Springfield City Council — April 14, 2025

0:16 Mayor Vay Gordon here. Councelor Ward here. Councelor Mo here. Councelor Rodley here. Councelor Blackwell here. Councelor Doyle here. And councelor Stout here. Thank you. All right. We have two more session items this evening. The first one is the wastewater and storm water user fees fiscal year 2025 226 Okay. Um good evening mayor and council. I'm not ster city's environmental services division director. This is know you all know. um pleased to be here for our annual presentation on storm water user fees. So um I want to acknowledge that uh there's a lot of

1:01 work that went into this presentation. This just kind of scratches the surface after several years of presenting. I figured out why this presentation bugs me a little bit is because we we put this together and then we deliver the budget to you in like three weeks. But this is really a lot of this work is that was done for this presentation tonight informs the budget. And so um you'll get that budget piece coming up and we can answer any questions you have on the budget. Tonight we're here to talk rates. Um, and I want to acknowledge Lua Laco and a few others, Kevin and others that put this presentation together, put these raised together for us. Okay, there we go. Little delayed. All right. Um, presentation outline

1:47 tonight. Um, going to talk to you about revenue goals, a little bit about the systems. This is is going to be reviewed for many of you. We'll kind of blow through this and get to the rates, but we're going to ultimately end up with the rate options for you, but I'd highlight there's a nice picture of the mil rate there, the mil project just few blocks away. Okay. Um the revenue goals that we have for the city are listed here for our user fees. I would note that the user fees are the primary funding source that we have for the city's work on our storm water and wastewater systems especially for they are the primary source for our operations and they're a big source of our our funds for capital projects about 85 to 95% depending on the year and how much STDs we collect about 85 to 95% of our revenues are used

2:34 to fund our capital program and then 100% for maintenance as mentioned uh we want to provide so we want to provide those resources for our own end programs on capital program, maintain our debt service requirements, um maintain, we were looking to accumulate, right now we're looking to maintain our capital reserves and then preserve our fiscal health rating. We show this slide each year. Um but I think it's important to keep it just to give council some context for how large these systems are, how big the assets are. Um you can see the numbers there. I was joking about going to Jerry's and buying a 10-ft section of 8 inch pipe um and bringing it in here and then you do that times 520 which is equal to a mile for you know the math and then times 250 miles of sewer that's

3:21 about 135,000 sections of 10 foot pipe that we have not to mention the the utility access holes and everything else that goes along with the systems. So big systems worth a lot of money they cost a lot to maintain. Is that through Eugene and Sprinkle? That's just right there. Okay. Um, yeah, it's hard to visualize how big these are, but they're they're large. Um, and they're also a priority to our to our public. Elder water are concerned. Folks value recreational opportunities and economic development is dependent on adequate well-maintained services. We just went to a Oregon water caucus at the state capital a couple weeks back and they highlighted how 50% of Oregon's economy is directly related to water and wastewater infrastructure.

4:09 Hey. Uh, a lot of challenges with paying for clean water. Um, we have increasing operating costs that are increasing. Our infra infrastructure is aging. We have a lot of our system that's greater than 50 years old or older. Um, we have the typical inflationary pressure. We have permits that I'll talk about briefly. Those capital needs and then um note reduce federal funding that's probably take that off. It's been reduced for some time. There used to be a lot more partnership at the federal level and participating in some of these projects and on the storm water and wastewater side at least we've seen that diminish. Maybe not as much on transportation but definitely on our utility side. Uh update on our permits. Um our stormwater permit is hard to believe but it's basically it's it's run its course of five years. It's on extension right now by DEQ. They're working on renewing

4:54 it for all phase 2s phase two communities which Springfield is one. We expect that we're going to see that renewal sometime this fiscal year. It's not up to us to renew it. It's up to DQ to renew it. So, we're on the schedule. We do think it's going to be within a year or so. Um, our wastewater permit, we're in the middle of that. That's issued to MWMC sprinkled with any gene and it's going to be up for renewal in 27. That really drives the program programmatic requirements for our wastewater system particularly at the treatment plant, but also in the local collection system. So for example, one of the provisions in that permit is we're not allowed to have any sanitary road overflows even again when they happen occasionally occasionally but they're prohibited by permit. So really a drive the drivers for our

5:42 programs high level just the fun the some of the programs that are funded with user fees. We have heavy operations and maintenance programs, education and outreach, capital work, um elicit discharge, which is people, you know, dumping things down the drain that they shouldn't be doing and follow up on that. Um a lot of our development review is is some of it is all the engineering work associated with that is funded with these fees. Um as a as is our wastewater treatment all through NWC and I'd note that master planning, facilities planning and customer billing is also funded. So uh the fees touch a lot of the work that the city does on a daily basis. I'll let Jeff take the next slide. So, yeah, thank you, Matt. So, this next, as we get closer to kind of talking about the actual fee increase, this is kind of a little bit of a a

