Meeting discussionsStart with a topic.

So we have employees budgeted budgeted out of the general fund, E911 fund, uh hotel motel fund and water sewer fund. So 90% of that is comes from the general fund. So overall for insurance and benefits we're looking at a $713,000 increase about 5.4%. One of the bigger ones there is our health insurance. We're increasing that for the total city um from 6 million to 600 20 6,250,000. Been seeing a few increases there uh for both our liability insurance or the line that we budgeted in is just other insurance. So, it's kind of a catch-all cyber things like that. We saw a bit of an increase for our premium there as well as our claims. So, we're increasing that by about 10%. Then our retirement contribution has increased about 7% as well. We did receive our premium for that hoping it should be a little lower than this, but we feel comfortable with this number. We are recommending going down to the next line a use of 1.37 million of committed funds. So these are funds that over the course of I believe dating back to 2018 that council has allocated to be held in these funds for specific purposes that they have to be used for that. So that the the things that we're looking at here would be vehicle uh capital projects which vehicles are capital but more of a capital improvement projects debt health insurance and retirement. We've been using this money for retirement at least for the last six or seven years. We've used about 100,000 of that. Uh and then for a few of these vehicles, we're budgeting a fire uh firet truck upgrade for 490,000. So we're proposing to use that committed those committed funds for that. And then for CIP, we have a specific IT project for the uh network refresh and upgrade we're recommending for that as well.

If we go down to the next line, contingency, this is the contingency we have for our entire city. So the first line for merit raises uh as a note for both merit raises and the cola that'd be a cost of living adjustment. These are contingent um as the name would suggest on council's approval. So we budget these for half a year beginning in January. Those will come back before the council will be approved. Uh for merit raises that's uh as high as three and a half% based on performance evaluations across the city for all employees. The cost of living adjustment. This would represent a 3% increase over our current pay grades. However, we are budgeting for a class and compensation study this year run through our HR department. Last time we did that was five years ago. So essentially that just comes in and measures if we're where we need to be at compared to other municipalities. So we've since we you all have done a good job the last five years of keeping us hopefully consistent with uh with the rate of inflation. hoping that it won't be a big increase like it was when we did this the last time because at that point we hadn't done one of these in probably over 10 years. So it was a a big jump. So we're planning to use that money, the cost of living adjustment money toward whatever that class and compensation study tells us. And then we have the unallocated amount. That's just a plug for anything that might come up. Running through a few of those funds that I discussed earlier, revenues and expenditures for those. So the city does have its own E911 center. So if you make a 911 call in the city, it gets routed to our dispatchers. That number, that 1.45 million has stayed around the same for for some time now.

So all these revenues and expenditure numbers are the same as last year except for the transfer from general fund, which has actually gone down a little. The reason for that is that we did have an employee budgeted any 911 that was working out of the police department. So, we moved their salary over to the police department. So, it's really uh not an increase there. And then for intergovernmental revenue, this would be our Georgia Crime Information Center. It's money that we receive from other cities that run that. So, then you see a breakdown at the bottom of salaries and benefits. You'll see uh as is the case for any city and especially ours that the vast majority of money would be paying the people that do the work. Going next to our hotel motel fund, we do have a pretty significant increase for hotel motel taxes. That's B that's an increase based on the budget. This is actually around the same that we're projecting to collect through hotel motel taxes. Uh for a few big expenditures we are budgeting a use of reserves of $597,000 going and going down to expenditures there. There is a set formula for it says payments to Cobb Galleria transfer to general fund. Whatever uh set percentage of that money that we collect for hotel motel taxes has to go to the general fund and to payments to the Cobb Galleria. So we're budgeting a little bit of an increase with that. And then we'll also see operating costs and benefits with that fund as well. Then our water sewer fund. So on our next slide, we'll talk a little about rates, but just to cover cover that here for our water sewer base rate and usage, which would be 23.5 million, obviously our biggest expenditure. I'm sorry, that's our revenues. And if we go down to look at wholesale purchase of water for expenses, 13.8 million.

So we get our water from the Cob Marietta Water Authority, uh they usually give us yearly increases that had been around two two and a half% over quite some time. uh this year was 5% and I believe they're planning on at least three and a half percent over the next several years. So we have an automatic pass through of those increases built in. So those are usually consistent with both the wholesale purchase of water and the base rate and usage that's that is build out is consistent with those increases we pay for water and then the citizens pay. We also have use of uh water sewer reserves budgeted as revenue here about $ 1.77 million. The reason for that, as I discussed earlier, and I think Kristen will hit on in a minute with our CIP, is we do have a water meter replacement project budgeted. There's $2 million that you all approved a few months ago in FY26, and then we have $2 million for FY27 and then 2 million for FY28. So, we typically budget uh money to reserves from here. So, normally our revenues are greater than our expenditures. So, we've built up a substantial uh reserves in our water funds. are very comfortable using that for a specific project. And then we'll see our transfer to water sewer CIP. So we transfer out to fund those CIP projects. This is about a $ 1.9 million increase. Once again, consistent with the $2 million water meter replacement project. And then the water fund transfers to the general fund each year. So that covers uh expenses the general fund is essentially conducting for the water fund. So this would be things like HR, finance, employees in the general fund that do work uh to the water fund. This is a bit of an increase from last year as well. Then just some proposed fee changes quickly.

