0:03 We're calling to order the special council meeting of the City Council. Today we will be discussing and perhaps deliberating on our city budget to see if we can't get at least close to where we need to be. But first of all I think we had one other item emergency item that was put forward. We need her to be here. Do we have someone online? Okay, so we do have a quorum. Wanna go ahead? Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to. Hold on. I missed y'all. I missed y'all.

1:04 Yeah, right. Yeah. Like you missed a headache. That was funny, huh? Yeah. We're trying to make sure we get a quorum back. Mr. President, thank you. I move that we add an emergency item to the agenda and that item is in order revising the Jackson Police Department's 2025-2026 fiscal year budget. Second. Okay, we have a motion on the table to add an item to the agenda. Is there a justification for this item being added as an emergency? I can. No. From the bottom. From the bottom.

2:37 Okay. I'm going to yell at you if you're asking for the bottom. Thank you so much for that. Rochelle Brackney, Chief of Police. Yes, sir. This is an item that needed to be uploaded into NOVAS, but with all the issues that we were having, it didn't get uploaded in. It's a simple transfer that has to be done immediately in order for us to acquire the brass tracks that we've approved for the last three council meetings. And that money needs to get transferred into a single account.

3:07 These are all coming from grant fundings and nothing out of the general fund. We do need to make the transfer to make that account sufficient in order to purchase it. Okay. And so this is time sensitive? Why? The time sensitiveness of the nature is from the time that we got the award, which was just approved for 107,000. This is the end of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety's cycle. It has to be expended by a certain amount of time for the 2026 year for them. So it is time sensitive that it has to be expended or we have to get that purchase in this week by the 15th at the latest before the next meeting would be on. Okay so there is no other meeting that it can be done at before it expires then. Okay I will we have it on the floor any comments or questions? If not all... Mr. President I'm going to go right ahead. I'm in favor of doing this. Okay all right if not all in favor okay it has been added to the agenda. Order revising the Jackson Police

4:07 Department's 2025-2026 fiscal year budget. So moved. It's been properly moved and second that we move forward with this item. Any questions or comments? Just to reiterate to the public, this is an accounting move in order to make sure that we are receiving the grants that we need. It doesn't add a dollar or remove a dollar to the police department items. This is a routine item that is needed in order to receive the grant and the program that attempting to receive. So this This is separate from the discussion we're going to have in a moment about the budget for next year.

4:50 This is just a move to move some things around and all the funds are accounted for. It's just to get the funds. Okay, any further comments? If not, all in favor? Okay. And the item passes. Okay, next we have the next agenda item. resolution approving and adopting the municipal budget for fiscal year 2026 through 2027. Okay and I'd like to add that you know we've been working hard on this and today we'll have short deliberation. We need a second. Oh I'm sorry. Okay. Okay it was properly moved and second.

5:33 Okay we've been working hard and the entire council has been working hard to to try to get this done. We're going to go into deliberation where we will continue to ask some questions and see how far we are from where we need to be. Councilman Parkinson, chair of the finance committee. Sir, you wanna take? Sure, big moment for us to get this on the floor. So this is an exciting thing. Now we'll be able to begin making amendments to it. I have my own list of things I'm sure we'll come up in our discussion, but I appreciate all the work that the entire Council and most especially the administration and their team. I want to give a special appreciation and make sure that Peter Tewis in Gillian Caldwell and Brandon Jackson were here working until one in the morning on Friday, technically Saturday, getting the information that we need and anything that we've requested from y'all you all have provided. So I'm grateful for you. I appreciate your efforts. And, you know, we've still got a little bit of work to do, but we are really, really, really close. And

6:51 it's possible even that we'll be able to pass this thing today depending on how conversations go. I guess the one other thing that I will remind my colleagues is by law, this thing has to be passed within the week. So we have a September 15th deadline and correct me if I'm wrong but you all need to do pass it. Are there steps that you'll need to take by the 15th in order in order to make no okay so as long as council takes action by the 15th will be in compliance. Okay so we have a week I don't think we should take the full week just because you never know what hiccups are gonna arise or things like that but the clock is ticking we've been working really really hard and hopefully we can get this thing across the finish line if not today as soon as possible. Okay can you give us the major outline of our Ms. Caldwell someone give us a point where we're at right now how close or have there been any changes you know they mentioned you were working to early

7:53 morning hours hopefully that netted some reward if nothing else but lose sleep but where are we have there been any major changes yes Jillian Caldwell CFO yes we have made a significant amount of changes dollar-wise our revenues we feel very confident that we'll be approximate at approximately 113 million 113.5 million and so we've I guess in the last couple of weeks we received final assessment values from Hines County and so we're pretty confident in that amount that we will bring in at FY 27. Okay anything to add Mr. Chair? No we also have so the item that we put on the floor is the complete budget so we've been talking thus far that the budget the total budget is 300 350 million dollars or so and again this has been said before but just to reiterate to the public. The vast majority of that is money that we receive for a very specific purpose. And so where most of our conversations have been, and I suspect will continue to be, will focus on the general fund, which is the spot in the

9:18 budget where we have a little bit more discretion. As our CAO reminds us, we can't use it for absolutely anything that we want, but within reason that's where there is some flexibility but the total budget is but what we have in front of us is the total complete budget for the city for the year. For all funds and it totals three hundred thirty seven million three hundred forty eight thousand eight hundred one dollars. Okay we just want to note Councilwoman Clay is on. Councilwoman do you have any comments as we're getting started? The only comment I have is I see on what we're looking at today the 2024 25 actuals and not 2526 actuals and I'm wondering why we don't see actuals from the current year that we are currently in instead of going back again okay is there an answer there let's call well there our councilman Parkinson that is the typical format that we use when preparing the budget item that is the typical format that we when preparing the budget item for the order.

10:46 We usually go back to the prior, to two fiscal years prior to the current budget that's being proposed. And that's just the format that has been in place. I have a question then. If we use the format, why do we have a dummy version of the format, a few pages and not all the details details if we go into the format. And why wouldn't we really look at the past year? And we didn't use that format last year because if we did, we would have used 112 for a budget. And this year we're using 113 million. And did we collect over 12 million in the last month, month and a half? Because we were only at 100 million and now we're at 112 million for actuals.

11:31 Okay, stand by a minute. We're trying to come up with the hundred and twelve million is what I think was the original proposal. I'm not sure where she would what number you're referencing as far as this is the number. Okay. And I'm not fussing and I don't want Peter to say I'm attacking you or anything else. Okay. Well, what I'm representing is when we did a budget last year, we used one hundred and thirty five. That's the number we budgeted based on. The actuals for that year before that was 112, okay?

12:19 This past year, 25, 26, the last time we got some actuals from you, they were right at a hundred, they were 96 million. You said you anticipated collecting four more million, which would have been a hundred million. I'm asking to get to 112, the document that you gave me over the weekend or Did you actually collect 13 million from the time that from the last time you gave me? We we're still waiting for some final amounts to come in so we don't have a full year of FY 26 Revenues yet that have been brought in we have the receivable and expectation that it will reach 112 million or close to the mark I'm not debating or anything else.

13:11 I just want to know point blank. Did you actually collect? How much have you actually collect? Not what you forecast and what you expect, but nothing else. How much have you actually collected? One moment, please. Thank you. We're currently at 100 million, but that's not. 100 million. So I understand about what you hadn't put in there, but how many weeks have you not put in? So as far as revenues are concerned, you will receive a couple of months of tax revenues in the month of September toward the end of September, as well as in the month of October and November.

14:35 And so we have a question for you, Ms. Julian, if not what you're going to receive later. You have collected 100, OK, based on what they're coming in for the month of September. You get them on September 20th and you and me budget starts October, right? Yes. Okay. Based on you've already gotten all the 20th, right? Yes. Okay. Is it August 20 in that hundred? Yes. Okay. So September is all we got left that we can say we're getting for real. Okay. When you get it next year, you're already in a new year.

15:20 Okay? So what do you anticipate for September? That's what I was saying. We're anticipating at least another approximately 10 to 12 million. For one month, you're going to get 10 to 12 million in the month of September. What did you get 20-24 in September? We have another allocation of property tax to come in. We have... My question is what'd you get in the year 2024? Not what you allocate in the comp. What did you get 2024 September? What'd you get September 2025? I will have to get the information Okay, I'm just saying this we make last year we did a budget the administration said we did bad math We're not gonna do bad math or Tina's not gonna do bad math this year because we know what we got.

16:26 We know what the numbers should be and what they've been on past experience. If you can't tell us those numbers now, that's fine. You can forecast whatever you want, but we do not need to use unreal numbers. And since we're getting a simplified, dummy version of our budget, we should be able to get a better version that tells us the curve year and not go back two years. Okay, did you want to reply to that? Okay, you're running a report now. Go ahead. Yes, I am running a report to give the amounts that were brought in in September of 24 and 25.

17:11 Okay, thank you. Councilman Foote, you ain't spoke up in a while. Okay, I've got some more in the weeds questions. If it's okay for me to go in a different direction. Yes, while we await this. I'm looking at the budget here, order adopted the budget and all these pages. Okay, so he's got, I don't have any questions at this point about page one, but if you go to page two, it's got parking fines, vehicle parking fines, expected 20,000 and then the last two years was budgeted at 50,000.

17:57 Well, that's obviously an estimate because you wouldn't have exactly 50,000 in parking fines. Is that parking fines that come from our parking meters that where they give tickets and they have to go pay fines at the courthouse? Is that where that money comes from? Is that a reasonable? It's 20,000? I think he's getting ready to answer, you know. Brandon Jackson, budget manager. Are you speaking of the parking meetings line 4715? No, this is 4312. This is the second page of this budget order. It's got listed misdemeanor fines, 100,000, which is half of what we bought last year, which I don't know, vehicle parking fines, 20,000.

18:46 Is that the money that comes not from the parking meters themselves, but when people get tickets? And they have to go to courthouse? That's coming from court, yeah. So that's only $20,000 we've collected there? Seems for all the hassle and phone calls I've gotten, I would've thought it'd be bigger than 20,000. But that's okay. That's just an estimate, I assume. Okay. If you go down to the bottom of page three, it says Pro-Rata State Sales Tax. It's got $31,969,801 for 2526. I guess that was, I hope that's an actual number.

19:24 Well, let's go over here, actual. You have to go back to 25 and get an actual number, a million nine six nine. No, excuse me, two, oh no wait. This is a sales tax, 26.872. What's the, do you have, what's your number, what have you received in sales tax so far that through 11 months? 25 million, four. So you're expecting another 1.6 million during the month of September, is that how you came to the 27 million? Correct. Okay, I'll answer that question, okay. If you turn to the next page on page four, it's got Municipal Auditorium Thiamara Hall Rent.

20:16 Last year, you had budgeted for 26, 156 million, excuse me, 156,625. And now you're expecting zero? Come on, man. I know they're going to rent at least some of that Thiamara Hall. It's got to be more than zero, don't you think? It's open, isn't it? Been open for almost 10 months. It needs to be some estimate. I mean, it's not zero. I guarantee you they're going to have more than zero rent from Thiamara Hall, which spent all this money getting it fixed. And we've already had events there.

20:57 There's a whole bunch of events. We had big events, big sellout events. So are we going to- For the Vice President, well, who cares? What? Are we gonna expect a figure? Anyway, so we gotta have a, that's not a realistic estimate. No. That's my estimate. You go, you should, reason I should- Peter Jefferson, CIO. I think it might be realistic. The money that comes in from events at Thalia Mara goes into a separate account, and I do not have that new agreement that the council and the administration entered with the Convention Center for Management at Thalia Mara.

21:29 I would need to refresh my recollection on that to make sure that that money isn't... Yes, you're right, Councilman Foote. There is going to be income and has been. The question is, is that going into the general fund or some way you can spend that? And I'm not sure that it is. I assume that this budget was all for the general fund. So that... Is this not all... So the budget that you have in your hand is for all funds. Oh, well... The general fund is like the first several pages of the budget But the all funds are included and this is the full budget for the city Okay, all right, but the one we're gonna vote on is just a general fund. Is that correct?

22:11 But that's when we got a balance right the entirety of the budget has to be balanced Okay, we've been focusing on just general fund. Yes, they're trying to figure out, you know That's why I made a big plus out of the situation with the, over whether it was going to be the one-cent sales tax commission paying for that thing versus the general fund. Okay, so I apologize. I didn't realize, I thought all these things were the general funders, a couple other ones I want to bring up here and then we'll go to.

22:42 Mr. Fuches to query. Okay, let me say, on page six, there's interest earned on repos. And I think the interest rate that T.P. Morgan signed up was 2.6 or something like that? Yes. Okay. And my understanding was the average balance is around 90 million. This 1.5 is not an accurate estimate then. It should be 2. something million. So we wanted to use a conservative. I know. But the problem is when we're trying to spend money, you can't be super conservative over here. you can do that with your household budget, but this is the city budget and we can't scrap and not have the services ready for the citizens if we're underestimating every line item like this.

23:30 I think we need to be realistic about things that I know that J.P. Morgan are the biggest bank in the world, I know they're good for their interest. And so the question is, and they said they're gonna pay us 2.6, so really, only unknown then is what is your average balance? So it would just drop a lot to get from $2.7 million down to $1.5 million. So I'm just trying to. So just to be clear, in months where our main allocations from the property tax come in February, and so in months that pass, the months thereafter, Those funds do dip quite a bit until we get our next allocation.

24:18 Do you want the balances right now? It's approximately $85 million. OK. Anyway, just a thought there. I was just going down here on some of the things that seemed unusual to me or odd. Another one over here on the- Before we look at it, may I address that? Peter Tablinson, CAO. I think Councilman Foote makes an excellent point on the interest. And I hope we are actually underestimating it a little bit, but in a general sense, you need to understand how your revenue works. We have to have some carryover revenue to start the year.

24:52 We're not gonna see a, we will see sales tax monthly, remembering that sales tax runs 60 days behind. We'll then not see a large revenue input until we get our payment from the county at the end of January or the middle of February. That is for all your property taxes that are paid at the end of December. In other words, we have to cash flow the city before the year starts. In doing that, I think the question you had asked a couple of meetings ago, Councilman Foote, was what had been our average balance at JPMorgan Chase since we moved the money there.

25:29 And I will point out that when we moved the money there in 2026, it was after we had received a large amount of funds and that's where we got to the 90 million. we'll be in a much better position next year during budget to know what an actual year looks like, including the dips, not just the more recent months that had the higher number. And that was the reason for being conservative. Okay, anyway, I just think we need to be realistic too and not just- Councilman, hold on a minute.

25:58 I see a lot of zeros at the end. Can we just maybe hit some of those larger ones and with an explanation? because I mean, there's a lot of areas we can go in. I don't know if Councilman Put is going to capture all of them. But I'll turn the floor over to you. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead Councilwoman. Line number 4315 warrant fees. I see it's $41,439. What all the warrants that we have over there, that's all we collect? The 41,000 is what we're proposing to collect in FY27, which is closer to the actuals of this year, but that's just that one line.

26:46 A lot of these lines come from your court revenue, not just that one line. But what I'm saying is, is this line item, when you go over there to the city of Jackson, court serves it, all the, well, it's full with warrants, and we only collect $41,000? For that line in the warrant, you have moving traffic violations, you have misdemeanor fines, vehicle parking fines. All of those different fines are part of what you're collecting in municipal court for your revenue. It just don't. So that's just the one.

27:26 With all the warrants that the city of Jackson have, it just don't look right, that line. OK, councilman, that's partisan. Thank you. a few things. First, as it relates to the revenues, my personal recommendation is that I think we should be very hesitant to raise any of these revenues. I think you can make an argument for maybe this line or that line, but I think there are also other line items where they might be a little bit higher than maybe what I would personally estimate. And So on that, I personally think that the revenues are in a really good spot.

28:09 That's just my first note that I'll make. The other thing I'll say is in my personal estimation, you know, I started this this budget season with a gigantic wish list of a whole bunch of things that I wanted. And as I heard from department head after department head of department My wish list continued to grow. I wanted to add additional folks to the legal department. I wanted to increase the grants given out by the Human and Cultural Services Division. I wanted to raise employee wages, especially for those under $12,000 an hour, and a whole laundry list of other things.

28:54 But as we have worked through the budget and parched through all of the things, where I'm ultimately landing is in three really big priority areas. And those priority areas are in police, fire, and public works. And I think the most money that we can allocate to those three areas, I think are the three areas that are going to most move our city forward. And to that end, I think I'd like to get the ball rolling a little bit. I was thrilled when we received this version.