6:27 refresher um on what the council saw and adopted last year, which was the wastewater master plan update. Um um you heard as we looked at that we've used revenue bonds in the past um to pay for unexpected in a way mandated um u replacement repair of pipes. Um, and so one of the things and one of the goals when we looked at our strategic financial plan as part of the wastewater master plan was making sure that not only are we prepared if we need to take out future revenue bonds, so maintaining our credit rating, but also so that we can maintain that even rate increase. Um, I don't think anybody really remembers or was on the council when we I was here when we did sell those bonds,

7:12 but we had to do a rate increase of 14 and 12% back to back to get our credit rating and get ourselves prepared to sell those bonds. And that was something that came down mandated um from the EPA on those replacements. So, we didn't really have a choice. Um, so that's kind of key as far as when we look at setting rates. Um, one of the other things we talked about was, you know, part of our capacity man management operations and maintenance program is maintaining and preserving, Matt touched on that, the amount of assets that we have in the ground out there. It's really critical that we maintain those. Um, as a reminder, one thing that was identified in the wastewater master plan, there's 130 miles of pipe still out there that it's concrete um, older than 1980. So, basically, it's concrete pipe that has

7:57 reached the end of its useful life. And so we're planning to basically go through the system and and schedule and these rates are setting us up to be able to systematically go through and replace that pipe. Um customer usage so rates or system expansion I could cover that. So also we're planning if as we expand into the UGB to make sure that we have the adequate adequate resources to provide for that growth. Um and one thing I will touch on as a reminder as well that we did look at all of the middle housing rules. So we we factored that into the master plan update. So those expansion and where we might need to do inflow expansion or increased size is already factored in. Um customer usage goes both way. It kind of dovtales with water conservation. Our rates are factored on

8:42 the usage. And so if there's a high usage the rate goes up which increases revenue but that also means more flow with the plant that they have to treat. Um, on the other side, when we conserve water, that means people are paying less, but our costs don't necessarily reflect that. It usually costs about the same, maybe a little more, and we're also always seeing increasing costs um with inflation. Um, and so that kind of covers it. And that's with the customer usage that that rates are kind of flow-based. Okay. Um like to show council the rate comparisons where Springfield sits um for wastewater and storm water compared to some of other agencies. And this

9:29 shows that for wastewater it's a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison. The blue bar represents MWMC and that component is the regional treatment component. That's the same between E and Springfield. That's one of the it's a primary component for the cost of of delivering wastewater services. The green um in each genius Springfield represents the local components. Um, and the typ typical questions that come up here is why is Eugene's local component less than Springfield and some of that has to do with the uh the bonds that we had to go out and sell and and how we had to take on that additional debt and we didn't have as large of a customer base to spread those costs out over as Eugene did. There's other factors and I would also note that the permit drivers are different for Springfield. The MWMC's permit with Eugene and Springfield. Those permit drivers are a bit different um than other communities like Corvalis or Albany um or Portland

10:16 for example. So, um, this is where we were as of February 1st of this year, um, before, and this is typic, this is assuming 5,000 gallons of waste water treated. The average, uh, home, average average user home in Springfield uses 4,200 gallons. Um, so they see um, a little bit lower than that, $59, maybe around $50 a month for wastewater um, services. Okay. storm water side. Um, it looks like our graph got cut off there. I guess you can see Springfield is one, two, three, four, fifth from the left. Um, and it's it's sandwiched between Albany and Beaverton. Um, about

11:03 $1689 a month. The average is around 13. And what I note here is that a couple of things. Um, one Springfield has the the uh the good fortune or the poor fortune, whatever you choose, the how we used to look at it of being one of the the first actual phase 2 community that was issued a permit from DEQ. um we're sandwiched between two rivers and there's a lot of being able to mature program and it costs money to deliver those programmatic requirements that it takes to meet our permits and so that therefore by having a program in place for quite a bit longer than other communities we have uh no requirements in our permits uh but others are catching up actually didn't even have a permit um under the phase 2 program believe it or not I'm not sure how they eat by is another story but um until

11:48 just a few years ago and they had to implement a program that's for motor fee here recently and you can see it's just a little bit higher than ours but again this is a bit um apples to oranges but it it gives a good approximation of where Springfield sits. I would note for many years we were higher than Eugene and we've used the council's philosophy of small incremental rate adjustments over time um to kind of moderate our rate increases. So and then Jeff is going to talk through a few options with you. Yeah. So first option presented shows that that 4% proposed on the wastewater um the 3% on the storm water. One thing I'll note the storm water rate between option one and option two is the same. Um one of the um things with that is we