I discussed with you the water and sewer fees. That's the only one they have now. I will say I believe I noted this Thursday that they are looking at a few fees. uh maybe significant overhaul of their fees, the water, sewer, which we might bring back to you all before we adopt this budget or just after uh Paul and his and his team are working on that right now. And then for storm water utility, uh that's another one that we are trying to evaluate to make sure both we're billing that correctly and we're billing what we need to fulfill all of our obligations for storm water work without the city. And the budget now has contained a 2% increase, which is either a seven or eight percent depending on the some decimal points. And then for parks and wreck, we are uh not any huge changes. Most of the things that are actually hard fee changes will be decreases, but we are adding back fees that were previously off the schedule for Talison uh aquatics facility reopening and then for the splash pad as well. We're adding those. We had some placeholders for splash pad, but kind of firming those up. Uh what we did have was $5 for just like a general admission for that which is has been lowered to somewhere between two and a half and $3 depending on uh their criteria. We've also decreased the rental rates for baseball and softball fields from 300 to $200 to try to help uh facilitate rentals there. And then they've added some just to make sure or hopefully increase rentals in city facilities during the weekdays. So, this is Monday through Thursday before 5:00 pm, they've implemented a 30% discount on those room rentals there. And then the community center after 5:00 pm there's a 20% discount uh between Monday and Thursday.

And lastly, if you look in your book, uh if you see any changes there, they have converted, we've begun using a new software. So, to simplify the process for our software, they've converted those numbers to hourly rates rather than just like a fixed set of time. I think a lot of them were four hours. So, it's not that the rate has changed, just they're showing it differently at an hourly rate rather than a big block of time. And once again, with this, there are several fees. I would refer um even even if you don't we don't have that many changes, but just to make sure you're aware of all the fees. See, page 27 is where it starts. I'd refer you to that if you want to get a little more detail. With that, I'll pass it to Kristen. All right. So, I'm going to go over the personnel request. Um we have um we're recommending funding for three new positions. One of them in our facilities department um for a new m maintenance tech. Um we've got four people in that department currently and we've got new facilities coming online. So we need some help with that. That position is budgeted for 50% of the year. And then oops sorry come back. Sorry that's fine. No worries. Um and then we are um recommending the funding for two parks maintenance tech ones. Those are budgeted for 25% of the year. Um with the new pool coming online, um we're thinking that towards the end of the year is when we're going to need those positions to help out with uh parks maintenance. Um we had five additional uh full-time positions and two part-time positions that were requested from the departments. Um we are not recommending funding for those. The annual impact of those positions was $471,000. And so we're we're holding off on recommend recommending those.

The three that we are recommending are going to have an impact to the to the next fiscal year of about $63,000. Um there were also um a lot of reclasses that were submitted for consideration, but as Landon mentioned, we're going through a comp and class study. And so we're going to use that study to evaluate the positions and see if we need to do reclasses instead of doing them during the budget process. And then the last thing on here is the fire department has requested an increase for their mandate pay, which is the fire prevention division of fire. They're currently getting two and a half% and they want to increase that to 5% um going forward. Uh budget impact is almost $13,000. Uh debt obligations, the $66.2 million is principal and interest outstanding and the 8.9 million is what's scheduled for FY27. You can see the breakdown here. Um 122,000 from the TAD fund, 6.2 2 approximately from general fund. We're going to use 219,227 of previously committed funds which Landon touched on a minute ago. And then the balance of that is about 2.5 million from Splast. Um I will mention on the TAD even though 122,000 is the amount that is due we pay um every everything on the above the um increment we pay to pay that bond debt down. So last year we paid an additional 1.9 million and we are um going to we're hoping to pay that bond off in full this year um with about $2.1 million is what else stand on that bond. Um if we had not been able to make those additional principal payments that bond would have stretched out through 2040. Um the general fund has got uh the 2005 park bonds. It's got the um portion of the 2021 bonds and we've got our Smarter Grove bonds in there as well.