29:28 This was very, very late Friday, technically Saturday. We received this and I had see if when I compared this to the original budget that we started the year off with, I was thrilled to see that Public Works was given an additional half million dollars in their personnel line, in personnel line, and they were given an additional half million dollars. And I was thrilled to see that additional funds were being devoted there. I think that's, But they need as much funds as they can get. But I am still concerned, in addition to Public Works, with police and fire as well.

30:06 And so I'd like to offer up an amendment. And that is to adjust the personal services line in Public Works. What page is that? This is on page 10. So we're going to adjust the personal services line in Public Works to $8,837,480 and direct those funds to increase other services and charges in police to $1,728,262. That is at nine. So here's where we're at. Here's where we're at. Here's where we're at. services was given in Public Works, personal services was given an additional $500,000. As much as I'm ecstatic that they were given additional funds, and I still want to make sure that they're given additional funds, just given all the needs of the city, I don't know if we can quite get all the way there in my opinion.

31:16 So if we adjust the personal services in Public Works to $8,837,480, what that does is it still gives them an additional $250,000 more. So it's still a raise from where we started the process. So we're still showing love to Public Works, but it's just instead of giving all the love to Public Works, it's given some of the love to Public Works and some of the love to the police department. My amendment is basically to take $250,000 from public works, personnel services and direct that to other services and charges in the police department.

31:58 Mr. Finance Chair, can I make a suggestion as we go through sort of mending things that we don't have to amend if we want to give somebody $500,000 that we don't have to at that point decide where to take the money from. In other words, just say, I want to give the police $500,000 more. And we can vote on that. And then we can start taking money away and vote on those specific takeaways. Because we end up with the, I think it may be, it's been my experience, if you could try to do both, where you can take this money over here, move it over there.

32:37 I think we can just start to add money in or take money out based on the particular line. Sure, I can appreciate that. I think that's a discussion for us as a council to have my only concern with that is the administration Has presented us a balanced budget. So if all we do We should not say balance on anything. I mean is balancing currently they always ask Revenue and expenditures always don't balance out and equal zero no matter what we do But we shouldn't say balanced at all because nothing about this that we can get back by definition of accounting.

33:16 Well, what I mean, Ms. Clay, is if, for example, I mean, I ultimately am hoping to get an additional $1 million for the police and an additional $1 million for the fire department. If I make those motions now and those motions pass, but then we then can't find where we're going to take the additional funds from, then we're stuck and we cannot pass the budget. And just given that the same, yeah, but at the same time, if you start taking stuff, you may not get stuff passed because people don't want to take it from that particular account.

33:51 Then you haven't accomplished what you set out to do, which was give more money to police. So I think what I'm hearing you say is that if we want to remove something, we remove it from the general fund And instead of going and then later we can come back. Well, we need to make a cut here. We need to make a cut there. Is that what you're saying? There is a difference between, I mean, this is everything, but there is a specificity about the general fund that is different than other parts of the budget, correct?

34:31 I'm not correct in thinking that. Yeah, and Jimmy covered it wrong, We can't take money from a grant that has been allocated for a very specific you can't take it from a modernization tax and put it in In the general fund right right right right so we all know that Yeah, okay But I want to make one interruption and I'm gonna be quiet for the rest of the time y'all can talk On mr. Foote's point about this budget that hundred and thirty five million and that one thirteen million and y'all just came back and told him that this was a budget that was not general fund, this was something different.

35:07 Why are we voting on those numbers if that's not general fund? We vote on the general fund budget. So the budget we've been voting on in the past, we were led to believe it was general funds only. So now you're saying there are other funds and revenue in here other than general funds when he asked about the IMR. So when we started the entire day of the budget process, we explained that ultimately the city does need to pass its overall budget, which includes a general fund, as well as every other fund item.

35:38 We specifically did say on the very first finance committee meeting where we were talking about this, that our emphasis would be on the general fund given the nature of the general fund. We don't have flexibility with some of the outside funds. So everything that we have seen up to this point has been a discussion on the general fund. The work that Peter and Jillian and Brandon did into the wee hours, that item, which was emailed to us very late on Friday, technically Saturday, and is in our hands for those of us that are in chambers, this is the very first time that we are considering the budget in its totality.

36:21 But I still think it makes sense in our conversations for us to focus in on the general fund, but Ultimately, the city's required to pass the total budget. So Mr. Chairman, what item in here in revenue is not a general fund item? Just tell us this so we can pull it out in our own mind. Okay? Which category is not general fund? Revenue. The enterprise, the water sewer would not be in the general fund. I know that, but some of these others I'm confused about. So, if you look at the document that was provided, you'll see on page one, it lists general funds in blue with white lettering.

37:10 And then continue to scroll down. Tell me what page. You just go to the page. I got what you got in my hand. Yes, ma'am. And if you scroll all the way down to page 13, you see the next section, which is General Fund, Other Special Funds. And then if you scroll down to page 15. OK, but page 13, when you get down there, where you're talking about outside funds, that is not included in that 135 or that 130. So what Mr. Foote was talking about up there at the top, with that 135, is everything at the top that we normally budget and see, okay?

37:51 So yeah, we understand that. So what- And then if you scroll down to page 15, you can see the parks front. And if you scroll down to page 16- But that's kind of in that 113, 135. No ma'am, the information that's included- Okay. Go ahead. So he's not confused about what he asked you about the zero, it was up way before page 13. Sure, and if Mr. Foote wanted to make a motion to raise those projected funds, he would certainly be entitled to do that. My own personal...

38:27 We all... Whatever, but I just wanted to clarify. I don't want nobody to think that we don't know that what a general fund is, and that 135 is what we voted last year. And when we vote this year, we're going to be voting on 113 and whatever else you added. It doesn't matter, but 113 is your number that you got up there to top, okay? That's exactly right. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, so we don't need to be confused. This is budget here. Very elementary. There's no detail, so there's no reason for any confusion. Oh yeah, I don't think anyone's confused, ma'am. Okay. We were confused when you told Mr. Foot that uh, Sallie Meyer was not included, okay? Did I say that? Because we, it shouldn't be included.

39:08 It's a separate form. We understand that. Thank you. My only point, ma'am, is I don't think we should raise revenues beyond 113 that's that's my recommendation. I have no problem with that but I just didn't want it to sound like that was in that 113. Okay can I ask another question? I think we still have a motion on the floor. What's the motion? I can't remember. Councilman Parkinson can you repeat that please? Yes sir. Although I do think this is an important I think Mr. Foote raises a really important thing and we're gonna have to decide as a group if we want to if anytime we propose raising something we want to come with a corresponding decrease or if we want to handle all the raises first and then come back and do all the cuts. Well you could get do here's a raise and make a vote on that and you can here's a cut and you can vote on that separately keep them separate for purposes of keeping track we mean you should get to keep track of

40:10 them but for instance here's another thing that confuses me since you were You're getting ready to take some money out of Public Works, right? Isn't that right? And so... I was planning to take some of the additional funds that were already added to Public Works and take some of those and distribute it elsewhere. Yeah. Well, so I'm confused here about Public Works. So I'm on page 10 and there's about five lines there. Okay. And it's got personnel services, which is what you're talking about. supplies and materials, other services and charges, capital outlay, grants, contributions, contingencies which is zero and then debt service which is 115,000. So all that money comes out of General Fund, is that correct? In that square? But there's parts of Public Works that are not in the, that aren't funded by General Funds. That's correct. So where, where, what page do I turn to to get that if this is the whole budget.

41:11 And which funds are you looking for again? The money that goes to Public Works that's not in the general fund. Tell me what page I need to turn to find that. That would be one cent sales tax commission modernization tax. Enterprise fund with solid waste and water. Solid waste as opposed to fee based. So starting on page 17. 17. You have a few MDI grants there. So from my standpoint, public works has got a lot of money that goes through and gets spent, which is good.

42:01 That's what it's supposed to be spent on. It's supposed to be spent on fix and drains and everything else. But you go look down here at federal grants expenditure, it doesn't say public works there. So I mean, from an organizational standpoint, If we're going to look at Public Works, make sure they've got enough funds to accomplish their mission for this coming year that starts in 20 days. And be able to look, be able to say, here's Public Works, here's the part that they're getting funded from the general fund, and here's the part they're getting funded from modernization tax and all that stuff.

42:34 On page 21, you have those funds that you're mentioning. Let's see. And correct me if I'm wrong, but we wouldn't see the 1% sales commission, they manage their own budget is that correct or does that come through the snow they they manage and make a make a lot of calls on stuff but the point is that money is available for public works type work yeah I mean they may have our nice eye contractor but it's still work on unlike that for instance that deal where the 338 roads being resurfaced from the bill there that's important work more more roads are going to be fixed in Wilfex, fixing our own, which is great. But just to see the totality of what Public Works does, it's very complex and critical department in the city.

43:27 We need to be able to look at the whole thing, not just the general fund slice of it. That's the point I'm trying to make. For instance, if we're making a personnel cut, does it impact the enterprise fund with sanitation with solid waste. Well, we're outsourcing solid waste. But no, at a landfill and going around picking up open dumps and managing our roll off dumpsters and other things, again, that requires a little bit more thought. I agree. These are all process things. I'm just trying to make sure that we understand the big picture and we don't get so micro focused on, you know.

44:13 I think that's a good point. Because if you look at page 21, a lot of these items listed there are really public works related. And so we could in some way consider that all a hundred million is going to public works and in some, I mean, that's one way to conceptualize it. So a good question. Can I ask a follow up question on this block on capital projects revenue? Please do, but understand we still have a motion on the floor. Yeah, so you've got a subtotal of revenue.

44:46 We had to do this 25 special obligation bond of 40 million. Now, some of that money has been obligated already, hadn't it? Peter Taylor's on CAO. I think you've obligated all that money. Has it? Somehow we need to know that. I mean, that's important information if you've already spent the money. We can't show it as 33 million in revenue, can we? Well, we can because we haven't spent it. We've obligated it. We've obligated it. Notice the distinction in the language. Okay. And y'all forgive me. I'm still a lawyer at heart.

45:18 So I'm very precise with the language. We've not spent that 33 million, but you as a body have approved paving contracts and ditch cleaning contracts. And you would have to confirm this with Mr. Anderson. But my understanding is essentially most of that 33 million has been obligated by the contracts you approved and we're asking about earlier this morning. Now, it says in here on this capital projects, the 1% infrastructure tax. It's got, and I think we get about 15 million a year in that, something like that.

45:51 But you look over here for what's proposed is 30 million. Is that because we've got an extra 15 million and it hasn't been spent yet? And so this will be an extra. So it'll be 30 million that we've already gotten the bank from infrastructure, from 1 cent sales. and plus another $15 million. So it's going to give us $30 million there that shows up in the revenue line. Yes. Even though $15 million of it was from last year received. You see where I'm coming from? Anyway, it's just important for us to know this when we're talking about the public works budget.

46:30 The modernization tax, same thing there. They've got, it's part of that money encumbered, showing 31 million. Is that available? Most of that is available, yes. And I think your general point, Councilman Fudin, I want to make sure that public files is that Public Works is one department that is not solely supported by the general fund. Right, that's important. In fact, Public Works has multiple funding streams, as you pointed out today. It has public, I'm sorry, it has general fund money, which the administration has proposed about 14 million.

47:10 It has one cent sales tax money, which we have to work with the commission, but that will be spent on public works projects. We may reprioritize those, but it will be. It has bond funds, which we should see the spending that is occurring on the ditches and paving should all be evident in 2027 this fiscal year. And it also has modernization funds as well. And modernization funds can be used both for paving, as well as rehabilitating buildings that we own, which is another public works function, and I think both you and Mr. Hartley have pointed out, because there's a lot under the Public Works umbrella.

47:47 We also then receive state aid or federal highway funds, which go to public works projects. So we have about a half different funding, a half dozen different funding sources for Public Works. And so it's important when the public sees this that they don't get caught up on the general fund number as being all that this council and this administration is doing to support the many Public Works needs. We're doing a lot collectively. And I just wanna add that the 14 million was our original proposal. We are currently proposing 19.7 million for Public Works.

48:24 Now why did you, why did y'all, Can I ask why you only increased it by $5 million up on the general fund side? Two things. One, we moved the money that had been going to the planning department for the traffic lights and the street lights and all that, that four million or so back into Public Works. And we did that for two reasons. One, we've heard from the council that that seemed a better natural fit than the planning department, which it does. And two, we hope this incentivizes Public Works to get a handle on those street lights because if they can figure out how to pay less than 4 million, I'll be the first person before you out there to keep the difference.

49:01 So they can go figure out a ring out a half million or a million dollars in savings on streetlights. And I believe Public Works will figure that out in the next fiscal year. They will be saying, and they ought to keep that extra money. Okay, so they've got extra work tied in with the increase, the obligations, work obligations to do the streetlights and the other things you mentioned. Yes, and I will say in many ways, this is a performance based budget. It is gonna be incumbent on department directors to take some additional steps in this upcoming year.

49:33 We know that there's still a large amount of public works equipment that we can sell and generate money for the public works department. That needs to be a priority. Chief Brackney is both concerned about vehicles, but also she has some weapons that are potentially out there for disposal in a way that's outside of Mississippi that would generate funds and public works if he can cut the budget on streetlights. So we're really gonna be looking at department directors during this next fiscal year to help us augment the budget.

50:05 When I say us, the administration and council, by being aggressive at what they can control in their departments, and that's gonna require some performance by those department heads. Very helpful, I appreciate that, Mr. Davidson. Council Parkinson, I will go along with your taking some funds from Public Works 500,000 because of the discussion we just had there where I feel more comfortable with the knowing they've got these other streams of income coming in that are pretty meaningful. Well, before I'd like some additional input, I was talking offline with Mr. Anderson.

50:47 money is it already committed or is it going to increase the public works budget at all? Lorenzo Anderson, Public Works Director, it's going to increase the overall budget but it's get it's tagged to a bill that's already that the city is paying. So if we had 14 million dollars and you send us a five million dollar bill and increase our budget you're just transferring money from planning to Public Works. You're not increasing our budget where we can buy more people. I mean, not buy more, increase our personnel.

51:24 No, we don't want to buy people. Increase personnel. Those days, right? Increase supplies, things like that. One thing you have to understand is, Public Works does have a lot of capital improvement projects. We use CCID, we use 1%. All these projects are for construction projects. What we have been discussing is operations and maintenance. We cannot use modernization to increase personnel. We cannot have modernization to give raises. We can't have modernization, and we can't use the MDOT money, especially for all these operations. So we have a separate money, as far as operations, which we've been discussing, on $14 million, and we were asking for 16.8.

52:19 So we're talking about two different situations here where, yes, we have $140 million worth of capital improvement projects. If I could use some of that for personnel, I would, but I cannot, because it's MDOT money, federal money, it's state money, all these are earmarked projects. We can't use this for operations. So yes, you can increase the 19 million dollars, but it's a five million dollar bill. So it washes out. Let me ask a technical question. So modernization tax is earmarked or identified by the state legislature has to be spent on infrastructure. So you could go out and hire a contractor who's got workers to go do some work and pay some infrastructure work and pay them with the modernization tax money, right? Yes. But can you use your own workers to go do some some drainage work or whatever and you wouldn't be able to use the modernization tax because it was your own workers versus the contractor's workers? My understanding we cannot use for personnel we can buy a personnel I mean it takes personnel to go do drainage

53:34 yeah I mean yeah and that's something I guess the answer is no I don't know I just can we that doesn't sound right that you have to outsource it in order to be able to use the infrastructure money I wonder if that the state had that in mind when they set it up that way so you're saying if you see you can get additional personnel through there through that revenue stream mean if we're spending and if they could be used for other capacities. Well, you need to use it on infrastructure.

54:02 Right. But infrastructure requires personnel to actually go out and, you know. OK, Ms. Tiggs. Is that, am I off base on that? Thinking that we're better off, well, I'm never going to say any council members are off base. But I think I followed the conversation. City Attorney and I just had a sidebar. I think there's a way to achieve using some modernization funds for personnel costs, not for personnel directly, but personnel costs. So currently, there is no prohibition against reimbursing ourselves personnel costs if we're using them on a project that that money would cover.

54:49 So under home rule, I would opine, I want to do a little more research with the city attorney, but I think there's a way to achieve that You know when we get federal grants, we're allowed to pay ourselves back an administrative cost for the employees we use I think if we could account for time appropriately and we'd have to have some really good controls and public works to make sure We're accounting for the time the right way But I think if we account for time the right way there may be a way to reimburse ourselves some of those personnel Okay. Is that a long stretch or is that something that's really really easy doable?