12:35 have we don't we haven't gone through a strategic financial plan. So we haven't looked out that 20 years. What do our needs are? What are our needs for revenue? Um we're going to start that with a new permit coming in looking at what those needs are. Um, so while we could probably sit here today and say maybe 3% isn't quite enough to meet all of those future needs of the growth of the system and adequately maintain it, just not comfortable presenting to you what that what that information would be without kind of going through all of the factors in the storm water program. So, we'll be doing that work ahead of next year's budget. Um, again, the wastewater proposal is based is just 4% um just an option presented to council. what that would mean versus the 5% option two and you just got is is that we would most

13:21 likely have to just extend some future projects. Um the 5% is something that we brought to council last year. It's based on the strategic financial plan that we went through on the wastewater system. As I talked about earlier, it factors in all of that needed future growth and all of that um rehab work that we need to do as well as a strategic spend down of the reserves we had to get to a an ideal reserve as well as revenue new revenue coming in. So again, that's why the 5% is recommended is based on the strategic financial plan presented from last year. Yeah, I know I like numbers. So I just did I ran some numbers and I mentioned this at our commission meeting. Um over the last 10 years we've seen an average of about 2.74% on the stormwater side

14:06 for an adjustment and 2.45 on wastewater CPI over the same time has been around 2.86 a little higher. So we're kind of right in that we're right in line with where we should be. Um this year's this year we're proposing the five and the three the three and the outer years will probably increase for storm water if we do that financial look. um we're just right where we kind of need to be and right where we are given the economy and what's going on out there with the cost of projects and the cost of maintaining infrastructure and the cost of materials and services. So put the two options side by side for you and apologies for the formatting got there but I think you can get the um get the gist of looking at those two options side by side. Yeah. So, one of the goals when we look at

14:51 this is thinking strategically, as I said, is is looking out at at the work we need to do and trying to make this incremental um because nobody likes fee increases. I know that. Um but we also don't like drastic fee increases. So, the key is to balance the work we know we need to get done um within the system, all of the requirements we have, and try and moderate those increases and keep them as low as possible. And so, that's that's what um is proposed. And again, that's why we want to do those big long looks to say, what does our permit tell us we need to do? What do our assets, what is the condition of our assets, so that we can make sure we don't have to deal with costly emergency repairs. Um, we don't want to have to sell bonds, but if we do sell bonds, we'd prefer to do it for big expansion

15:37 projects, those large capital projects where we know we're getting new revenue or new users coming in versus having to do capital for maintenance or preservation or or sell bonds for capital preservation or maintenance. Um, we'd rather try and make sure that we can manage that with the user fees on hand. All right, questions? Well, do you want to finish first? One more. One more slide. Okay, last slide. So excited about the rates. This I give you a rate forecast for MWC. Um the commission we held public hearing here on this last Friday, so just a few days ago that was preceded by um a budget meeting with the to talk about capital budget, the entire

16:22 budget um in March. And the commission recommended advancing a 5% adjustment on the regional side of the wastewater fees. um based on a number of factors. I don't need to get into those, but um the same thing we've kind of been talking about just the increase in in cost of utilities, cost of materials and services, um cost of meeting permit obligations, um those sorts of things. There's a whole host of things, but they did recommend a 5% on the regional side. Um, and so that all to say that depending on your direction tonight, we will be back before you on May 5th for public hearing um to present whatever it is that you're recommen you're recommending for us to implement. All right, councelor Bradley. Thank you. Thank you for this. I appreciate it. It's always very easy to understand and

17:10 explains all the things. Um, and I kind of feel messily about it and I'll tell you why. I I think that if I'm definitely leaning towards the first option and even that I think yes um I completely support the incremental increases. We don't want big increases for folks, but we're living in a time when even that that first one is going to be felt by people, I think, because we're this isn't the only rate increase, right? Everything is going up and people are feeling very scared and precarious and don't, you know, are we're just not it's just the way the economy is. So, I want to be as sensitive as possible about that and know that we still need to like do what

17:56 we do and maintain the services and think about that. um 5% just feels big for your average person that I see talking about utilities. Um and I understand it. So I just wanted to just put that out there so that people could hear that at least you know that I am I am concerned about how that's going to be felt by people in this particular year. Um and I know that there's philosophies around we do smaller increases and then when the econom is better we do bigger increases. But we don't I mean it's been like it's been a mess like ever since I've been a part of council and the budget committee and stuff it's been we never know what's happening. So I'm leaning toward I'm definitely leaning towards option one and just want us to be sensitive about it. Okay.