Um the 2021 bonds are split between the general fund and that splice on the bottom, that $2.5 million number. General fund CIP. Um this year we're recommending $3.5 million of CIP. This is an increase of 1.5 million compared to last year's adopted budget. We had been funding our CIP for several years through ARPA funds that had come from the federal government. We have um expended all those funds and so now the CIP goes back into the general fund. I will um note that a million of this is for green energy projects which has its own revenue funding source um that comes on the property tax bills through the street light funding. And we're going to use $300,000 of committed funds as Landon mentioned earlier um for an IT project. Water, sewer, and storm water. Um a lot of these projects are just repeat projects um from year to year with an increase. There's a 7% increase for infrastructure and drainage each year. We are finishing up the lead and copper inventory projects. Um and so those are going to be done hopefully in the next two years. The new project that Landon uh mentioned earlier is we are doing a meter replacement. We're upgrading to AMI technology. Um as he mentioned, y'all have approved $2 million to start that project and so we have $2 million in the next two fiscal years to finish out that project. Um and then storm water. Uh this also has just a standard increase every year, but as Landon also mentioned, we're going through trying to evaluate what we're collecting on that and what we need to collect. Um we're going through a storm water analysis right now. So trying to make sure that the numbers um that we're budgeting are what we need to budget as we move forward to make sure we take care of our storm water.

Uh vehicle replacements. Um you can see we have a total of 21 replacements this year. Um 1,874. Um as Landon mentioned, this is a decrease from last year. Um, but we will be going back up next year uh with our replacements because we do have a fire truck and a sanitation truck coming in in 28. Um, you can see there's 21 uh scheduled replacements. Four of these are new uh requests from uh departments. Um, one for environmental services. Uh, there's two pieces of equipment for parks. And then with the new position that we're recommending uh for facilities um we're also funding an F-150 for that position. Um Landon mentioned earlier the use of committed funds. We are recommending funding um an upgrade to um a for the fire department to a transport capable um rescue. And so we're using the the reserves that we have for that $490,000. And then 22's lost. Um, I think we touched on this on Thursday. We have um we budgeted the 22 splast in full for the life of the project. Uh, when we started that project, we I'm sorry, when we started the splice collections, we are now in the position of um collecting additional money over the initial projection. And so we will be amending the budget annually for that. Um, and um, we have about $9.4 $4 million planned for FY27. A big portion of that is for resurfacing. And then um of course the aquatic center that we're hoping would be finished up um and ready to go. And um we have bond payments in there. And then we have facility improvements and sidewalks, trails, and greenways to complete that 9.4 million. Uh the budget book, um you can find it on our website. If you go to the website and go under departments under finance, go under the annual budget financial and audit reports.

You can find it there electronically. There's also a hard copy at the um library and with the clerk's office if you would like to look through the book yourself. Um tonight is the required public hearing and then um we will come back on June 1st and we will um hopefully formally adopt the budget. So do y'all have any questions? Any questions? We could Landon has done a fantastic job. He's been working on this since November. He does a great job. So, just give him a public shout out for all he does. Yeah, he has done a great job. Christian, you do a great job for the city as well. Thank you'all both so much. Yeah, thanks guys. Very well done. All right. Thank you both. Uh moving on item 9B H City attorney highlighted. This is a public hearing. If you like to have a comment, please come on forward and be sworn in by the city attorney. Okay. Seeing none, close the portion of the public hearing and move on to item 9B. uh ATTH 2026-065

authorization to amend the fiscal year 2026 adopted general fund budget to increase the expenditure budgets for general government allocations in the

amount of $500,116 for the initial costs related to the Campbell Middle School project and parks administration in the amount of 105,299 for the purchase of an additional screen authorization to amend the adopted budget adopted project length budget in the general fund CIP fund to increase transfers in from the general fund and to add a new expenditure project for Campbell Middle School both in the amount of $58,716 authorization to amend the adopted project length budget in the water cip fund to increase the project project budget the amount of $38250 $38,250 for the Project 52609 and transfer in from from the water fund by the same amount. Authorization to amend the fund fiscal year 2026 adopted water fund budget increase transfers out of water CIP in the amount of $38,250 for the additional equipment necessary for the AMI meter upgrade. authorization to amend the adopted project length budgets in the American Rescue Plan Act, AA ARPA, to to adjust expenditure budgets for the close out of all related projects in the total amount of $47,825 and the revenue budget in the amount of $438,587. And hopefully Kristen can explain this. Thank Thank you for reading all of that so I didn't have to. Um what all that means is is that at a previous meeting, council agreed to use general fund reserves to start the Campbell um middle school project. And so this is just trueing up that budget line item to amend um for the transfer from the general fund into the CIP project fund where that's going to be funded from. And then the water CIP um as mentioned previously uh council approved a project to start the AMI U meter upgrade and there is uh some equipment that needs to go in the ground as a part of that. So, this is amending the budget to include uh the boxes and the lids that go along with that project. And then the last thing, uh the ARPA projects um was a federal funding that we received and we had to do our final report for them as of March 31st. And so this is just trueing up all of the budgets for all of the spending of the ARPA funds over the last several years. That's all a lot of words for that. true up budgets, right? Make sure the line items are adding correctly. Uh, any questions? Any comments? So, Mr. Lindley is our finance chair. Would you like to make a motion? Motion do pass as presented. I have a second. Second by Mr. Welch. All in favor? Motion passes 5. Thank you, Kristen.