55:23 I would put it in the medium. I don't think it's a long stretch but as we've thought through the framework just sitting here I think that's doable. Now does um on the same uh um angle the blight work if we hire people to go out and bulldoze you know old buildings or whatever is that considered is that qualified for modernization tax no that's an easy no so blights an unfortunate no but an easy okay so modernization tax is supposed to be for physical infrastructure such as roads sewer water or building buildings and rehabilitation of buildings written not demolition not demolition of force okay councilwoman okay mr. Lorenzo just a question the city garage follow up under you right yes ma'am if we take the police and have them have their own garage would that free up some of your money no it would free up some of the work orders but the money would be the same, basically you'll just be transferring money from fleet, our fleet, to police fleet, which is still the same general fund.

56:44 Which I would recommend if you're going to transfer money to do that, centralize it and give us more money. If you're sending money to fire or you're sending money to police, you can give it to public works. all jury fund if it was something that was done. Like I really don't have clarity on what the change is. I know that I don't have the number that you all have, have the number that I presented. Are we talking about the 16.8 million? Or are we talking about the 14 and the motion that was carried?

57:23 Yeah, what figure were we discussing? And let's follow up on your question as well. So just to interrupt, so Chief, would that, I know the city contract a lot of its work out, but would it free up some of your money if you had your own city garage instead of contracting so much out? Chief Frackley, GPD. Yes, we currently allocate approximately $100,000, I mean, a million dollars in repairs. And those are the majority of them are labor that we are paying to these small garages to do our vehicles.

58:02 We are now currently in the process of attempting to centralize and alleviate some of that burden off of public works because the vehicles just back up too quickly. The amount of, we're heavy consumers of the garage system and the garage does not have the capability, capacity to be able to do that work. In addition, the garage does not carry an inventory basically. So we are piecemealing every single part that we order out from either AutoZone, Mike Hikes place, Radiator Places, etc. So we could save a large amount of money and that's currently something that we're pursuing to centralize our vehicles, our vehicle maintenance.

58:45 And just even our asset management as we've been able to determine, there are quite a few vehicles that are not in the city system that we are uncovering that no one has been able to account for and literally they've showed up as the words missing on the inventory. And we've been able to track those slowly but surely down. Thank you. Chief of Staff Norwood just put her hands up. We have currently four vehicles that are missing that no one knows where those vehicles are where they were previously, who they were assigned to.

59:25 Actually, as we've been doing our inventory assets, the chief of staff along with our individual who's assigned to that unit now have literally been driving past garages, spotting our vehicles and recovering those vehicles. It's too soon, sorry. I was going to. It is way too soon. And again, we are being very intentional. Again, not only just recovering the vehicles, but what source of money paid for vehicles and who they were distributed to so that we are making sure that we are in compliance with grants. But also with general funds, if you gave us general fund monies for vehicles, were those vehicles actually being distributed within the JPD or were they being distributed throughout the city?

1:00:16 Chief, now you mentioned those four vehicles and that opens up a whole other question here. Is it due to some type of mismanagement and they go into a garage that we're not aware of or chop shop, you know, someone's riding around with a police car? What's, I mean, you're opening up a question. I'm going to be very careful the way that I say this. But from the very first point of entry, we just don't have a really good accounting system. And if we want to discuss it further, it probably would be a better executive session to do that in.

1:00:50 Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your forthrightness in letting us know that. Okay, and I think that we have a discussion earlier about a centralized garage. I spoke with one of the council members about perhaps having one big centralized garage for everybody. And that was my recommendation is you give police a million dollars to have their garage. You give fire department whatever over $1.5 million to do their garage. Well, they got different vehicles. Right. If our fleet is $800,000 and you expect us to take care of all these things, and you're outsourcing, why don't you spend that $1 million?

1:01:35 If you're outsourcing $1 million, bring it in-house and centralize it. I think you would save more money. Now, if you talk my time, Chief is right about inventory. I had the same. She was very nice about it. But I had the same thing about we need to do a better job of inventory in normal vehicles. This was over years and years and years of inventory. We need to have a system where it's centralized. You come in, you get checked out, you tell you when you need your oil changed.

1:02:04 Right now, it's more of like the wild, wild where people just get their oil changed when they want to. It needs to be systemized where I've been in systems where they call you and tell you, you need to come and get your oil changed on this day. It's documented in 2021. I know I had a transmission change on that vehicle. And it's linked to the vehicle number. And next 10, 20 years, you'll have your inventory on it. And I think they need to be centralized and not siloed in different areas.

1:02:35 Mr. Anderson, are you missing any vehicles that you know of? I'm pretty sure we are. Pretty sure we are, OK. Yes, sir. I don't know. I don't know. What we're talking about is some type of inventory system and maintenance software. I thought we had approved something like that within the last couple of years. Excuse me, Council President. I just wanted to second Parkinson's motion. It was, yeah, I was going to take it. What was the motion? The motion was concerning pulling out some money from Public Works and placing it in JPD.

1:03:16 That's what's on the table, and that's what still is on the table. Ms. Carwell, can you add anything to illuminate this issue? Yes, as far as the system, our financial system, Tyler Muniz, it can track all of those charges for vehicles. Even when we were discussing building improvements, the software will track all of that. We just have to use it. And so I think, you know, now that we have new administration on board, We can reach out to them for some training of whoever will be responsible for managing that, but we have the capability within our current system to track all of those things related to vehicles.

1:04:01 And buildings. And buildings. And I think we need to put that to use. Immediately and perhaps in our committee meetings we can bring that up. Certainly within public works I'll plan on having that on the agenda as well. We need something more advanced, I would say, we need something more advanced than this dedicated to vehicle inventory. We had a RFQ and IT that's part of the proposal to update and more advanced, meaning this is more like financial. We need more inventory related. And to the question about, I still don't know the amount that's pulled from Public Works.

1:04:41 I need to know what are we pulling from Public Works and adding to police? Yep, Ms. Carwell, do we have any information as you guys work through tonight, burning the midnight oil, what did you do to Public Works? No, she's talking about, he's talking about Kevin's motion. Oh, oh, his amendment. Well, they're related. What I'll say is when we very first started started the budget process for this year, Public Works was at a certain level. When we got the budget on late Friday, technically Saturday, the personnel line item for Public Works had jumped $500,000.

1:05:24 What I'm proposing is adjusting it such that only $250,000 is added. So you're still higher than we were when we started this game. So is it the- But that comes with the liability of those functions that were turned over public works from planning. Right. That was- No, I'm talking about personnel. The person that my item is specifically addressing the personnel services, which went up $500,000. Yeah, it did. But I was thinking that that- what was it you moved over from planning to- That was $5 million.

1:05:59 That was the light bill. Those are the light bills? That is separate. I haven't touched that. Okay. Public works they don't physically pay the bills. Bills are paid by the department administration. It's just paid, it was paid out of the planning budget and you all actually moved to the public work. So we just moved the budget for the lights and the bills. But I do think Mr. Taylor's point is really good because if we can get better at managing that line item, line item, any cost savings that is adjusted in there would be living in the Public Works budget. So it really is a boost to Public Works. It just comes with a, as Mr. Thales said, a performance indicator. How much money can you save in our light bill? Because every dime that you save in our light bill is directed towards other public works.

1:06:56 OK. So are we? Mr. Carwell. In those early morning hours, and you guys added something to the public works budget, was there a rationale behind that? Yes. As CAO Davidson stated, a lot of the work for the streetlights, we moved over the streetlights from the planning department. That was about four million plus. Okay, let me add to that. I'm sorry, go ahead. Both Mayor Horne and council members have specifically asked us to try and find additional funds for public works. That has been a shared consensus among the governing authorities.

1:07:38 So yes, we did move the 4.1 million over from planning over there as an incentive to public works to get a handle on the streetlights, but we also put additional funds in there because there had been a request. Mayor Horne wanted a couple of million dollars. We told them we don't know where we're gonna find it, but we'll find what we can. Councilman Hartley, you had said that there's been public works support from all of you. And so what we tried to do was one, give one pot of money that may incentivize, but also found whatever other money that Mr. Jackson could shake out of the couch cushions to also put into the public works budget.

1:08:15 So as I understand what Councilman Parkinson is saying, he's not touching the street light money, He's touching the additional money that we put in there. Some of the additional money. I'm sorry, correct. There's still getting more. A portion of it, right? Yes. So my question is, is it the eight? Is it eight million, or is it 10 million? Because I want to make sure we start at the same number, because I proposed 10 million and $10.5 million for my budget. Now, is it the 8.5? This extra money that they put in your budget, not what you put on it.

1:08:50 I got 19 million. Yes, so you added the 500,000 to the 8.5 million, so that was my understanding. So we were asking for 10.5. So... Yes, sir. And Chief asked for a lot and Director Slater asked for a lot and Director Brown asked for a lot and Chief Thomas asked for a lot. So I understand the need and we were able to get, even if my amendment passes, You're still getting more than you were when the show began As much as I would love to allocate a hundred million dollars to your two personnel items in there Miss Carwell Okay, we're discussing the mayor and the CEO said hey look we had some concerns we allocated an additional monies We found it other places to put in public works So let's let's say that's put to bed. Is the fire department and police department getting what they need? I mean before we start pulling at what they had, I'm sorry Mr. Taylorson. That's not a fair question. I'm sorry, I'm going to rephrase it Council. I think every department

1:10:20 director all the way down to the city attorney and myself have said none of us are getting what we need. Yes. And so I just want to be careful about the word need because we don't have the revenue we need. And so we're trying to make sure every department gets what they can best use to deliver the services. But if we get caught up in are we meeting needs, I think the point it was made a little while ago we're probably a hundred million dollars short if we really get caught up in the needs. So that's a question we can't answer when it just comes straight is everyone getting what they need. Okay I'll rephrase counselor the question were there considerations for the for the police and fire department during your discussions? Yes. Okay and as a result of it? I can let me pull a report to see how much additional we gave but there were some increases in in those areas as well.

1:11:25 Okay, thank you. Point of clarification. I don't think that that's true. I'm looking right now, for example, police. Page nine of the big document that we have here that we just got late Friday, technically Saturday, is saying 32,994,200. If you look at the page two two of the expenditures document that we received on the very first day when we started this thing, it is $32,994,200. So that's the same. And if I'm also looking correct, fire, and I went through all this this weekend, but fire is the same exact amount as well. So the The only department that got additional funds was Public Works.

1:12:39 I think Ms. Caldwell, unless I misheard, I think she may have misspoken. She said, yeah, when we were redoing this, we gave police a little bit more, we gave fire a little bit more, but from what I can tell, that's not accurate. The only department that got more in the version that came out late Friday, technically Saturday was Public Works. So from the original proposed to the one we just released, the updated proposed, yes. But from the, this one, on fire. The fire department did receive an increase from the current year budget to the original proposed budget.

1:13:26 Yeah, still less than the actual from 25. Yeah. I got a question. Councilman Foote. Thank you, Mr. President. On police, we've got over here the budget presented us on page nine shows, Personnel Services, $27 million, $602, 130. Is that sufficient? Or how many sworn officers can we hire with that personnel budget of 27 million. Because I'd like to hire or target hiring like 255 sworn officers. Chief. That's okay with you Mr. Mayor. Yeah, you got a deep pocket in there. That's what I'm trying to line up.

1:14:15 How much money is that? So I'm running our numbers back and forth. And so the 32.9 million is the exact same number that we were given at the very beginning. It looks like what happened, and I'm just now seeing this budget is, We just reduced the amount that we were supposed to pay for supplies and other things and then dropped it into the personnel budget instead. Is that what it looks like? I don't know. Yeah, I'm just kidding. I haven't even seen the numbers. I'm grabbing them for the first time the same as you are.

1:14:44 So in other words, all we did was go back to the same 2021 FY budget that we were operating under before. The budget that I presented to you was option three that even to get me for 255 officers, the number was 34 million. So at this one here, we're going to stay at our exact same number. And we're asking that instead the number, if we stay at 32 million, that's the exact same number that we used in 2021 for the number of officers. And if I believe that would currently hold us at about 210 officers is what our current one would be.

1:15:25 Again, I'm just getting the number in front of me so. Okay. There are no changes on a JPD from the original proposed amount. So how much, how many officers on that original? So I. We'd have to freeze and stay where we currently are, if I'm correct, to operate. So we would have no increases. The number of officers that we are currently operating with, if I'm correct, would mean that we would not hire another individual beyond the numbers that we currently are now, correct? You're currently around 237.

1:15:58 No, we are not. We are, the last number we gave was 212 and we've lost officers since then. So if the number we're going with now would put us at 230 officers, that we would be freezing us at, that would be approximately 45 less than we were currently budgeted for in 2026. It's also another 20 less than I believe I could even try and get us to operate at. 255 would be the lowest budget that I could even figure out. So we're now saying that this one would give me the 220, 230, 230 officers.

1:16:35 So that's even 20 less. Let me ask, let me re-ask the question. So wherever we are right now, 212, how much does it cost to increase the sworn officers by 10? So it's $63,000 a year if I'm correct with their total fringe and their entry rates at $50,000. Sixty-three thousand? Yes, 63 something. And we presented it to you in the very first one of our budget's proposals what an officer plus their fringe would be. It'd be about 63,000 if I'm correct. But we couldn't get there next week if we gave you an extra $630,000 for 10 officers.

1:17:20 It takes you a while to get those 10 answers, correct? Sir, at the rate that some of the things that are going on in JPD, we would have a struggle, but we're trying to plan a class for October, which our goal is an October class. And so, again, getting us to those numbers, part of it is a combination of terminations that are going on right now. The other ones are retirements. Some people have moved to another agencies. Again, they're staying in the region, the ones who are not, the ones who are voluntarily leaving JPD.

1:17:55 Okay. To my council members, thank you for that information. But I think we need to step up and be bold in setting a target of 255 and put up enough money to get us there, say, by December or something like that. And I will add to what you're saying. I'm not saying public work is not important. It is. But police and fire, by working with the department for 25 years, if we don't get them what, actually what they need, it get burnt out. The officers get burnt out from working short.

1:18:35 So we need to find a way to come up to make sure we find our police and fire. OK. I just want one question. Ms. Caldwell, according to everything you have, what are we trying to budget for this year? Was that 237 or 230? Or what? 230. 230, okay. This was more around 230 officers. And we're looking at $63,000 per officer increase after that. Okay, Councilman Parkinson, I'm sorry. One more thing. Also, we complain about the overtime, But if we don't have enough officer, you have to pay your officer to work overtime.

1:19:18 So if you give them the money upfront to get the officer that they need, overtime will come down. Yeah. And the other thing I'd say is that in police presence around neighborhoods, around the city, is a huge deterrent to crime. You know, we'd like, I'd like to have a police on every street, every block, whatever, we can't do that. But I think police presence is a key component of public safety. So I'm big on that. And just my comment is, I think the broken window theory speaks for itself.

1:19:54 Places that are in disarray, disheveled community, generates more crime and more fires. And there are statistics out there that proves that every day. So I just wanted to throw that out there for conversation as well as consideration. And I agree, Mr. Davidson, we wish we had more for everybody, but that's just not the case. Did you have comments, sir? Yeah, thank you. Just to put a point on this. So I really appreciated this revised budget that chief had presented us when she came to second time And she included budgets for up to 275 sworn officers, 265 sworn officers, and 255 sworn officers.

1:20:43 And it includes not only the personnel services line, but also a lot of the other line items as well that is needed to support a force of that size. And so I actually think if I look at the most recent version that we got, the personnel services in police is actually sufficient, if not actually, maybe even a little high, but all of these other items are woefully short in order to support a police force of the size. And so ultimately, we need about a million more dollars in police to get to a force of 255.

1:21:21 And I share your concern, Mr. Foote, I think that's the bare minimum, the bare minimum we should do. And if my amendment goes through, we're a quarter of the way there. We would still have to find a lot of other money, but this gets us a quarter of the way towards that goal. Just my final comment on this, and that is I'm an environmentalist that's been doing work and have worked in public works for years. And so, and I'm chair of the Public Works Committee. And so, you know, it's sort of, you know, it's a trade thing.

1:21:56 But I do know the effects of cleaning up the blight and its reduction in crime and fires. We've had to respond to the Chapel Ridge Apartments pretty much every day. Fires. Six times during July. If we dispose of that in another way through code enforcement, you know, or some other matter, then we can reduce that strain on our fire department. So it has to be, you know, we have to look for these overarching goals and not just response, but prevention as well. And I would argue that plenty of studies out there that says go in and clean up an area you've got an immediate reduction in crime.

1:22:46 And so I again, this body will decide and I hope it, you know, there are no easy answers Mayor. But we're going to do the best we can to make it work. Comments? Okay, we have a motion. Yes, sir. I have one other comment. I want the public to understand this. I know the council does. But even if you appropriate all that money, we have to actually be able to find those folks who are willing to work, whether it's police or public works. I have done everything but get on my knees in this council chamber and beg for people to come work in public works.