18:46 I think sensitivity is definitely important and rates are going to go up everywhere in everything that we're dealing with in life right now. Um, but I'm I'm comfortable going with option number two as recommended. Just I think it helps us kind of stay on a little bit better pace um for future and it's a 25 cent difference to me that's not I mean it can it can add up depending on how much use there is but I don't for 25 cents I think I'm okay with number two. Mr. Stout. Um, so as the council leazison to for the MWMC and being on the board, um, I just want to express my incredible gratitude for the work they do do and also highlight the incredible um, fiscal conservatism that their whole

19:32 that the whole organization has. You won't find a group of people quite as passionate about saving money for the rateayer as is on the MWMC board. So, I think we we have a lot to be grateful for for the work that the the board is doing there to ask the hard questions to make sure we're not paying a dime more than we absolutely have to. It I am frustrated about the whole situation of rate increases. Absolutely feel that and it does scare me a little bit that we are increasing so many different things, utilities, etc. Um that said my only other I I am leaving towards option number two and the reason is I was I was uh I received one barb in session which was that we are accountable for every gallon of water that comes down the

20:17 river downstream from the MWMC and I do believe that there they will be just stewards of the rate increase to make sure that we absolutely are on that without um I don't think we're going to see we're not going to see any negative press of excessive uh expenditures on their on their part. It would just it just doesn't it doesn't exist there. So I actually support uh the 5% increase and and I think that will help them stay ahead of things. Um in addition their finance people um especially I want to highlight Loka's work. Um he it's incredible how well they can change with on a dime what the rate model looks like and what their proposed rate model is. So if we were to hit an even deeper, you know, recession, we can quickly and

21:03 easily adjust those rates to take care of our people even better. So that's my two cents. Thanks. So uh I believe that one of the most uh important responsibilities that we have as local government is um caring for and making sure that the infrastructure that we have is um provided to the community. And I think that it's the number one thing. Um it's unfortunate that we don't have people that come into our meetings holding up signs saying, "Yay, waste water. I'm so," you know, uh but we don't. Um and it's because people just expect that their toilet's going to flush when they, you know, push the button. They don't think about all of that pipe and those old old pipes. And the idea that if we do have something

21:49 fail, it is a significant. Now, you're not just talking about the pipe. You're talking about the street. you're talking about millions of dollars. Um, and so for me, making sure that we have that um, upkeep um, as best we can. And I I too agree that our staff with MWMC um, and that you guys do a good job and you're good stewards of our money. And I know that you're looking out for making sure that that um, infrastructure is well cared for. So, I'm okay with uh, your recommendation of option two as well. I am as well. I'm good with option two after looking at all the information that was provided. Thank you. I um my concern would be with option one is that we're playing catch-up at a future year that we're not keeping pace with what we

22:35 need to um to do in order to maintain the system. So, I'm good with option two. Option two. All right. So, um sounds like option two. Um the couple of questions. One of the things I like that we've done the last couple years is switch to show an actual forecast for what those rates are going to be because the you know if we are talking about wanting uh to have small incremental rates we want to also look for rate stability right you know having 1% the first year doesn't help us if we have 10% flash the last couple years one thing that I think would help us because historically you've kind of come down in the out years it feels like and maybe a little bit in the front years is to simply come back and tell us what what what you

23:20 forecast the last time and what the new adjusted you know adjusted rate is because I think that would I don't think they're changing that much but know it's like a year since we we see these every single time. So um having a little bit more additional information when we do the public hearing about that I think would be would be meaningful. The other thing and I will just continue to echo this is we control a lot of fees. We could control a lot of charges. Continuing to work towards rate stability as low as possible, right? Is and take care of our infrastructure is the balance we're all here for. And I do appreciate the work you guys have done with this. All right. Thanks. Thank you.

24:11 So the next our next item is the Springfield Piscal Stability Task Force and we have Nate. Okay, Amory got Sarah. We got a whole army of people Uh good evening, mayor and council. Um back in September and October of 2024, uh staff engaged the council in two work sessions uh looking for guidance on how

24:56 to address the uh structural imbalance that we have in the city's general fund. Uh from that came a mayor's task force and uh a committee charge uh providing guidance on the purpose of that task force. Uh essentially develop an understanding of the city services and finances and provide recommendations to the city council on options for developing a strategy for sustainable funding for city services. Uh since that time the city contracted with uh two consultants uh Funk Levis and Eco Northwest uh to assist uh in the planning of those meetings uh for facilitation uh fiscal analysis uh as well as the final report writing. Uh we um the task force met uh for nine consecutive weeks between mid January

