why don’t we take that simple thing? I’ll see more than that should come from. We as council have gotten off the council. It will come from. I can put something together and circulate it amongst all those. I just said that. It’s not an organization. I was told you want. Oh yeah, well, it’s fine. OK organization wise. Because Corey is acting as a manager. And it’s over with some teeth. I don’t want to recommend that we see him for visual about six months. I don’t know how it goes start now and I’ll let you. Opportunity. I gladly do my best to make sure that we get ourselves going in the direction that you guys are want and meeting with everybody, and I’ve seen what we can do to make sure and doors always open. Just don’t know where it’s going to be, but the police department are here, but one of the two you’ll find I’ll work a lot closely with all the managers and the reason why I’ve got your name. and I came in the way so hard. They’re doing a pretty good job themselves. The managers all know their jobs. They know what their job is. So, you know, the pressure on you. She should be less because each of them knows what they need to do to make their departments function. This morning, I’ve seen three state people please. Officers picking up in our territory. It happens. They have the state must be low on money. They have some things that they do. And unfortunately, because of those some of they use our rates to do their assessments on where they go. OK, now we’ve been out on a. OK now. We have to look at this. Search for a dentist. You know, if I said before here, before we move on, I would sleep better at night. Maybe you care. Maybe you don’t care, obviously We can have a huge sleepover. A motion in a second to just confirm the appointment of Tori is in. It can’t assign any checks or sign a contract or something. Then we just make sure that he’s just doing. I was getting there. I’ll make a motion that we appoint Chief James as the interim town manager OK, as I was starting to say what we need. To do is really, you know, really good search. If what, we’ll see. Hopefully I don’t have to search. Well, again, let’s not put the cart in front of the horse. Let let’s take one step at a time and again our next Council meeting and various other discussions that still have to be done. All right. Overall, I mean, I think we all agree that we have to formulate a plan. I mean, there’s certainly we no matter where we’re at, we have a lot of things that need to get done. In the next few months. And again, you know, I’m just saying because again, we have to stop planning itself. You have to have a backup plan and a backup plan. The girl, maybe we need a door, or somebody send us the existing town manager job description and you see if we don’t want to change anything on it. But again, it has to be a process but I mean to get this time to do it. Maybe we should fix and address some of the issues that we have in town and then pursue these opportunities once we have a better idea of what really needs to be addressed by a town manager in town. We need to set ourselves up to be successful with the next town manager by getting a lot of stuff done right now before that process will be hard to find somebody to custom want to come to us we have a lot of details and they’re not going to be asked out tonight Monday night or whatever it’s going to be a process that we have to formulate it. Yeah. We need a strategic plan to get somebody in there eventually who will do the right thing for the right reasons and have a job set that matches the town not somebody that has letters behind their name that made a criteria that looks good on paper The lessons learned. All right. Good meeting everyone. The minutes have been transcribed by computer to record the most accurate information. MBJ