1:23:24 I've been saying that for months, yet we still have a number of unfilled positions in public works. I think the same thing with the police department and we're always saying we need more law enforcement. I say that because even if we appropriate the money, the public needs understand we can't magically make police officers or public works employees appear. All we can do is appropriate the money and be aggressive about our recruitment efforts. I also will say that if we somehow in this city fill the public works positions and the police positions and hold them at the number you've budgeted then it's on the administration to find some more money so we can increase it from there. So you know I don't think anybody's gonna and come back and say, well, we hit 237 or 230 or whatever this is and we're done.

1:24:13 I think at that point it's incumbent upon us to figure out where to get the next five or 10. And the same for public works. When those positions are filled and steady, I hope Director Anderson's back here saying, I've got 40 or 45 positions filled and I need some more people. And then we roll up our sleeves again and figure out where we're gonna get more funding for that. So I just want the public to understand, I think without a question, Mayor Horne and this city council is going to pass a good budget that puts people in place.

1:24:43 Public, we need you to come work in these jobs and we need you to be a part of the solutions here at the City of Jackson, thank you. Just to add to you, can you also, cause I had a few call me about applying for public work. Can you tell them where to go? Cause they went under the city website, but they didn't see it. And I called Mr. Anderson in reference to it. H-R-O. but they need to post it for them to apply. We, I will get with the HR director and make sure those positions are out there to be filled.

1:25:14 Yes, sir. And I'd like to echo what you basically said without being too, get too deep, but look, directors, we need folks working. We need people working, not holding up a counter, not presence in a seat, but to actually get things done. And to that end, we will be focusing our committees. I will ask everyone on our committees, our chairs, to make sure that they have metrics in place. Because we got to get back to that. At once upon a time, we had that, where, hey, you had to document everything you did every week when I was working for the city.

1:25:58 We got to get back to that, where you justify the dollars that's put in your hands. Now, if you're here just for a stroll, or you anticipate a job with the city just so you can hang out, then this is not the place and this is not the time. So we want to invite people to work, but we want them also to have a passion for their city as well. Mayor? So that's one of the primary reasons we're putting the KPI standards in place. We have to have key performance indicators of how our workers are doing it, what they're getting accomplished when they were employed with the city of Jackson.

1:26:36 So the sooner and faster we get those KPIs, the better. Thank you, sir. We'll be looking forward to that. Do we wanna hear from any department heads about the KPI process or some initial thoughts that you have? Okay. Okay, is there any discussion while we wait for Councilman Foote to get back and we'll take the vote? Anything else? I do believe, I do plan on having a monthly public works meeting. I think Councilman Parkinson, you mentioned a monthly meeting? Yes, we're planning monthly finance meetings where we'll look at the actuals.

1:27:20 And so that'll start, I think it's like mid-November looking at the first month and we'll keep our eye on our revenues up, our revenues down, our expenditures up, our expenditures down, monitor ongoing, and hopefully that'll avoid the urgent crunches at the last of the fiscal year. Yeah and councilman Councilwoman Brown. Yes we have a public safety committee meeting also this Thursday at 4. Thursday at 4. Public safety meeting. Fantastic and again if you're directors we will be looking at metrics. We want to know what have you been doing and the results because we're bending everything towards efficiency and being effective. I I think if there's not any more discussion, we can dispose of that one motion that's on the floor.

1:28:08 You want to repeat it one last time, sir? Yes, sir. It's a motion to adjust the personal services line in public works from the general fund to 8,837,480 and to adjust the other services and charges line of the police line in the general fund to 1,728,262. Can you mention the specifics from each department? Yes, sir. So previously, the Public Works Department was given an additional $500,000. This takes $250,000 of that and directs it towards the police, such that the Public Works Department would still have an additional $250,000 and the police would also have an additional $250,000.

1:28:57 OK. That's the motion on the floor. If there's no further comments, all in favor? Opposed? Now the same. So the motion. And on the, do we have other council members on the left side? What is your will? Okay, then it carries then. 4-2-4-0-1. I'm sorry, 3-0-1. Okay, next item, is there any Any other discussion, council? Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Mr. Taillieson, when you presented your budget, you shared that the budget was based on four individuals, yourself, Sylvia, and two additional folks, which I believe at one point was the size of the CAO's office, if not bigger.

1:30:02 And you mentioned at that time, you said, I could see an argument for potentially going down to three. You said, please, please, please add at least one additional person to the CAO's office, which I think is totally fair. I'm wondering if you still feel that way, and then if so, Ms. Caldwell, if you have a recommendation for, if we were to add just one additional person to that office, if you include salary and fringe, what would be an estimated amount that we might be able to reduce that for?

1:30:32 Because I'm about to make another motion that we take that from there and direct it towards fire. Peter Taber is the CAO. So in the FY26 budget there were actually two vacancies in the CAO's office that I did not fill. Obviously I was one of the first people to recognize the budget challenges that would be forthcoming so I did not fill those. I will also say that the number of things that come through the CAO's office, having a third person in there beside myself and Miss Peavy would be helpful. I think there was both an assistant CAO and a deputy CAO on the books. I did not attempt to fill either those, did not talk with the mayor about filling either of those. Going forward though, I think a third person would allow us to one dial in the KPIs we're talking about and also dial in some of the details about making sure that we're selling equipment and doing other things we've discussed. It's simply beyond two people. So I would ask that you leave

1:31:28 one of those positions. I still concede you can take one. I think ideally having four people in that office is the right size, but where we are with the structure of the city and where the needs are, I will stand by what I said previously, you can take one of those positions and reallocate that money elsewhere. And I would ask that you leave one and that we might attempt to fill that during FY 27. Yeah, Ms. Co, would you estimate if you include the salary and fringe and related expenses, 60,000 safe, 70,000, what would be a safe amount?

1:32:10 It depends on what position we're looking at. So we could, I mean, we could get a person for 70,000, but. Do you have a preference as to which one you keep, Mr. Davidson? I think y'all know me well enough after the last 14 months, whatever you leave me with, I'm gonna make work. Okay, and that comes from the personnel administration, is that correct? That position would come from personnel services in administration. General government. General government, okay, give me one second. So for a starting salary of approximately 50,000, that would get you a salary line of about 70,000 to include fringes.

1:33:13 Okay. While we're waiting on the calculation. our solid waste are we still getting money from Jackson water on a timely basis yes we typically send the invoices and he pays them right up right behind us sending them so going into this next year we won't perhaps we won't be looking at pulling money out of the general fund to prop up this the enterprise fund Well, we still have a significant amount that we have not received from before this new arrangement. He just started back making payments in January of 2020.

1:33:58 And so those payments that we have not received, we're still working with him to receive those funds. Do you know how much we might have coming? That was approximately seven to nine million dollars, I believe. Seven to nine million that's owed to us. Mr. President. Yes. I move that we adjust the personnel services line of general government in the general funds to 5,362,934 and adjust the personnel services line of the fire department in the general fund to 24,171,517 which essentially moves $70,000 from the CAO's office to personnel for the fire department. I second. Okay it's been moved and properly second. Discussion councilman good you have anything any any councilman on the live size any comments? Are you ready to vote? Yeah sure. Okay all in favor? Okay.

1:35:38 Mr. President I got a motion I'd like to make. Yes sir. What was that vote? 4-0. Okay. Go ahead councilman. This is less about money than it is about organization. I think I wouldn't like to make an amendment to combine the HR department, IT department, constituent services department, and communications department together in the one department. Was that? That's HR, the HR department, IT department constituent services department and communications department can I ask a clarifying question before we well I need a second to get it on the floor if anyone want to get it on the floor what a second if you withdraw your motion so it doesn't die by lack of second I might be interested in that later I just I'm not ready okay if nobody will second it up and withdraw my motion okay I believe that I think we really need some heart discussions on sure and after the budget is is a past I think I think we need to make these changes during the budget is more difficult afterwards I just think we need

1:37:08 the streamline and and you know it's I think improves accountability improves responsibility and actual efficiency in the government if we consolidate some of these departments. I understand people may not want to do that but that's what I think. Let me ask this if we do that consolidation will it will it impact our ongoing discussions concerning this budget? No, I can't see any, if you if you vote on his item, yes, I don't see any. Okay. Colleagues, did you all want to revisit that? Okay, not at this time, but I do believe that first out of the gate we will be hidden those consolidations as soon as we get this process behind us. Yes sir. Thank you Mr. President. Mr. President, I'm wondering if we can get clarity from either Director Brown or our CFO. Can you remind me the personnel services line item for planning and development? Does that include an expansion from our current levels and if so can we get an estimated amount if we froze planning at its current staffing levels? So the four million here is this all people or is

1:39:03 this just general fund? Any contracts in that four million line or? No. Four million one oh four? Yes so where did you put the like Opengov and the folk festival? that will be other services and charges. Okay. 852. Gotcha, so then the four million would be, I think only of the losses, so we didn't lose about 15 individuals, so this would keep five of those roles in the budget. Of the, what I have 70 people right now. What page is this on, we're looking at? 67. Page 10.

1:39:41 Page 10. Yeah, so I have around 70 individuals excluded in this budget and five will be unfilled rows of the 15 we lost to keep about 16 we lost five of those rows in the budget. Where does the folk festival fit in here? What line the item is the folk festival on? So that will be in the other services and charges. How much have you got set aside for the folk festival? So we do 200,000 for folk festival. We do another like 215 for the open gov and then what if we turn the folk festival over to visit Jackson?

1:40:21 Well, we entered into I think we have a contract with them to pay the funding Yes the contract Okay, so then the remaining 400,000 is the commercial demolitions is about other services Yeah, okay, so if I go back to personnel services for a bit So that's the four four million one hundred thousand dollars would be your existing staff plus filling five of the vacancies You're saying you've lost about 15 and you'd like to bring about about at least five of those back I would love to see that happen. But what if we just brought back three of those people and not five of those people Approximately how much are we talking?

1:41:17 50,000, 40,000. I don't know what it would be with fringes. The most might have been like 42 might have been the highest. Is this your proposing an amendment or just, we're still just discussing. Once I get the information I will be proposing an amendment. Let me just throw something on the fire and that is what about the possibility of moving code enforcement from planning to JPD and that part of their budget would go to JPD's budget. Yeah I don't think that's all for a budget issue. If we want to talk about it from an efficiency perspective we can debate that. I'm talking about it. I'm talking about all of it.

1:42:05 Efficiency, more effectiveness, I think it'll be more effective if they show up representing the Jackson Police Department. No offense to the folks that find folks at planning. I think the only reason I say this, because I'm not sure if it's a germane motion at this time, just because I think it's like if this is a budget, unless we're talking about either, I can be mistaken, but unless we're talking about either raising or decreasing and if we're just moving it around, I don't think that solves necessarily for.

1:42:33 Well, I'm just trying to, I think it's noteworthy of consideration that it wouldn't change the budget because you'd move their pay with the personnel. I think we had several discussions by having a deeper conversation of pros and cons of moving me because we're gonna have similar issues in terms of process and enforcement. Did you want to put it out there? I know you were up the podium. I didn't want to mess with you. Okay. So three people at approximately $43,000 a position would be $183,000 with fringes.

1:43:16 Okay, I'm sorry, what if it was two so that we allowed them to hire for three of the people? That would be a hundred and twenty two thousand. What was the first number you said? Okay, so a hundred and twenty two thousand you said? Okay, tell me the number one more time, please. One hundred twenty two thousand. Okay, while he's calculating if you would But don't forget, you know, we needed a response to Councilwoman Clay. Yes, I have it when you're ready. Okay, when he finished that, then we can give her that response.

1:44:18 Ms. Callwell, on the Planning and Development Department, the bottom line is operating transfers and shows here is they're budgeted for a million 898. Last year and current proposed budget is 3.157 million. What is operating transfers? That would be your transfers to J-Trans. So the planning department makes transfers to J-Trans for the match on the grant. Oh, those are the matching grants for those million dollar buses? Yes, sir. You have to put it like that. Million dollar buses. Did you want to go ahead and present that information concerning, I think, Councilwoman Clay's?

1:45:15 She asked about the fiscal year 24 and 25. Yes. So in FY 24, we received an additional $11 million in the month of September. And in FY 25, we received an additional $12.7 million in the month of September. What's that? What did we get it for? Mostly taxes. Oh, well, you're back to taxes. I thought you were talking about planning. Yes. No. No, we. Councilwoman Clay. Councilwoman Clay needed an answer. So that was 11 million, no change? It was 11 million. Okay, and then 12-point sale.

1:45:57 And fiscal year 25. Sir. And fiscal year 25. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I'll make sure she gets that information. Mr. President? Go right ahead, sir. I move that we adjust the salary personal services line in the Planning and Development Department for the general fund to $3,982,870, that we adjust the other services and charges line of the police department of the general fund to $1,828,262, and that we raise the personnel services in the fire department to $24,193,000, I'm sorry, $24,193,517. Essentially what we would do is we would take $122,000 from the planning department, we would give $100,000 of that to the police and $22,000 of that to fire.

1:47:12 Second. Okay, it's been moving properly. Second. Question. Okay, so basically what you're saying you killing one or two of her positions and you leave leaving her with three that she can't correct. Okay. Okay, it's been moving properly second. Is there any further discussion? If not, all in favor? Abstain. Passes 301. Okay. Thank you. Mr. President, we have a liaison position in the CFO's office. If we were to adjust that, what would be the savings on that particular position? If we were to, if we needed to remove that position, what would the savings be for that item?

1:48:29 That would be approximately 90,000. 90,000? Yes. With fringes. Okay, and what department is that under? Administration. And we have not yet adjusted personnel services in administration, correct? We've adjusted general government. We haven't the administration line item, correct? We've just done general government. Okay. Okay, let me get the first. Well, yes, you touched the CAO's office. Yes. The other than the CAO's office. Was that an administration or general government? Okay, all right. Okay. Question while... Go right ahead, sir. Ms. Caldwell, on page 14, the state tort claims fund last year, in the previous year, were budgeted at $7 million at $19,000.

1:51:51 We've only got down here a proposed budget of $2.305 million. does that does the state inform us what our tab is each year is that where the is that given to us by the state or somebody have to make an estimate on that? The 1.9. There's a format. So there's a statutory formula that can't risk management. Okay. Why did it change so dramatically from last year from 7 million to 2.3? Well, it actually gets spent to change it more than the page 14. 14 That's a show any spin it just says it says revenues, but we don't get paid by the state doing I thought that was an expense But it's listed as revenues to them like that, okay, we have to set that money aside Okay, I see so we set that money aside and then we just see how it goes during the course Right, so we keep, y'all have to explain this part, but the fund has been changed in one place, and then we say, hey, we settle the case, or we have attorney's fees, for example,

1:53:39 where we're defending such and such days, while we put together an order and a distribution to the city fund, you see revenues. So what happens, let's say just theoretically, if you finished the whole year and you didn't have any, or you just had like, if you... Then it rolls back into the general fund. It goes back into the general fund, or it just stays there and you... And then it gets reset back into... You don't have to put as much. So do you know where we stand right now versus what we'd set aside?

1:54:20 I know we're well under $7 million, but I do not know. Yes, let me get that. You can see it open, so you can pull it up. I actually have not ever read it. Mr. President. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just was trying to get some information while we were waiting for. Councilman Parkinson. Thank you. I move that we amend the budget such that the personal services line in administration in the general funds is $3,156,433. What page are you on? That is page 11, sir.

1:55:03 I also, as part of this amendment, think that the personal services line in the fire department on page nine should be $24,226,571. And also part of this amendment that the other services and charges line in the police line item in the general fund becomes $1,885,262. Essentially what I've done is I've taken the 90,000 from the administration line item in personnel, directed 33 of that towards the fire department and 57 of that towards the police department. Yes, sir. Okay, it's been moved and properly seconded. Repeat that once more.

1:56:33 Repeat the end result or repeat what basically happened. What basically happened? Who are we, where's Peter and where's Paul? 90,000 from the administration personnel line item and then split that 90,000, such that 33 goes to the fire department 57 goes to the police department. Okay it's been moved and properly second. Is there any other discussions? If not all in favor? Opposed? Okay okay I'll just note I'm sorry go ahead. I'll just say thus far you know what I would love to do is find in a million dollars for police and a million dollars for fire and I think for police, Mr. Foote, that gets us to the 255 sworn officers we've discussed. So far, we've been able to find $407,000 for police and $125,000 to fire. So while on our way, at this point in time, I'm all out of ideas. So I think we have to look at...