25:41 and mid-March and currently uh Ecom Northwest is drafting a final report that'll be coming back to you in a work session scheduled for uh May 19th. So joining us tonight is Ann Marie Levvice from Funk Levvice and Sarah Emmens from Eco Northwest. Uh and uh we've got a presentation that's going to include um background on why the task force was convened, an overview of the task force membership and structure, uh a summary of the process and work completed uh as well as demographic and financial comparisons between uh Springfield and peer communities in Oregon. And with that, I'm going to turn over to city manager Nancy Newton. Thank you, Nathan. I'm going to try to navigate with this remote. So everybody, good luck, right? Um, I wanted to kick

26:26 off this evening with just a little bit of context because this group has been meeting, but I think it's important to talk about the story of how we arrived here because that really sets the stage with some of the information you'll be getting later to this evening. So, there it uh came to the city in April of 2020. Um, not an ideal time to start a new job uh by any measure. Uh but one of the things that I noticed pretty quickly was that the city runs very very lean and I remember making an observation to that to a city manager colleague and their response was well Nancy all cities run lean and you know I've been working in local government in Oregon for over 20 years. I know Oregon isn't flush with

27:12 money. So I was like well yes but this this feels really lean. this feels really lean almost like everybody's doing like a job and a half or more and but of course you know I'm not making decisions based on my feelings I wanted to find out and check you know what is really our financial position rel and how can we look at that to improve our long-term financial outlook so really that was kind of the thought in my my head and Nathan and I started talking about really being deliberate in highlighting the structural imbalance that exists that you're going to hear about this evening and really being clear and open with that in the budget process in all of our communications. And we also talked about the five-year

27:57 general fund forecast which we really wanted to sharpen our pencils and get as close to real-time information as possible. So we were making real-time decisions. Um, also, uh, in 2024 and, well, part of 2023 and moving over to 2024, we retained, um, public state or excuse me, Portland State University Center for Public Service uh, to conduct an assessment of the city's financial condition. Um, Portland State has done similar studies. They're kind of a local expert on how cities work at the Center for Public Service. Um, and so I just wanted to see, you know, did we miss anything? And having an independent third-party person go in,

28:43 talk to department directors, ask them questions, and from a kind of purely academic and public policy view, say, are there things that we could do? Could we make additional cuts? Do we add additional resources? Are there legislative changes that we should maybe pursue with the council? Is this an economic development conversation? These were the kind of the four areas that they were looking at as well. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about that. Some of the general findings was that the city is financially well-managed. Um, that did not come as a surprise to me. I I have a lot of faith in Nathan and his team and this the executive team and it did um also show

29:29 that we are in fact a very lean city. Um, our property tax rate is comparable to other cities. Um, but there are a variety of factors why we are lean and Sarah will talk talk more about that when she does the deep dive into the data which I think is really interesting because it tells a story about how we got to where we are today. Bottom line, there was no easy work to be done, right? all of the kind of lowhanging fruit as people like to say had already been picked, had already been, you know, yielded by prior councils, prior staff. So, now we get to the hard part and not not that it hasn't been hard and the city has um done very well, but you know, this is where 20 years in the making has kind of come to a

30:15 head. So, when you look at this uh the study um really we were having them focus more on the city's general fund. that is our fund that we have the most ability to be flexible within and it also funds some of the city's uh core operations namely our public safety uh police fire also our municipal court and dispatch service. Um, we do have two uh local option levies that support uh the municipal court uh the police department to some degree and um dispatch and also um we have a levy for our uh to pay part of our fire uh department. However, those levies do not cover the full cost of services and that

31:02 is simply a result of when you begin a levy. It's always easier if you're looking to renew a levy to do a straight renewal than to incrementally have a a cost increase and we just talked about that uh in the prior presentation about the importance of making incremental cost um increases when you can. Uh the challenge of course is that it's it's it's a difficult cell when you when it's something that is placed on a valid versus a public policy board making that decision. um within the PSU study because it was also happening u coinciding with the um Eugene Springfield fire um governance task force that was kind of excluded from the study and also from the ex excluded from the task force charge. It's its own

31:47 process and track and on running on a parallel process. So I just wanted to note that. So, here's a number that really jumped out at me, 10%. Um, and that was PSU's analysis of the administrative cost load of the city. That is exceedingly low. And just to give you some context, when I started my career in government, I worked for the Commission on Children and Families, keeping kids out of the juvenile justice system. We administered grants to nonprofits and our recommendation to nonprofits was to keep their administrative costs um below 18% 18 to 19%. To be competitive for grants and we this is 10%. This is substantially lower than that. So my feeling of boy we are

32:33 really lean was borne out in their analysis and I also like to be right. So what was next? you know what what what happens next. You know, we have the PSU report and I I do think that it was an important process to go to go through because, you know, it's one thing for us. We work we work with these numbers every day. We're constantly monitoring our budget, but to have an independent party confirm, you know, our the way our uh we run and to speak to councelor Stout's, you know, um kind of version of, you know, we are very fiscally conservative and we have been and that's been that's been a a wonderful thing for the city. However, you know, we are in a position where we

33:18 want we need to make some difficult decisions. And so, I was having conversations with the mayor over a series of months. Um, you know, much like uh mayors have the ability to engage uh special task force and committee. Sometimes they're called blue ribbon committees. You give them a fancy name, sometimes you don't. In this case, we we were a little bit more plain and just called it a fiscal stability sustainability task force and really um calling on our community um members and that had technical expertise in finance had um demonstrated commitment to the city either through either a large employment base or the presence of what they do in our city. um to really get their take um with the help of our

34:05 consultant team and I want to talk about our consultants really quickly before I hand the presentation over to them. So we really um when you're engaging in a discussion this important you really want to get the the most um talent that you can bring to the table and in this case that was fun and eco Northwest. Um, Punk Levvice specializes in helping government go through uh challenging topics and engaging communities on those topics. That that is kind of their niche area. They do a lot of other things. Um we had used Punk Levis uh previously during the ice storm when we did not have a public information officer in the city that was they really came through

34:50 in the clutch and so they were already familiar with the city had a relationship with the mayor so there was very little learning curve there. Um Eco Northwest is also um very much an expert in anything um that crosses um economic development and public policy. that's kind of their niche and they are really known for the tremendous amount of work that they do in that field. Highly regarded. I had worked with this firm um many years ago when I was in county work. So I was familiar with their work and I'd worked um with them. So again, real specialty areas. Um the takeaway on this was you know as staff we are we were really committed to having a very transparent process that we didn't put

35:36 our finger on the scale that we didn't have a preconscribed outcome that we just wanted you know what people would say was well you just want to rubber stamp something that you've already decided and that was certainly not the case in our case it was you know I really believed and in talking with the mayor you know my core belief on this process was that we have a community of people that are very dedicated to the city and if you present them with a challenge and provide them with information they will step up and they will help and they will you know offer some creative ideas and this is exactly what happened with the task force. So I'm going to hand this over um to probably Emory first. Yes. And then we are going to talk about her observations

36:22 as our facilit facilitator of this process and then also um the data portion. When we get to the data portion, I will say if it's okay with Sarah, if you have questions because you're going to be going through a lot of data, so you might have a question in real time. It's okay to ask that question then. Yes, please do. So hand read. Great. Thank you, city manager, mayor, city councilors. Thank you for your time tonight. Um I'm really thrilled to be here to talk to you. Uh we'll have three meeting sessions together. Tonight is to really talk about the process, go through the data, the deep dive into the data that Echo Northwest did that so you can see where the um committee started.

37:10 Um for those of you who don't know me, uh I'm uh president of Funk Levis. company's been around for 45 years. No, I wasn't there when it started. Uh but joined after uh the UFO. I've been a planning commissioner. Believe we were planning commissioners together. Uh elected official as a school board. I've been on library committees to do fundraising for that. Um a lot of different things. For me, this work was personal. In fact, I turned it down when I got a call to to do this. I said, "That sounds difficult and it sounds like um it's going to be a a cumbersome, really tough project." And I said, "I

37:56 don't know." Um turned it down and I called back about a half an hour later and I said, "Actually, these are the things that people in this community need to commit to as elected officials. You make difficult decisions all of the time." Um, but my one saying to both the mayor and the city manager was nothing was off the table that this committee was going to operate and discuss and be able to ask any question. And so I want to talk a little bit about that process because um in all of the work that I've done, this may be one of the things I'm uh the most proud of for the committee work, for the um questions they were able to ask and

38:42 for um frankly the openness of of the city. really um Springfield does things their own way and it's done really well and and I'm very appreciative of that. Um as you're hearing in the news, many cities, many counties, many communities are going through this. Um a lot of it are going through it uh in different ways. I think what you'll see from this process um was a really thoughtful bringing together a a good group of people um to really think about this in a a different way. Um and I will say that that this was really led by the committee. Um we were

39:28 facilitators. We had our data exceptional data. Um it was led by the committee. the committee um asked the questions, they talked about this, we gave them the process to do it. Um which was pretty intense. Um but but it really was the committee going through and what we're bringing to you is is that good work. So then it comes for you to make decisions. Um, so when we think about this and we call it the mayor's fiscal stability task force, it really was a technical advisory committee. Um, when you see the people that were on this, they were

40:13 brought to this committee for their technical expertise. whether it be as community members who had been very involved with a lot of the things with Springfield, whether it was because they were a part of the largest employer in Springfield, um people who were very involved who have been on committees, um they had technical expertise that was really exceptional and they were given a charge of making cuts that were uh to give the city time to really be able to look at some of these um structural imbalances. Um there were four areas and