1:57:40 I think you need to work real hard on the fire department, because the fire department is going to affect everybody in the city of Jackson. And we talk about population. You're going to see a whole bunch of people that can afford to stay, move out of the city if you can't change that fire rating, okay? So I agree crime is a very, very important, but everybody in the city is affected by the fire department. You're homeowners, you're renters, you're business owners, you're everybody, okay? So work hard for the fire department, because if not, you're going to see people lighten up out of city. Between your flood insurance and your fire insurance, it's going to be exit road. I completely agree. The fire does not discriminate. Fire is going to go everywhere.

1:58:29 And to your point as well, at the end, it affects not only fire safety and people's sense of safety and security, but insurance rates and other items. So I'm proud that we were able to get an additional 125,000 thus far and I welcome any ideas that you have to raise that even more. My ultimate goal, like I said, is to give police an additional 1 million and fire an additional 1 million. We started that process but we're a long ways off so if you have any other places that can be cut, I welcome any and all suggestions. So how close are we? The department does an excellent job with grants. You may need to let them write some grants to figure out how to get their money.

1:59:08 The fire department does not do as well. So you may be concentrating on fire, giving them money, and then what, how they come back midterm and making some changes. Because if you let your fire department stay like it is, I guarantee you the city of Jackson is on suffer. And if you left your police department stay like it is, the city of Jackson is gonna suffer. And the public works. about it. Let's take a deeper dive and see if there is any other areas that we can go right ahead. This is for Ms. Caldwell on page 12, general government the other services and charges align is for this year proposed 4.8 million. What all is that what discovered net 4.8 million for general government so that's where the contracts are for the for general government what about our what about our our contract for parking meters parking meters would have been a planning department but there have not been any payments made in this year have we have Have we found out whether that contract can be nullified?

2:00:35 Mr. Martin? Peter Davidson, CAO. Oh, the contract can be nullified. It's what other consequences are nullifying that you really wanna know. And I'll speak for Mr. Martin. I think we would prefer to discuss that in executive session. Mr. Martin and I have both looked at that together. That's why I grabbed the mic. And I think we have a shared base of knowledge. We're more than happy to talk to you about that, but it wouldn't involve potential litigation so 4.8 million is that just contracts like the parking meter contract or like?

2:01:11 Like Smith wills or what contracts are in that list 4.8 mills a lot of money That's money we're getting paid we're getting paid that money from contracts well. I should be getting paid from Smith wills Parks and Recreation. That's expenses on Parks and Recreation and money we're getting paid. Oh that goes into Parks and Recreation? Okay so it ends up in planning right? Didn't they merge or for Parks and Recreation? They went into Public Works. Is that right? So it goes in. OK. So I'm just curious what those items are that almost $5 million.

2:02:12 While I'm pulling that, also the claims amount so far this year where we had the $2 million budgeted for next year. You're talking about the tort claims? Yes, sir. We've currently paid out $1,029,000. That's pretty good. I'm going to pay that one. If we set aside $7 million, if we set aside $7 million, we only paid out $1.29. That means we shouldn't even have to pay torque. We should just leave the money in there, $6 million in there, and move forward without having to budget anything for torque claims.

2:02:48 So we can hope nothing goes wrong in the next 20 days. There's your money right there. We can fix police. That would be beautiful. I'm personally comfortable with that risk. I mean, not all of it, but I'm personally comfortable with some of that risk if the law allows it. Well, it's a formula, so I mean, but the point is, do I understand this correctly on the tort claims that we set aside $7 million in there that we then we can pay? No, tell me, Brandon, tell me what it is.

2:03:24 Make sure I understand this or the mechanics of how this works. So each year we actually set aside mining for appropriation to go to the state towards on claim fine. So that's around $1.9 million at this point. OK. That's what's actually coming out of the general fund to the state tort fund. So the 1.9 came out of the general fund and set over here in the tort claims account. Is that right? Correct. So that we can draw on it if you have expenses or whatever. So we get to September 30 and there's no more expenses, or maybe you have to wait for a month to see if there's any tail to it.

2:04:07 What happens to that 1.9 million? So if it's not appropriated or moved over, it stays within the general fund because it's not spent. Stays in the general fund. It doesn't stay in this court tort claim. Only what is necessary based on the. For the next year. Correct. OK. So we've got it set up right now. We're getting ready to set aside 2.7 million, right? I believe some of that will be money that was rolled over. that's still sitting in the account. Which is okay. But the $1.9 million is still appropriated within the budget.

2:04:50 All right, but okay. Anyway, it shouldn't have to compound. If we don't spend it, we should have access to it. That's why it goes to the general fund. So that's money that is gonna be in the general fund that doesn't show up in the revenue stream. I think that's right. All right. go back to your question about the four million that's paid out of the general government other services and charges line that is mostly our property insurance in October we pay 1.7 million and then the Evans agency for our workers comp payments and then you also pay your lobbyists out of that account public defenders those are the contracts that are so those are expenses not revenue okay for the page 12 I believe that was page 12 question mr. Slater your turn yes that 4.8 was the expenditures in general government okay fair enough thank Question.

2:06:09 Question. On your IT organization chart, I see under your system manager, you got that position field and you got three other positions that have not been filled. If you take one of these BSA away and let you keep one of them, would that be sufficient? Nathan Slater, Director of Technology. I believe we've already removed, they took away three positions from my, what was it, my original org chart. And. And which one was those? They took away. Who took it away? Because we had six vacancies. And then we.

2:06:57 Under system manager? Under the system. Well, I'm talking overall, talking overall number of positions. But let's talk about the system manager position. Okay. So under the system manager position, the question is if we took one away, could that person make do with just two? Yes, because it looks like you got three vacancies. How long have they been vacant? They've been vacant since I've been here. But in one reason, so we had budget cuts, right? We had the freeze that came in last year and we weren't able to do anything with those positions.

2:07:40 And the only position that we feel were those that, where we lost somebody, was somebody left in midstream of the budget year and we filled those positions, but then those that were declared vacant, we did not fill those positions, any of them. So my question is, would you be able to survive with only one BSA? You got a BSA one, BSA two, and then you got a network person under that line item, that system manager field. We could make it work the issue that we're going to have is is paying a competitive salary for someone to come in To the field that's that's our the biggest issue that we have with recruitment is that most Organizations around town that have technology professionals are paying a much higher salary on what would see Jackson is offering Okay under this telecommunication manager. You have a franchise service administration administration. We definitely need that position. There's the position that that inspects all of the towers and what we receive our tower revenue and we're in the process of trying to fill that position now. So back to the system

2:08:55 manager would you be able to do with one? I would make it work. We make it work. I'll pick up that ball. Ms. Caldwell how much money would we be able to save from IT personnel services with the elimination of one of the BSA positions. Mr. Slater, do you have a preference on if you could have one, would you want the BSA one or the BSA two? It would definitely be the two position. Okay, if we eliminated BSA one. 62,385. Let's just say 62,800. 62,800. That's what French men fist, alright?

2:10:11 this the elimination of BSA 1 you said 60 I think I think I said 62,000 60 thousand miss car will okay so the changes we make this for we're still we're still balanced yes okay mr. president correct answer I move that we adjust the personal services line in the information technology department in the General Fund to $1,841,345, that we adjust the personnel line item in the fire department for the General Fund to $24,257,571, and that we adjust the other services and charges line in the police department to $1,916,262.

2:12:51 what we've done is we've taken the 62,000 we split it evenly for police and fire. I second. Okay it's been properly moved and second. Any further discussions? Foot? Are you good with it? Sure. Councilman Parkinson, any changes? Just the items that I just Okay, all right. It's been moved and properly second Bearing no additional comments all in favor Okay, opposed for zero, okay Mr. President, I don't have any additional ones at this time. I don't think I'm quite ready to Vote on this. I think there's a I'd like to take a little bit more see if we can do a little bit more That's my own personal preference. Of course. I don't claim to speak on behalf of the council one question I will ask is would it be possible if we do conclude today without voting and we need to schedule another meeting, would it be possible to get another version of this with the amendments that we've made today so we can see the latest?

2:14:34 I mean unless you all are ready to vote. No, no, I'm not ready. Mr. Anderson, Director Anderson, I have a question for you. If you don't know the answer, perhaps HR can help out. some of our lowest paid individuals that are in public works what's the salary? 22,000 a year which is 22,000 a year yes sir that's custodial services that make this under they've been grounded under $12. 12 dollars and what about the other field workers? The average 30,000 so between 30 and 45 but the biggest thing is being competitive the people that's out in the field fires construction if they get a skilled labor job like equipment operator they're gonna probably take it if you know they provide benefits but between 30,000. I'd like for you to consider and consider looking at maybe some of our contracts our contractual obligations and see if there's any savings there so we can help these folks out there's out in a hundred degree temperatures and freeze and weather to get to something that's meaningful that will allow them to to feed their families.

2:16:19 Yes, sir. Okay, so see if there if you can look, you know, before our next meeting, see if we can look at any type of contractual Areas where we can look at maybe increasing or giving them a slight raise. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Okay anything else? The I need to hear from from Human cultural services don't they oversee thiamara hall now? Is that Thymara Hall with them? Okay. Mr. Davidson, can you help out any? I need a reasonable estimate on the rent for Thymara Hall for the year.

2:17:04 Zero is not reasonable. Again, my answer is going to be the same answer I gave earlier this afternoon. Until I look back at the agreement that was entered into between the city and the convention authority last fall about this time, I don't want to answer that off top of my head. We gave them a big chunk of money to get it up and running and they did a great job. They got it up and running. Yes, you did. But it was certainly my understanding that we would get revenue streams from it.

2:17:33 Okay, please do. Please do. Yeah, okay. There's a line down here on page 6 that is 55-15 indirect costs. And it was $2,680,000. I guess is that cost or is it money that we expect to come in? You said page two? Page six. And it was budgeted last year for $2,680,000. So a lot of that came from the water department in the prior years. So is it a cost or is money they pay us? This is revenue that we were receiving as indirect revenue for the administrative functions related to the water department.

2:18:46 So they were? So when the city was overseeing the water department, we were transferring funds from the water department to the general fund for indirect costs. Indirect costs that we had, they were paying us? Yes, because the general fund has like your insurance, your accounting, your pay roll. Is this related to payroll for the people that work over there? Or is this something else? This is indirect costs. So the payroll, you can clearly identify where your payroll charges are. just extra cost that they've been paying us for.

2:19:31 Overpaying charges, yes. For being part of the city of Jackson. Okay, so why did we drop it from $2,680,000 to an estimate of $350,000? Because we're no longer receiving that revenue from the water department. Really? That's just a one-time deal? No, it was recurring when the city was overseeing the water department. But now that... seeing it in 25-26. We turned that over at the end of 22. And there are no actuals in those years either. Okay so so 350,000 why they paying us 350,000? Or is there some other indirect costs? So we also receive indirect costs from the landfill sanitation fund. Really? So that portion that's left is from what they're for that. Okay, all right, okay, and we don't know about the parking meters. Okay, then, let's see here, was one of the thing I was gonna look at. Well, please review the Thalia-Marra Hall Agreement so we can, I, we're sitting here trying to save 10,000 here, 20,000 there, and we've got zeros on a lot of these things that we just don't even know. So, you know, we can, we can play small ball, we can play big

2:20:51 And I think I'd rather play big ball because we got big problems, we got confronting here, we want to start out the year on the right foot and not stumble and fall down on our nose because we didn't count something. So having all the zeros down, I would encourage to look at each one of those and see if there's a number that should be put in there rather than zero. And it makes us look bad in the public eye too when we've got a parking meter contract that's been out for three or four years and we're making.

2:21:20 zero on it. Plus we create thousands of headaches for our constituents who try to come down or maybe decide not to come downtown because they don't want to deal with the parking meters. So please look through all the ones that are marked zero and see what we can do. We will do that. Thank you. That was quick. Okay look we are considering just adjourning this meeting instead of closing it out and and recessing until tomorrow. Can folks, can we just have a quick check? Do you know if you have an availability around 2.30 or 3 tomorrow?

2:22:00 I'll check and see. We don't, I wanna thank the people who were helping us on this and all that. And I apologize, sometimes I may come across as cross or whatever, because really, it really is important for the citizens of Jackson, that we don't pinch ourselves to the point where we are not providing services because we're not sure if we're gonna have money to provide the services. That's really not the way government should operate. It's the services that people signed up when they paid their taxes for fire and police and public safety and public works. And we can't sit, we say, well, we can't fill any potholes this month because we're not sure if we'll have enough money to make it to the next month.

2:22:37 That is just unacceptable government, okay? So we got to make this work. We need realistic estimates on everything. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. I think that's enough for today, but we certainly appreciate everyone's participation. This is a hard thing, and only the best is going to be able to do those hard things, and we appreciate the folks' dedication, and I agree. Let's fill in those zeros as much as Ms. Jilly, Ms. Cartwell, Ms. Cartwell, let's fill in those zeros as much as possible so we'll know, have a reasonable chance of sustaining some services instead of having to go in and find further cuts. And we would definitely take a harder look at those lines that had the zeros. What we found was that prior budgets were reporting revenues that we had not collected on and so where actuals were deemed to be zero that's that's where we put most of them but we would definitely take another look and make sure we have not missed anything because you might go on please let me

2:23:52 editorialize here a little bit you know Jackson's got we are asset heavy as as as Mr. Davidson has said. We got all these assets all over the place. I was glad to see that the JRA is putting an RFP or RFQ out for some of the properties down on Ferris Street. And we've got all these assets, but that so many of them are dormant because for whatever reason, and here we've got Thiamar Hall, we spent with the state's help several million dollars getting it fixed and we got a zero for the rent line.

2:24:26 And we got contracts where we looked like they were negotiated for the benefit of the vendor, not for the benefit of the citizens. And what have we gotten from Smith-Wills? Where does that Smith-Wills show up on our revenue line? I don't know. But they're supposed to be paying us $400,000 a year or something like that. We have to pursue every line in the budget so we can deliver the services that the citizens need and deserve for the taxes they pay. Thank you so much. I appreciate all your work on helping us get there. I appreciate your leadership and your thoughts and wisdom there Councilman Foote. Also, do you know how long it'll take before we get our review of the number of parks in that facility?

2:25:17 I will circle back to Director Junior. Okay. I had said we'd have something by the next meeting for sure. So we will, I think we'll have it before them, at least in draft form. I feel like the information's already ready, may not be in a final form, but I think there's something that could be shared with you by the end of this weekend, at least draft form. I appreciate that sir. Yes sir. I'd like an motion to recess. Yes sir, so moved. It's been moved and properly seconded. We recessed. Do we have a date, time tomorrow? We're working around 2.30 ish.

2:25:54 Okay, and we'll send out a confirmation. We do that at three o'clock instead, the 1% meets at two o'clock. Okay. It should not take more than an hour for them. Okay, 3 p.m. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Oh, that was it? Okay. Nothing else. We're recessing until tomorrow. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. All in favor of that. Okay. Yeah, recess. Good deal. Okay. Okay, we're gonna get started today of council deliberation on the budget. We were recessed yesterday and so today we're just taking, continuing those discussions. And Councilman Parkinson, our chair, is somewhere.

2:26:48 Oh, okay. We will give him a moment. Don't need any additional stress. Mr. Parkson, welcome back sir. Alright so we as I was saying we were recessing from yesterday and so we made some changes. Do you want to get us up to speed on what we're seeing here with the updated? Mr. Caldwell, do you have an extra copy? William Caldwell, CFO. Yesterday, several amendments were voted on and approved that affected several of the departments and several line items within those departments. For a summary, the police departments, other services and charges was increased by 438,000.

2:28:22 $438,000, so the new total for their budget is $33,432,200. The fire department received an increase to personnel services in the amount of $156,000, which brings their new total to $25,529,736. The Public Works Department personal services line was decreased by 250,000, which brings their total budget to $19,459,502. The Planning Department personal services line decreased by $122,000 which brings their total budget to $8,146,467. The Department of Administration received a $90,000 decrease in personnel services and the new total for the department is $4,170,391. For government, personnel services line was decreased by 70,000, which brings their new total to $15,569,088.

2:30:10 And the IT department was reduced, their personnel services line was reduced by 62,000. And their new total is $1,882,759. No other departments yesterday were amended. And all amendments were balanced. So the general fund total is still $113,250,961. And no amendments were made to outside funds. Repeat that last amount, please. The total general fund budget is at $113,250,961. Okay, before we get into the budget deliberations, Chair, do you have any opening statements? I don't have any major thoughts. I just wanna thank everybody who's been part of this process and I know it's long and difficult, but I think we're doing an excellent job and working through a really robust process.

2:31:33 And I'll just remind us that by law, this thing has to be passed by the 15th, but there is some back-end work that will need to happen. So getting it done before the 15th is really necessary. And once the budget is passed, we always have the ability to amend the budget throughout the year. So I think we should work as hard as we can to get the very best budget that we possibly can and make sure that we are maintaining good legal work in that regard and then work to make changes throughout the year as priorities from various council people emerge.

2:32:13 Thank you. There have been some continuously, there has been some discussions concerning realignments and merging departments and things of that nature. And I think some of our colleagues here want to move some of those things ahead on the budget deliberation. Councilman Foote, you had one such comment concerning the movie. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, I do think that the city can improve its effectiveness with some consolidation and some adjustments in different departments that, in particular departments that have a broad spectrum of things on their plate, and sometimes that can be overwhelming, and they get new things to come in and get put on their plate that can impact the performance of some of the other departments in there.

2:33:16 So with that in mind, I would like to amend or make a motion amend the budget to move the housing, I'm sure it's called the housing department or housing office where the proper term is, from the planning department to underneath the mayor's office. Second. It's been moved improperly second that we make the move of the housing sections for the individuals dealing with housing. to the mayor's office. Are there any other comments? Question. Go ahead, Councilman Stokes. Thank you. Finance. All the housing that we have, what's the total money that we're looking at moving?

2:34:06 We're working on that now. Unfortunately, our financial system is down due to some technical upgrades. So we're pulling some reports now to get you that information. Just one moment and we'll have it for you. Okay, I think a meeting or two ago, issues came up about monies that we're gonna try to identify that we can put the homeless into some houses. I'm planning director here, Mr. Davidson. I don't wanna speak to the homelessness initiative. I have not been a part of that, the discussions. So I'm not going to speak to something.

2:35:04 I'm not knowledgeable. With respect to moving the housing, I believe most of those positions that are supposed to be dealing with housing are actually paid from the funds that are allocated by the federal government. So that ought to be easy to accomplish without really being much of a, really shouldn't be any budget impact whatsoever. It would just be moving it to a new location as proposed with a different chain of command and reporting. but it ought to have no impact on the budget overall. Okay. Thank you.

2:35:40 Can I continue? Yeah, can please continue first. In terms of the fire department, and I think the budget increased by 156,000, is that the total of the 25 extra employees, the fire department told us 156,000 increased, but should be around 25.5 million. Yes, the general, the fire department's personnel services line increased by 156,000. Is that for the 25 extra employees? It's towards that, it will not cover. How much would it take to cover it? I believe they reported about 1.2 million to 1.5 million. to a couple 25 extra employees and 100,000.

2:36:44 That's not gonna be much. Okay, I'm trying to get some kind of answers because it was one of the different things when the fire department meeting went up in terms of fire department And there was a lot of discussion about, you know, the fine show is gonna be up more and how we lost employees. So we made a commitment to bring on employees. I think so many this year, so many next year to make sure we get out. I don't have it in front of me.

2:37:41 Yeah, Mr. Stokes, did you want, there's already a motion on the floor concerning housing. Do you wanna- Do I want to- Do you wanna- I can photo at the two or- We can vote on housing. Okay, let's, I think we have our planning manager. Can you approach please? Yeah, and then we'll circle back to the fire department unless we combine the two. Mr. Chair. Yes. So the amount for the housing department within planning department is around 287,000 for personnel services. So that's the amount that will move from the planning department to general government department. Okay. Do you have a number of personnel or maybe our HR?

2:38:31 So on their full time right now is only three individuals And we have a new program starting so we are looking to hire a director and some additional staff And you have vacancies so it's I I think based on the thing we would have vacancies, but again that's a program that's 100% funded by a federal grant and it's the Administrative is directed towards the salary for the program. They're administrative Okay, there's a motion on the floor Before you arrived that we moved a housing Program underneath the I think the mayor's office, okay and so What would that entail for his personnel and equipment and and everything to support?

2:39:22 That program So that would include us so there are four programs under the hood So the housing program is the hood management of hood grants, right? So there are individuals who do grant management services to ensure that how we disband plan to spend the money Spent the way we're trying to spend it and so the individuals that manage the individual programs that CDBG home ESG and hop with So it's for individuals and then we have a count since that's a part of that structure. Okay Okay, then also the budget health offset services that we do for economic development and our code enforcement Now we don't foresee These individuals serving in dual capacities So they would be completely distanced from the planning department if they come in. I mean, I mean there's going to be relationships but their job will be managed by the mayor's office. Did you have anything else to add to your motion?

2:40:19 The dollar amount, if they're all paid by HUD, does that money flow through the department then? Do we need to change, what's the dollar amount we need to move over to the mayor's for bookkeeping purposes? What do we need to move? It will be a $287,000 budget. Okay. Is that general fund or that's all grant? I have a question. She said code enforcement, is code enforcement going to move over with housing? No. No. So it's just the demolition of funding that we use for demolition program.

2:40:59 Please clarify. Okay, so here's what I'm proposing in my amendment is that we move the housing programs, which which are funded by HUD and the personnel that oversee those that are paid by HUD over to the Mayor's office from plan. It was second. Okay. And that's that. That's my proposal. All right. Is there a second? Is there any, yeah, we, it's been properly moved and seconded. Is there any other discussions from Council? If not, all in favor? Opposed? Councilwoman Clay, West Sayy? I agree to move them over there. Okay so it's six six zero okay any other changes for his alignment now we can get back to the fire department. Yes sir please.

2:41:52 Chief your goal was can you explain to this body again what you numbers you're trying to get, make sure that we provide fire rating and how we will not lose employees in the goal which you're trying to reach. Yes sir, Chief Thomas, my fire chief, City of Jackson. The goal was to hire 70 extra firefighters to put us to the 112 average per shift that the ISO rating is saying we need to lower the rating for it is as of now. So the plan that we have in place was to add 25 firefighters for per year and gets to that by the time 2020-2029 comes when the next rating comes in will be in compliance and so we're trying to add 25 firefighters a year. Right now the council allocated extra $156,000 to our budget which only gives us two of the 25. Well two and a half so we can hire two and start application on the other one. So we need 25. What's the cost per fire Per it was including benefits and all 65 thousand dollars as rough as you found out a secret provides

2:43:07 Councilman Parkinson also said it was trying to get us extra million dollars that'll give us 15 firefighters That's what salary And how many do you have on how many firemen do you have right now? 263 263 if we had 25 per year will be at the goal by the time the rating comes out And this is not something we can just kind of pad at the end of it in the fourth quarter. They want to see a continuous process of the city trying to get to where we need to be over the years.

2:43:39 And so if we don't get 1.6 million this year for 25 firefighters, we'll need double that amount next year to still try to get to 250 firefighters by 2020. Hey, are all your fire stations okay? In good working condition? No, but we have found other funding to take care of the fire stations. The main thing that I need to do is change these positions, keep the insurance rating down for the citizens, and progress in the right direction. We've found funding, other funding to help with the buildings and to restore those, and we're on the right path with that right now.

2:44:24 desperately need to be in the five positions to show good faith in the diastole rating that we're continuing to do what we have to do to keep this in place. Thank you, I appreciate the work you've done on that. I would encourage you and your firemen to pursue and fire women to pursue public-private partnerships with each one of your fire stations, with the local schools or whatever. So we've already started doing that with the schools and the high schools, we have an program with the schools, all the JPS high schools in the area and also we started to develop community-based partnerships with different organizations in the community. However, they do not pay five-party salaries.

2:45:03 Sure. Right. If only. Okay, Councilman Parkinson. Thank you very much. Chief, I appreciate your efforts. So am I correct in understanding that in the current fiscal year, the one that ending right now you're funded for 263 yes that's right okay and how many do you actually have failed we've just about all of them okay so really you're just missing the additional funding if you get additional funding you can you can it's not like you you have 40 vacancies anyway you know so you've used all the money that we've given you every dime that we've given you you've used up you We need more to get even more officers.

2:45:46 Yes, sir. We've used the majority of my budget is salaries. It leads me to roughly a million dollars, a little bit over a million dollars to actually run the department. If you look at the budget, you see here I have, right now we have $25,529,000, well, $25,529,736. $24,000,000 is some change of data salaries. Wow. The rest of the house they try to buy fuel for the power trucks and all these kinds of things. We're finding a way to make that happen. But we need you all to find a way to make these 25 positions happen, if possible.

2:46:29 Okay, of course. Mr. Tegelsohn, go ahead. Peter Tegelsohn, C.A.L. I don't disagree with Chief Thomas, but y'all, we've got to solve our problems in ways and methods that don't simply evolve throwing money at them. The problem with the fire rating is not the number of firefighters. Problem with the fire rating is the fire rating system that says we're gonna send you a rating based on concentric circles. So that if you have a city the size of say, Madison or Risland that's 25 square miles, you're naturally gonna need a lot less resources even though your population density is higher.

2:47:11 If you have a city like Jackson that has 113 square miles, Well, that takes more circles to cover the area, even if you're serving less people per circle. So while I'm not disagreeing with Chief Thomas, who's doing absolutely everything he can under the current rating system, we quite frankly need to ask our lobbyists to go over to the state and lobby for a different rating system for municipalities. It is unfair with the low population density we have. We have discussed over and over how we can't run a bus system to support a population that's spread out over 113 square miles. What the same quite frankly applies to firefighting as well. And so money is part of a solution. Chief Thomas's approach is everything that can be done under the existing system. But at some point we've got to say hey system this system is not right. It's not an accurate depiction of the services that we're providing and if we've got a challenge that with the insurance commissioner or go to the state legislature we need to also take those

2:48:19 approaches as well. Thank you. Agreed. Well my standpoint I totally agree with that. We have to right-size everything. We have to make things make sense and to be throwing the bodies. I mean just like you know we need to do something with planning concerning our blighted properties going out and putting our firefighters in harm's way over some place that we need to prevent other companies in the first place. Councilwoman Brown-Cel. Okay, my question is for the police department. Have we applied for, I guess the Chief of Staff or the Grant Rider can answer this question for me.

2:49:08 I mean, have we applied for the COPS grant and what the COPS grant is, it pays for so many officers for four years, but the city after the fourth year, does city have to pay for the officer? Have we applied for that to try to help us with recruiting officers or helping us with this budget? Dr. Miriam Managhe, JPD Grants Manager. We currently do not have a COPS grant that we are operating, have not had one in years. COPS did recently have a round of grant funding, but we were not able to apply for that one.

2:49:53 The logistics of COPS, it is a hiring program. They also have a match requirement and we would need to look at how to go about meeting the match requirement. But that is the gist of COPS though. they do have a hiring program and the biggest caveat with cops, we have to meet our hiring goal first. So if we are budgeted for 250 officers, we have to meet that 250 officers before we can even ask cops to give us more, to give us funding to hire additional officers.

2:50:35 So we won't even be, I'm sorry, go ahead. We won't even be eligible. Right, unless we lower. Unless we lower our requirements. To even apply for it. Even if you lower it, you still have to meet it. So even if we say it's 230, you still have to, cops will pay you to hire additional officers. They cannot pay you for the officers that you're already budgeted for. Okay. And I know this is hindsight. We went we've gone years without getting money for the cops program. Yes, sir That's one of those we had the numbers I'm not sure about what the numbers were then I will have to pull up When we last had it and I do not have my laptop and I cannot access just grants from a cell phone But it has been a few years since we last had cops hiring cops hiring Go ahead. Okay money back You should have been around them that cost program because of the things you were saying We got the money we brought in officers, but we had to pay money back

2:51:51 No, not right now, but At a point in history JPD had a COPS grant. They completed the COPS grant. And we currently do not have a COPS grant. Because we pay money back. No, no, no, no, sir. So the grant period for COPS, I believe, is like 36 months, which is three years. So the COPS grant we had, we had it for the 36 months, which were the three years, and then they closed the grant. And it has not been applied for since. because we had to pay money back.

2:52:27 I cannot attest to that. No, you don't have to pay money back. I'm telling you what happened. I was here. We had to pay money back. Peter was here. That's why we don't mess with that cost program. Can I ask why do you pay the money back? But you get the money, but you got to have these employees for now own. And we didn't keep them. And we had to pay money back. And welcome to the Councilwoman Clay. Ideally, you would want to be able to retain your police officers.

2:53:04 So when you apply for a grant like COPS, you should also have some type of sustainability plan so that when the grant has exceeded or finished its term, you have something in place where you can retain those officers that you were hired. Oh, you paid money back. That's true. That's true. That's true. You pay money back. That's true. And that's what happened. We paid money back. But my reason for bringing it up was because it could, I know we don't need to put a Band-Aid on it, but it could have helped us and we trying to get to a certain goal.

2:53:43 And then we will have to retain the officers after the third year. I mean, we use all resources that we need to get what we need to get to. I've read concerning cops, not necessarily that money has been paid back, but nationally the issue that other grantees have experienced with cops grants is the fact that they get them in for the three years, but they're not able to retain them. So not necessarily that they had to pay the money back, but you lose, you lose police officers.

2:54:16 Well, the need that we need for police officer, I don't think we will lose them. Mr. President, Peter Tablinson, CAO. I want to clarify, because I think both councilwoman Brown-Thomas and councilman Stokes are making some really important points for the public. One, we don't need to budget positions in police simply to have unfilled positions. That will prohibit us from applying for and getting COPS funding in the future. So it doesn't look good if we just put a number on paper and then we don't fill that number.

2:54:50 We haven't done ourselves any favors either in servicing the citizens or positioning ourselves for additional federal money through the program. To Councilman Stokes point, whenever we get this money, it's incumbent upon good planning to say the money's for three years, we need to permanently program money for years four onward into the budget. I don't think that's a particularly hard thing to plan for if you've hired eight officers through COPS, you eight times that salary, and you make sure it's in there in the future. But my memory is the same as Councilman Stokes.

2:55:28 I think there has been some poor planning in the past. And again, not in recent years, let me make this clear. But I think in the past, and I'm saying past in a general 20 year arc, the city has received some co-op funds and then not maintain the officers that it needed to maintain and either lost an opportunity to apply further or had to repay funds. So I wanna say all these things for the public who is listening, these are important points. Let's budget the right number of officers, let's fill them, keep them filled, then let's go get some new money and if we get new money, let's plan to make sure we keep those people permanently.

2:56:08 What I'm hearing is that we need a degree of realism to our numbers and planning. That's absolutely necessary. So what numbers should we be looking at now going ahead? And I'm sorry, Councilwoman Clay, you had a comment? I have several comments. I've been listening. One of my comments is about retention. And it's not necessarily poor planning in the past. If you don't have the funds, and we're struggling this hard right now, then those people could not have done a better job of retaining if you don't have funds.

2:56:43 So let's make sure we understand that on the front end. Retention plus money goes together. Okay. Second thing is In terms of the fire positions I was listening that conversation and I understand we need to answer rating bureau to change whatever whatever But if we are only paying for two and a half new farming It doesn't matter how many farming we got over there if any farming gets sick something happens and they are not there etc. We are running a crisis and the rating bureau looks at a city during the time of those four years. You can't expect the rating bureau to give you a three and you hire them all at the end and you don't retain them. Second thing, the rate of fire is in the city of Jackson. If you just stop and look every morning something is burning up okay. We need to be trying to hire firemen and not. We look like we are unique and some of us don't like that word but that is exactly what I'm saying to hire two and a half new farming and know we need to

2:57:43 get to a hundred and within three years and our retention ratio is not good that doesn't even make sense for us to do it's like hiring zero or telling ten of them to walk out tomorrow. Thank you. Question on fire. Well fire or police wherever you want to go. I won't start with fire if I put that ahead sir. So Chief we need to come up with how much it is budget year use? 1.6 million. 1.6 million. Yes sir that'll give us 25 fighting fighters in a great step in the right direction. I have Mr. President a suggestion on that then I want to make sure I go to police. I think our reserve right now is at 7.5. Somebody?

2:58:34 Our reserve is at 7.5. Yes, sir. So we should have a reserve what, 7 million? It's about 8 million. About 8 million. Okay, now we can reduce our reserve to five with understanding that we're gonna increase it each year for the next couple of years till we get back to 7.5. That way we'll have the money to do what need to be done with the fire department and we meet our goal, having employees for this year and should take everything else. But somewhere down the line, we got to have a little more money for police because the goal got to be 350.

2:59:20 And I'm saying that as a way to say that as these citizens see us spending money, first thing they say, how we gonna make the city safe. And we can't tell them we don't know. We're going to have to listen to the police department. The chief came with, I think, a suggestion to us. And it's up to us to find the money, because I don't know exactly what they're saying, but how many new officers are we planning on hiring this budget year? Tanya Nord, JPD chief of staff.

3:00:14 Tanya Nord, JPD chief of staff. we're looking at to add in increments. So we're looking to add in increments right now is at 65, and then we're going to get up to 83, but we're doing it in stages. So from right now, the first half, we're going to go straight for 65. Then in our next round, we're going to get to 83. Preferably. 65 within six months or a year with the 20th century. We're trying to do it as quickly as possible. So our next round of training comes up in October, where we're opening it up for new recruits to come in.