40:58 they were all equally important. Um where could we cut costs? Again, the city manager talked about how lean your city is run. Um where could things be be cut? What could be done? What were some revenue options? um economic development. We we looked at ways that we could grow out of some of the problems and then what are ways that we could do things legislatively. Again, everything was on the table. Just wanted to show you a couple of pictures. We were in this room, so I had a little twitch when I walked in here tonight having been here. Um, just to kind of walk everybody through the

41:44 the timeline, as you remember, um, city council had a work work session talking about the five-year budget forecast. Um, we began our work, uh, we had everyone commit to every single Wednesday evening um, from 5:30 to 7:30. Um, they worked through, they uh, showed up every Wednesday. if they couldn't be here, many of them would either be on Zoom. Um there was very little of people missing meetings. So now we're here where we give you the overview and the report to the city council to then move on to um your process, but I always want to make sure people know where we are in the

42:29 timeline for this. Let's talk a little bit about the Sorry, am I doing that? No, we're going to put you on the box. They're gonna try to move one of the See if we can get the whole slide here. Okay. So, we we're pausing for station identification. All of a sudden, I worried that I was doing something wrong. I have tech phobia that I'm doing something wrong. So, um task force membership, I talked a little bit about this. Um these were people that were wildly committed to this process. Um people from um from UA Local 290, the pipe fitters, Bur Union, uh Springfield Chamber of Commerce,

43:14 construction, um one of your budget committee members, a community volunteer, merit, um CDC management, uh international paper, peace, community volunteers who have been very involved and OCCU, uh members. Again, as you look at that peace health as well, I skipped over. Um, what I will tell you is there were several of the people that we asked that at first also said no. Um, several people here have never volunteered for a committee, but they believed this was a critical step and a commitment that they were willing to make.

43:59 Um at the first meeting we asked what is it about Springfield that makes this such a a wonderful place to be. Um people talked about business and city are partners in what we do in Springfield. There's a sense of belonging, pragmatism, we get stuff done, sensible leadership. Um the downtown turnaround was a great partnership. Um and that there's an enthusiasm for getting things done. So, everyone here really committed to that. Let me talk again a little bit about the structure and process. Every Wednesday night for nine weeks, we went into everything. City finances, current services, all of the data. Um, I can't

44:45 even think, Nathan, how many questions were asked. I mean, every week we probably had five five to 10 questions, deep questions. In fact, the mayor who wasn't there very much, he showed up to one, he said, "There's questions that we've never heard in budget committee um that people are asking." So, it was really wonderful. And staff did a phenomenal job of they would answer questions, but they were not there to direct. It was not like a budget committee where staff presents. It very much was here's the data, here's the information, now tell us um what questions you have. Um, they discussed and debated possible options. And I I just want to take a moment and tell you

45:31 something I saw. It might get a little choked up. I don't mean to. I watched people walk in that room at the beginning and they had their mind made up and they said, "We're not doing this. We're doing this. We're not doing that." And I listened to people talk from their heart and say, "But we can't do this. this really matters to this community and people who said I absolutely want to get rid of soda machines whatever I'm just going to give you an example change their mind you don't hear that a lot in committees this committee sat they listen to each other they changed their mind that's something for a a process that you come into because you often

46:17 have your pet project that you say it has to be this so so it was a really phenomenal group of people and you'll hopefully get to meet some of them. Um at the end they came to consensus. Uh I will tell you it was lively discussions. There were back and forth. There were um things that came up and then things that got taken off but they came to consensus. So you'll see that at our next meeting. I want to turn over to Sarah again. We said uh we wanted you to see the data of the benchmarking for cities um so you can understand a bit about what how we looked at the data. We want to make sure you have uh the ability to ask any questions. I'm dying to hold

47:03 that baby so it's killing me. You know that when I'm in a room with a puppy or a baby, it's all I can think about. Um, so I want to turn it over to Sarah to be able to go through the data and then we'll have time for additional questions at the end. Thanks, Anmirie. Um, hi everybody. I'm Sarah Emmens. I'm a consultant. I work with the Echo Northwest. Um, I have a background in state and local uh, public finance. Um, I was formerly the the deputy CFO at the Department of Children, Youth, and Families in Washington State where I live. I live in Olympia, so I drove down today. Um, and I've worked in the Washington state legislature for in ways and means and house finance and with that go northwest and um, in other capacities I've done a lot of work on taxes and local budgets. Um, so it was a it's been a really fascinating project and like Anmarie