3:00:53 So based on how many classes we can get in. So we're going to look for the first six months and then regulate from there. Yes, ma'am. If we did 65, what would that put us in? Say, if we did 65 starting in October, we're successful. We're looking at about 280 by that time. We did this about 280 280. I'm going by. That's what we just need some numbers to gauge. So they should put us about 280 right to a 221 and it'll put us at 286 to be specific. All right.

3:01:38 I asked them as president because we should have a look money left by reducing it. And it's been done before and it's said that once we reduce our reserve to fire. We'll have enough money to do fire department and then I will hope, I will hope we can agree that the other could be set aside for police to make sure we raise them up to get close we can to the 3.59. As we lose that, that money is gonna be, that money is gonna be programmed and I know we're trying to get some money for public works and I don't want to try to split this little money with five police in public works because we're going to miss the mark.

3:02:22 I understand. But I'll make a motion whenever you read it. That's a question. Councilman Parkinson. Mr. Stokes, I'd like your advice here because you've been through several of these processes before. How would you feel about, instead of reducing all the way down to five, maybe five and a half or six, which still gets additional funds for fire and hopefully police, but might leave us a little bit of a cushion beyond what is legally, minimally required. I think what they had done in the past, and they can help us, and I look at Peter for his advice, when we was at five, I think the next year we went up, was it to six, Peter went to six point five.

3:03:08 We gonna move it up in there, I think it was like two years we were back. The money gonna be back, because money is collectible and collected each year. But you want to make sure that you have enough where fire's taken care of, we don't have to worry about fire. Police will be taken care of, so as they bring on their other officers, they don't have to come back to the council saying, we need a little more money, because we had the money our way. We're not gonna, it'll be earmarked, so we won't be touched for nobody, nothing else.

3:03:42 was left out, would go straight to police, and as you meet with your people, you can say, say, what are you doing to make the city safe? We should have 280 comment, plus we'll have money to take us close to 350. And then that way they can see that we're not playing with their money and it's all earmarked to go one place, one place. Okay. Mr. President. Mr. Davidson. Well, I hate to add a wrinkle. I don't disagree with Councilman Stokes, but as we sit here, I realize the city doesn't have a credit rating, but the city does have bond debt.

3:04:21 And before we eliminate or decrease what we're setting aside on that 7.5%, someone from legal will need to verify the bond documents to make sure we haven't contracted to maintain that percentage because we could inadvertently back ourselves into a position where somebody calls our bond debt due. So let me just put that caveat out there. If we want to go that direction, we're going to have to do some homework. That's why I point to Ms. Moncure because there's legal implications as well here and We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot.

3:05:04 So we need to understand where that's gonna put us. So how long will it take legal? Mr. President to check because what they're saying is that some of the debt we have out here with bonds is that if we start moving money, it can make them be able to call in our loans. That's the easy way to see it. Our loans can be called in. So we want to make sure that as we move it, whether we go up from 7.5 to 6, wherever we move, that we cover so they can't call it not long.

3:05:40 So how long will legal need in order to help us come up with that answer? Sandra Moncure, Office of the City Attorney. I will request to collaborate with Jillian to figure out, at least by end of week, to figure out. Friday. Before end of week. Wednesday tomorrow Friday what's it that didn't tomorrow I get it to you tomorrow but I would have to get with Julie yes I know that they're safe in their houses. They're not worried about, they are interested in economic development, but they're not worried about economic development.

3:06:38 They haven't grown over the years. Okay. Well, let me respond. Oh. No, I appreciate that. I got another wrinkle for this. But we're not talking about new debt. We're talking about debt that the city has taken out 10, 15, 20 years ago. Right. And hold on. Let me finish, Councilwoman. I know a little bit about this. If by law we run short of money and everybody needs to hear this, well, y'all all want money. The law says we have to pay our debt first. So if we mess around and inadvertently have our loans called do, guess what?

3:07:13 You gotta pay. Y'all ain't gonna have no money for no departments because those debts are all going to be paid first. And last I checked there was about $125 million in debt out there. So what I don't want us to do is trying to get a million over the fire or a million of police and back ourselves into a position where we now have 125 million do. So I'm going to propose a split the baby. Y'all not going to like it. Legal not going to like it. Give us 24 hours to close the business tomorrow to see if there will be any unintended of, exactly. It's just a matter of pulling the old bond documents which they should have in legal and a couple of us reading through there to make sure there's no acceleration clause in the debt.

3:08:02 I think we can have that figured out by close of business tomorrow and we could be right back here Friday for the deliberation. I can agree to that 100 percent. I'm not saying have the city's debt pool by no means, okay, but I'm saying that we need to get close enough to it. And if we are truly honest with these figures that are in this budget, and we're not overstating this budget, we're gonna be okay. But if we overstating this budget, we gonna have a problem.

3:08:29 So let's make sure we on tack with what we say in the budget. If it's really a hundred million, 105, whatever it is, let's say for real, cause we don't wanna get to the end of the year. And y'all be saying, oh Tina Clay, had us to spend the money and now we in debt. Cause oh no, Tina Clay didn't do that. Tina Clay telling you to be realistic on the front end and as simple as this budget is, we should be able to tell. Okay, Councilman Parkinson.

3:08:56 Okay. So we need to know that amount and you may have mentioned it already. How much would it take to come up? What was that amount again? 1.6 million. 1.6 million. Yes, sir. That's the fire. Mm-hmm. And look, it ain't a promise now. It checks not there yet, okay? We need to do some more deliberation. But also, we need to know from JPD, okay? Is there any changes you're going to need in order to make sure we have our personnel needs met? At first, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

3:09:40 Yes, that's 1.5 million, being that you already found 156,000. So how much do we need? 1.5 million. We need 1.5 million for fire. And that is to get us up to that personnel rating that we need. That's to put us in the lane. For this year. Yes, just for this year. You need 1.5 million. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And also, Mr. Taewison, please, can you get an outline or something that we need to present to our Hines County delegation concerning the numbers. As you stated, look we got 113 square miles to deal with and it's not fair if we're not judging this thing equitably. We need a break. Go ahead sir.

3:10:28 I agree because let me make it clear change of the fire rating on that. This is the best fire department in the state of Mississippi. Hands down. The motto is always ready but they demonstrated day in and day out. And I think this City Council is committed to fire, police, public safety, public works. But some of these things where there's an arbitrary number set at the state level, if we can challenge that number to help us, we need to challenge that number as well. are stepping up. Y'all are in here meeting, you're debating this, you're trying to figure out what is money, you're challenging us to go do some homework, which is all we should do. But I want to make sure we challenge the folks at the state level to make sure they're treating us fairly as well. So I will make some list of priorities. We often talk about the demolition and blight process taking too long, but this is another one that we really need some help. So I will make that list for the council.

3:11:26 If you don't mind, we need to make that a priority. We need to make other things a priority. For instance, these burnout structures and other things that folks are walking away that add to our blight situation. We need to make that a priority. We need to make it a priority with the laws concerning these apartments and these folks just walking away from it. Now you gotta respond. We need to make that a priority. There's legislative ways we have to go after these things in order to save money and to save our city.

3:11:57 And we got a Heinz County delegation that's waiting on marching orders. We're gonna come up with some marching orders for them. We got to. Mr. President. Mr. Stokes. Mr. Tables, while you're looking at things, in the past, some many years ago, the fire department did not have to go through the state. And they changed that, they may got fire department through the state for certification. Currently our police department, we do not have to go through the state but you can see the handwriting on the wall with some of these new legislators coming in. It's a matter of time before they make our police department go through the state. Can we start to fight reversing back our fire department, we got all the equipment, we got everything it takes to be trained by the city of Jackson like it was when it was a white city, none of this existed. On the dang chain is the race of the city and now everything else changed.

3:13:05 Can we start this fight now, please? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Chief Thomas, Councilman Stokes under the wildfire administration, we've started training our own firefighters here in Jackson. We thank you, Chief. We know. And then I know that we still had to go to the state, but we want to make sure that when I first became a counselor, everything was done in Jackson. So we think that's what y'all have done because y'all put out more fires in this city, probably in this city, in this state, maybe in this region.

3:13:40 I'm starting to feel like I put out some fires too, but Chief Jackson P.D., please, I apologize for being late. I was actually out at the commission as they were having a hearing on decertifying one of our officers, so I do apologize that I ran in. If the budget is currently still at the 33,432,200, is that the last proposed one I had? If that is the budget, that would still put us below our lowest option of having 255 officers and 152 sworn. Our budget for taking us down to 255 officers from the current allocation of 3, or 275 is 34 million, 047, 409.73.

3:14:28 So when the question, thank you, the question that Councilman Stokes asked, will we have to change if we had this budget change that is currently proposed, we would have to cut even more. We're trying to get up to 350. Oh, okay. 350. Oh, we're at 350. Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate that. We're trying to find more money, too. Alright, thank you. We'll get you to 350. One other. We have to get an excellent job. They really do. I do. I have an amazing staff that supports us, and when I say are trying to find as many ways that we can to support this city and not be reliant on the General Fund, it was well worth the investment to change one of our positions to make sure that we did have grant writers full-time. Thank you. Okay and one other thing that came up was our COPS program. Potentially I'm not sure how much money we can get out of it but we need to examine that as a source of revenue and start planning towards it. I'm

3:15:28 not sure what all that entails getting our numbers up. I've been in COPS meetings for years and we have to sign in and that's supposed to be justification. Yes. But look, we need to get back on track with the COPS program. So please, Chief, if you don't mind, please investigate where we're at and what we need to do in order to repair that as a funding source. And then we can tell you as a financial source, there's some caveats to the COPS program that most people don't recognize or realize.

3:16:01 Then you have to, the COPS program will allow you to support officers for three years and then you have to be in the position to support them after that. They also only allow additional to the numbers that you're allocated. They're not a use as a supplement. So if you allocate us to 275, 275 and above is the only thing that they will support. So then you have to find budget in the next three years after that to support the excess and most people do not have that opportunity.

3:16:29 They wound up laying off their officers or cutting them out after those three years. Thank you. Your staff, your staff's already covered all of those. You could say one page, one note with JPD. No, no change. No, no change. Listen, yes sir. They've already covered that. But let's see what we can do to find other revenue sources and we'll continue to pursue those. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments or amendments or anything? Can we have a council meeting, council people only meeting to talk about what it's gonna take to get everybody on board with the budget, find out that sometimes it's just good all council members have a chance to talk.

3:17:14 And I understand, I appreciate that we're gonna have to check with legal, cause generally if we go into executive session, it has to be for legal, and legal matter or employee, but I'm sorry. Well, yeah, I just wanted to know the question was posed about a council only deliberation. Well, we're not gonna vote on anything. We're not deliberating vote on anything, but it has to be an open meeting. Okay, well, we can do it open. Have a motion. statement and we won't do it. Well I guess we can just continue. Yes sir.

3:18:02 Mr. President I think from what we're hearing from the CAO Friday might be the day we we meet again to take the form of vote on the on the budget. I would hope that we as a council can make sure that we can make sure all council members feel at ease with the budget and that no council member position will be treated as not being important. We all represent voids and I would hope that the goal should be a seven-oh council vote. If a council member has some unreadiness, I think we should listen to that council member and the concerns of any council member because they're concerned.

3:19:02 That's enough for that council member to maybe not vote for this budget. Now as you go through the budget year, when you don't give a council member the respect of their knowledge, then that council member is going to surely tell as we run to HECUP because you're gonna run until a heat up with a budget, that council member gonna say, I told you so. So what I'm saying is that while we waiting for Friday, it's those talking on the phone that we listen to the council members' concerns about the budget.

3:19:40 Whatever the concern might be, how small it is, how large it is, there's a concern that one out of seven might have. The only people can vote on this budget is the seven up here. On the ones. Nobody else can vote on this budget. And it's important that we let each person know that they're concerned and their voters are important. I agree. And I'd like to go through the chamber here, the council. Okay. And let's listen to every member and just get their input, not guaranteeing major changes or little changes, but we need to hear everyone out completely.

3:20:30 Okay? So do we start at one or seven? Start at seven. Oh, okay. Number one. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm just, I'm not being biased. I'm just saying we want to know. Okay. Sure. Look, and let's aim for realistic, but let's aim from your gut. What is this budget as is telling you? How do you feel about it, sir? There's a couple of questions. I go, we're looking for trying to find money for police and fire and public works. If you turn to page five, and this is a budget of estimated revenues, okay, And it's got on the first line 5413 is a nuclear power plant. This is the you know energy grand Gulf power plant that they pay us I think it's 15 a million five or a million six each year and so it's got out here proposed budget a million five hundred and thirty two thousand seventy three that's coming in. In the past we We had an ordinance that was put in by the D'Heather stamps to take a portion of that

3:21:49 money I think and set it aside. I'm not sure if we need to adjust that, but where is that $1,532,000 going to right now? The $1,005,000 is going to the general fund, right? So it just goes into the general fund. Yes. So it's already been calculated in somewhere as the total amount. Yes. So we can't use that to fund police or fire? Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay. Can I? Sure. Just one quick question now, back to you. Yesterday we left with instructions to possibly look at filling in some of those zeros in our revenues.

3:22:31 Were there any changes to our revenue line based upon that discussion? We did not identify any additional lines. we, a lot of the lines were just kind of overstated maybe in prior years and so we, when we did our review, we had not been receiving funds in those lines. Okay, so no help there. On the same line, the, what I'd like to ask the City Legal Department to do is we've got a lot of contracts out there that were put in place over the past 10 years that to be reviewed to make sure that they're fair to the city itself and its citizens.

3:23:15 And the, I'd like to review all as many contractors as we can to include the garbage contract, the parking meter contract, Smith-Will's contract. We've got Thiamara, see if there's any revenue. I know there's money going into Thiamara, but we have it down as a zero line. And so we have a better, and there's other contracts I'm sure that are out there that were put in place that we need to follow up and make sure that we're in fact receiving the revenue we're supposed to be receiving.

3:23:49 That was a problem with the Smith-Will's contract back about four or five years ago, or three or four years ago, where we ended up forgiving them debt, $400,000 in debt. And I think that was actually an illegal thing to do. I don't think we're allowed to forgive debt to vendors or people like that. And I actually contacted the Secretary of State's office trying to get an opinion on that, and unfortunately, they had to recuse themselves because of the fact that there was a lawsuit between the state legislature and tried to take Smith-Will's back from us.

3:24:28 And the legislature was trying to get the Secretary of State to pursue and take back Smith-Will's from us, and so they had to recuse themselves from that opinion. But nonetheless, we need to look and review all our contracts. I'd like to ask the City Legal Department do that. It can't do it by next Friday or next week. But for healthy, we need to make sure we're getting all the money we're due from parking meters and other things like that. So I would ask that just as a task for you all in the month ahead or so.

3:25:01 The one other thing here I think that is an underestimate of what we're going to get on this, the debts, not debt service, where is the line, on the interest on our, from JP Morgan, I think it's 2.6% on the average balance of, in the, our bank account with them. I think that you'd said yesterday 85 million, if you multiply 85 million, if you use that as the estimate, which I think is fair estimate used, then you multiple that times 2.6%, you end up with 2.2 million.

3:25:37 And we're asking, we've got down here 1.5. So I think there's $700,000 that we could use by making a fair estimate and use that $700,000 to fund some of the line items that we wanna fund, whether it's payroll or whatever. But that's a couple of thoughts I had at this point in time. Thank you. We can make a second round. Was there any reply back to the statement concerning that? Peter Davidson, CIO. I think Councilman Foote's points are well taken. We do need a contract review. That ought to be one of the fiscal year 27 highlights. I will say Councilman Foote, I've heard you every time you've mentioned copiers and I have found someone in the city who is actually gathering information for us on copiers. It won't affect the current budget you're about to pass, but I've heard you loud and clear on that. So both administration and legal accept that challenge to review contracts right there to make sure that we're getting any funds we're supposed to. I do know that I have checked during this current

3:26:48 fiscal year to make sure we're getting paid at this time on Smith-Wills, and we are. But all those contracts need review, so those are all well taken. Thank you. This follow-up in the Smiths, if we don't be a good steward of it, it increases the chances the state will take it away from us. So I think it's important for us to be diligent about that and pursue it. Okay. Ms. Cartwell, was there any comment? The only thing I would add is on the balance, the current balance at the bank could possibly dip as we get into some of the months where we spend out our modernization money until the next round comes in, so this is the time of the year, you're kind of, you're at a higher point of your bank account.

3:27:38 And so there will be months where that dips a significant amount just because we're waiting for our next cash flow to come in. I can appreciate that. There's going to be chance, there's going to be times when it's above 85 million too, But also, and a number of these things, these departments were trying to fund for 250 police when we've only got 212 right now. We're not spending the money. It's sitting there. So there's going to be areas where we're overestimating. So I think just that's just a matter of professional opinion.

3:28:16 Oh, are we being too conservative here? I mean, you have room to move, but we were trying to make sure that we stay in a place where we're confident we can meet that goal. Well, I agree. I mean, but the point is, it's important for us to deliver the services, too, that citizens expect. So we don't want to say, well, we can't put any cops out to be late at night because we're not sure if we're gonna be payroll, you gotta have the cops out there where they're, you know, where the people feel safe anyway, so. Okay. Thank you. Alright. Mr. President. Yes sir. Thank you, Councilman Foote over in the can of worms should have been open a long time ago and dealing with what other cities do and I hope legal can guide us on this. Well, it's Smithville a stadium, a dollar a mile a hall, we need to put a dollar, a 50 cent of some kind of price in this ear market for police, fire, and public works.

3:29:32 I go to concerts all over this country, and those cities have money earmarked for these areas. We need the air market. People will pay it, because right now the promoters and others are getting all that money. We shouldn't have to come here every year. We need money for police. We need money for flight. We need money for public works. When we got a money stream that we need to utilize, I think it only takes legal as far as the past, or ordinance, order where when people use our places these are places we own. There ain't places that stayed on even the convention center we're telling people to come to our place you got to pay us and I don't think that's illegal they do it all over the country so I was oh well follow up with the idea as Councilman Footh is somewhat mentioning that we can put money on some of these tickets and every little bit of help as we try to get to a goal. The goal is anything we collect to help these agencies. Now I am concerned Mr. Taberson about our image.

3:30:47 It seemed as though this city would have taken the position that a mayor and council members have pled guilty, but now own convicted felons, and and we treated like it didn't happen. This city has a black eye, and this city hands are dirty. We got to clean our hands. And the way you clean your hands, you got to get rid of that dirt. It's of a record that the former mayor called the planning department to do illegal things. And we still allow this planning department to exist.

3:31:42 It's absolutely wrong. That's why I suggested those divisions go to police. As you talk to people in law enforcement, you need to be able to show what you have done to change that culture. You cannot be a criminal element and panning crime on the back. You can't do it, not in government, but when you're using taxpayers' money. I suggest again, move those divisions to police. Let the money go willful. As you talk to the FBI, US attorneys share for anybody. They say, what have y'all done?

3:32:28 on our police department. They have a careful watch for eye that makes sure there's no criminal activity taking place. What's wrong with that? I need somebody to explain to me what's wrong with this city not embracing crime. That's the first thing. Second issue is if we bear our heads and keep ignoring those problems, you're going to hear more and more about a state takeover. You're going to hear more and more about a state takeover. Crime is an element that will give them the authority to come into this city where they take over our water department, our police department, our fire department.

3:33:22 They will come in legally. That's why we need to do something now to show that we have made some changes that we are not a criminal enterprise. Finally, Mr. President, I think that the key word is going to be respect. Once we as council members respect each other and respect others' wards, then we're not going to have blow-ups. Understand I've been a long time ready to fight who wants to fight, but I'll go back to my ward and say I'm fighting for you. We want doughboys out of our ward, even though you may not have them in your ward.

3:34:23 Yeah, that's a good word to use. they come and they got a lot of money. And if they feel that they can come into this city and pay people off and buy people off, they're going to do it. That's why it's so important that we make the city safe. Anybody that you see, you need to tell them with this budget, we make in the city safe. If there's a fighting in your neighborhood, we're going to have firemen out there to fight that fire so it will not spread.

3:35:01 If you got criminal activity in your neighborhood, you don't have to say we're going to call the police. We're going to have JPD there. We're going to have special units for drugs and everything else. The city and its citizens want to feel safe. A lot of people didn't come out at night. My son told me he's a physician. a doctor that don't come out at night. What? I'm gonna hit Whataburger three or four in the morning. A lot of people don't come out at night because they do not feel safe. And it's up to us to make this city feel safe. And the only one who can do it is your police department, your fire department. Thank you, Mr. President.

3:35:47 Okay, next, Councilman Parkinson. Thank you very much. Yeah, I just will echo things that we've been saying the entire time, I would like to find more money for police, I'd like to find more money for fire and for public works. And so the more that we could do that, I think the better. And that's been my stance from the beginning and that will continue to be my stance. But I think it's a good budget. I think we're very, very close and we fill those gaps and I think we'll be set.

3:36:16 Okay. In my comments, first of all, legal, we need to get out that landfill fee ordinance. We have state-of-the-art scales down there. We could take in a lot more debris and charge the right price instead of guessing. I almost said swag, but scientific. Forget it. We need to get a handle on that. That's another revenue source and it's sitting in legal. We need to pull it out. Yes, between solid waste and legal. I think it's that legal last time I checked. Please, let's get it out and let's get that ordinance on the agenda so we can increase fees and have reasonable expectations that we're getting our monies worked the same way other municipalities do the same thing.

3:37:15 We've been guessing about trucks based on how many axles they have, how many wheels they have. It's just been all over the place. But we can get a finer tune in on the amount of waste that we're actually collecting and disposing of it, just like other folks. When we go to waste management, you're on that scale. They're calculating it down to a percentage of a pound. Then you're paying something like $40 something dollars, I think per ton or something, and they continue to increase. We need to get that moving.

3:37:51 Let's get that done. Mr. Anderson, did you have just yes or no? Did you have any thoughts on contracts? Yesterday we asked you to maybe look at some contracts. He was there in your wiggle room to give some of our employees raises. I think you mentioned the lowest raise was like 22,000 a year. Was there any wiggle room looking at our existing contracts that we might be able to pull from? And lastly, my concern is I want to prevent fire and police from having to respond.

3:38:41 We've got to make our neighborhoods stronger. In the fire department, you're driving down some of these roads, You already see the conditions. You already know, OK, that's a fire in the making over there. If you're in the police department, you're driving out some of these streets, you know, oh, man, we're setting it up for folks to commit crime. We got to do a better job. I have asked an outside source to provide money to keep Jackson beautiful. We've had dealings with keep Jackson beautiful for almost six decades.

3:39:19 It's a part of allowing our citizens to get out and help clean up. We need to do that. We need to open all avenues to invite the public to clean up their spaces. And that in itself is maintaining safety as well. Again, no additional cost from the city. But Keep Jackson Beautiful is an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and has certain advantages as such. But we got to encourage our citizens, the ones that are here, to take care of their spaces. We have to encourage that and continue to encourage that.

3:40:00 Other than that, I really don't have any other comments, but I want to go back through to council and see if there's anything else we need to help. Thank you, Mr. Harlan and me. I've got a couple of other things here I want to ask questions about, this is on page 13. This is all on estimated revenues. So it's on page, at the bottom of the page, it's got a section, Improvement Fund Revenues. And it's got a category, Grand Golf Emergency Planning. And this is where I think the Kether Stamps ordinance set up to set some of that money aside every year that comes in from the energy for their Grand Gulf escape route, which is up Highway 18.

3:40:52 This is on page 13 of the new document we got today. And down there in the last paragraph, it's got Grand Gulf Emergency Planning and it's got a total of $600,410. Now that's not a, this is money that's saved up that hadn't been spent. Can we use that money? And what were the, why can't we use apply that to one of these payrolls? Can we do that? What's that? So that's the money that has been supplied by the 1.5 that was, that we previously mentioned. We get that every year from Entergy for the Grand Golf Escape Route.

3:41:35 And so it was set aside being able to keep through stamps back, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, set it aside as to, you know, a rainy day fund, I guess. Well, it's pretty rainy, right? And can we use that 600,000 in part of our budget for this year? Yeah. Now, so the next- Well, once that's gone, that will be gone. That's just- That's okay. That's okay. Once this year's gone, it'll be gone too. But wait, it's back again, right? We'll get money. We get a million, I think it's a million five or a million six.

3:42:06 Right. No longer setting aside money. Okay, so the 1.5 is already factored into your total budget. So you are relying on that 1.5 to fund all of your departments. The 1.5 was also appropriating 160,000 per the ordinance you mentioned. But the point is that you don't set away and say we're never gonna spend this ever. I mean, you spend it when you need it and we need it right now. So it can be used to make some ones. I would suggest it be used for some one-time purposes.

3:42:40 Okay, well one time we need some additional help right now. It's gonna regenerate itself. Not the 600,000 because that's been paid for 160,000 out of the 1.5 has been moved over there every year. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, that's regenerate. Just 160,000. I know, but it adds up. It'll add up again. I mean, so we can't say, or because we set this aside, we can never spend it. It's a rainy day. I mean, and so this is a rainy day. That's where we are. We're here on a rainy day, and I think we ought to spend this money on those things we were looking for money.

3:43:18 The next, right below that is a number which I was surprised to see. This is, there's a huge lawsuit way back where the big storm came through in 2013. Hail damage, hail storm. and they tore up a bunch of roofs on properties we owned. And so the Zurich Insurance paid us and then they got sued by the city and it took 10 years to resolve and it finally got resolved about two years ago. But down this line it says $2,499,508. So I assume that's just a buildup of insurance proceeds that weren't used.

3:43:55 So is that money available? It was obligated for a part of improvement. OK. Well, let's use it. Let's use that money to improve stuff. I mean, it's not doing us any good sitting here. He earns interest. But the purpose to set it aside is so that you can use it when you need it. That's why you have a piggy bank. OK. Is it otherwise obligated? Sir. Is it otherwise obligated? Just for parts. Let's put that in the budget where the money is set aside for parks in our budget and replace it with this money No, some of that Grow a project What why hadn't been spent on the Grove Park is it?

3:44:43 We have been spending it on Grove Park I made some comments the other day to a different group The bulk of that money is to be spent on lighting for the baseball fields When I reviewed the proposals for the lighting on the baseball fields, I said, no, we're not going to spend $700,000 lighting fields and we don't have a plan to stop somebody from stripping the copper. That's a waste of $700,000. We have spent $200,000 redoing the pool and the kiddie pool at Grove Park this year.

3:45:13 We've also redone the tennis courts at Grove Park this year. So we're in the process of spending the money that the council previously set aside at Grove Park. just doing it a little bit slower probably than the public would like but doing it in a way that we don't have to repeat this because we don't have the funds that just put it over there and then turn around and have a tour know so the money we spent like a benefit did it come out of this it came out of this fine okay yes so the question is and I talked with a representative from an electrical lighting company within the last month and they claim that there are ways to make it that proof. Have we explored any kind of other options? I mean, surely there has to be some solution and we're not the only ones going through this. No, we are exploring other options and I don't know that we make anything theft proof. We can make theft resistant and discouraged and I

3:46:10 think that's a combination of changing how the lighting is so you don't have access controls at at the bottom, but you had them at the top. Of course, that involves a lift. It also involves having some blue light cameras and some other things in Grove Park, which will promote safety and promote the community to using that park and not having it. So I think we're well on that, trying to get that solved. I just don't wanna repeat what happened on the Bailey Avenue Bridge or a Fortification Bridge.

3:46:37 Both of those were before my time, but I would not be a competent CAO if I didn't learn some lesson from the last administration repairing the lights on both of those bridges, only to have that turnaround six months later and they're dark again. We have to do something about these thefts of copper. Even the interstate commissioner Simmons is having issues. Folks stealing the copper and the lights not being on around the city of Jackson. Any other place? So I guess we need to leave the Grove Park stuff alone, but I think we ought to consider using all or some of the $600,000 for some of these expenses.

3:47:23 I agree. Mr. President? Yes, sir. Thank you. I want to start off by saying I want to thank Peter Taberson for being a great chief administrative officer and doing a wonderful job. I remember when I went to the county and brought them over there. there was no counter reserve at all in highest county. And I told him then, help keep us out of jail and get a wonderful job. And I'm saying it now, please don't leave and help keep us out of jail. Because they are saying, I'm trying to say that they don't take it seriously enough about law enforcement and crime.

3:48:09 And they take it like, well, that's just chicken over there. And don't realize that people pay attention to Jackson. You're the largest city in the state, and you're the capital city. And even though some might take place in it, Mississippi, there's a different mentality when it's in Jackson. So that's why we got to clean up our own house, they're gonna come clean it up for us and it's gonna be a lot harder when they come in. And I also, as I was thinking Mr. Taberson, I hope we can do something about parks because over the years when they get real hot, we should take the homeless and others into our parks, community centers, and have air conditions and things of that nature.

3:49:02 And it's no one person fault that all the parks are in such poor condition, but it's all our responsibility to get them fixed and bring it up to speed again. And I still feel that the clerk or the council deserves a person from legal and their office, all the lawsuits that's gonna come through, they looking for one error. And that one error might decide, well, the person gonna get a million dollars from the city, or they gonna get $500, because they believe in that deep pocket theory.

3:49:48 And if you have clerks that's got to do legal work, but not lawyers, not legally trained, they follow. It's like when we go to court with police or fire, and the first thing they ask are they trained. And if they say they not trained, they not going to say it's that fireman or policeman fault, they're going to get money from the city. So even though we are saying that the legal department look over the finished product from the clerk's office, we need a clerk either to be someone associated with the legal department or the legal department be directly associated with the clerk's office.

3:50:34 Cause that's how it used to be with the clerk's office and legal protect the city. These lawsuits are real. Somebody is going to be glad to file a suit against the city and employee. Because they know that the city is going to have to pay the pockets is real. This city is a great city and I've seen it in its worst times and it's great times. We got some good department heads. I believe that this is really a budget I want to vote on. This is man who wants first real budget that he has put his fingerprint song and with the city of Jackson dealing with the issues we'll deal with next month as people are sentenced that worked right here in these council chambers.

3:51:34 We must, we must do everything within our power to put this train back on the track. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, let me address one thing you said, uh, Ms. Moncure. Uh, no, No? You don't even know the question. But we had a discussion with legal and they are in the process of giving us some type of personnel over in the council from legal. And that discussion and we've had it, now you remember? Okay, okay, so we are working on that and we need that, not only to help us save our city against lawsuits and other things, but also ordinances.

3:52:31 There are some things that we need to be considering, we need to be renewing and revisiting our ordinances and contracts and other things. So I just wanted to make that known why Councilman Stope brought it up, that that is something we're currently working on with legal. And I think he, uh, attorney Martin said that it should be within the next 30 days or so. I'll check on this. Sandra Manker, office of the city attorney. Yes, I did sit in a meeting with the city attorney and president Hartley and they discussed, um, providing the council with an attorney or a clerk. Um, but I would have to follow up with drew to figure out where that conversation is right now, but that is happening.

3:53:16 Yeah, just let them know that we have another, at least one other council member that see the need for it. And again, we can use a lot of help concerning our ordinances. We need to seriously revise a lot of our ordinances. Yes, sir. And we need that kind of direct tie-in, cooperation, communication with the legal department. We are the law. Yes sir. Thank you sir. Did you have anything else our councilman? So we're not gonna. I just want to thank the the budget chair for taking us through the final product and where we at now. When you start think about where you started off and how it started off and now we are almost at the finished product in terms of voting. We're able to stabilize the police department, the fire department, you know, from what I've heard and seen today, trying to do a little more with public works.

3:54:21 You know, the city of Jackson was spent, I don't say 113, I said 100 million is enough. And for $100 million, it's not chump change to anybody. That's a lot of money. It's not another city in this state going to spend $100 million. And that's what people trying to do us wrong and do wrong things to it. But Mr. President, I thank you for your leadership and making sure that we all stayed on the same page because it's easy for us. Disagreements to lead to other things.

3:54:58 Thank you, sir. Okay. Did we vote on the moving the housing? Yes, I thought we did. We did vote on that? Yes. Okay. We've been that low. Six zero. So just one other things, colleague. We're going to recess until Friday, I believe. Is that it? Okay. Now we're looking at 10 a.m. Ooh, I got to meet with Dr. Little, 18. Can we do maybe level? I don't know. I can I can reschedule. No, I haven't I haven't knew and do we think it'll take more than I don't know We can do ten. I can or I could do one Ten is fine Do you need a motion for that mr. President yes So move Okay, it's been properly I'm gonna check it still checking my schedule I guess I have to cancel some stuff.

3:56:09 No, no, it has to work for everyone. And this is what we got to do. So everything else is going to be put off. So 10 it is Friday. We were recessed, and I need a motion. OK, we got a motion and a second to recess. All in favor? Glad to be a part of that. Motion passed. Look, folks, thanks for your participation, your hard work, we're going to get it done. We'll recess until Friday.