47:50 said, a lot of cities are going through similar um, struggles that Springfield is. Um, which is uh, definitely um, makes my book of business probably more desirable right now. But it was um Springfield is a very uh um unique city in the in the hands-on approach it took to um kind of tackling some of these challenges. So um we're going to talk today I call this a comparable cities analysis maybe maybe not benchmarking although that's that is what we're doing um but benchmarking kind of implies that there's a right or wrong level of taxation or spending and of course as you know as elected officials no cities are exactly the same. there are many differences in terms of institutional arrangements and service delivery um and communities that we want to make sure we really understand. And the task force

48:36 was um I guess they they had a deep dive into city finances and they were starting to ask a lot more questions about you know how does Springfield's budget compare to other cities in Oregon? Um especially in terms of some of the budget pressures that that uh Springfield is facing. And so this kind of analysis can be really helpful to make sure that um they and you are are kind of grounded in how uh your city stacks up and compares. Um and a lot of what I'll say today probably you already know. Um but now you'll have the the kind of data to to back it up. So this is the order of the um my presentation and the indicators that we'll look at. The cities were um that we're going to look at were selected based uh based primarily on geography. So we were looking for similars sized cities um and

49:21 that that are you know relatively close to Springfield that are not necessarily in the Portland metro region. So sort of standalone city so the economy is similar. Um we wanted to have a good variation in county because we thought that would be more um useful to kind of understand the the differences in structure there. We're going to spend a little bit of time looking at community and economic characteristics u relying primarily on census data and then that will really help you hopefully understand more about how what your tax base um your residential tax base looks like who lives and works in in Springfield as well as the service service demands and then we'll spend some time looking at uh fiscal characteristics um the the budget size and budget structure and the responsibilities that um Springfield has and as um the city manager mentioned

50:07 please do interrupt if you have questions as we go. Uh so these are the cities that we um selected for uh for this analysis. We're go looking at um Eugene, Medford, Springfield, Corvalis, Albany, and Redmond. So most of the cities are again along the I5 corridor. Um tend to be uh relatively large cities. I think all of them are in the top 20 in terms of population in the state of Oregon. Um Eugene of course is is much larger than these cities, but you can't really talk about Springfield's operations without talking about Eugene's operations as well since it's your neighbor. And then Red Redmond is um a little bit smaller, but has maybe a similar um service profile and and Ben does a um not not so much a comp just in terms of um a lot of the changes

50:53 its economy has gone through in recent years. We felt Redmond was maybe a closer peer. And this um chart is intended to kind of show you the the um operational structures and responsibilities that each of these cities have. So we really did focus on the um operating budget uh uh not so much on capital. And these are the what I would call the respon responsibility areas or the service areas that each of these cities offers. So um Springfield is an outlier in a couple of ways. Of course, it's the only city in this list that does operate a jail. So, the other cities don't have jails and that does of course have an implication for public safety operating costs and it's the only city in our list that does not have a municipal parks

51:39 department and as you know that doesn't mean that Springfield is not served by parks. The Walain parks district provides excellent service in this area but um we're just focusing on the um responsibilities that the city of of Springfield provides. What's the asterisk on the wastewater? I'm sorry. The asterisk on the wastewater. Oh. Um, if that that would refer to I think some of what the previous presentation was about that the Springfield's budget um has the the NWMC budget as well. So, we did do a little bit of scrubbing to try to make sure we were only looking at the portion of um of Springfield's budget that serves Springfield residents. So, we we had to do a little bit of numbers crunching. All of the MWMC flows through even budget flows through our budget. So we removed that but we left uh

52:24 Springfield's portion of MWMC so we could still have relatively apples to apples Miles height earlier whether it was Eugene or not. Thank you. Yeah and the on an apples to apples note I should have said this earlier another kind of um tricky aspect of doing studies like this is just the fact that the data are so different. So, we did the best we could with the fiscal portion, but there would there will still um no no two cities are exactly the same. So, now we're going to move into the community characteristics. So, Springfield is as the ninth biggest city in Oregon. Um it's third in terms of size in uh in in our comparable cities list. Uh on the left you can see population and on the right you see the number of households and Eugene again

53:10 obviously much much much larger. And one thing that I'll note is the average household size in Eugene is 2.5, which is a little bit above the state average and and a little bit on the bigger end of the cities in our group. I think of Springfield as a as a family town. We have a little guest in in here that's maybe verifying that, but again, this is where, you know, I'll try to point out aspects of Springfield's community that you probably already know, but that we're seeing in the data. In terms of race and ethnicity, um the cities are listed here in alphabetical order and the state of Oregon is shown there um at the bottom. The cities are fairly similar in terms of their racial and ethnic uh distribution. Um and one aspect that I'll note is that the the uh

53:55 share of of Springfield residents who are are white alone is a little bit lower in all of these cities than in the state of Oregon as a whole. So when we talk about household income and poverty um and now we're moving into community characteristics that might tell you a little bit more about sort of the city's residential tax space. Uh Springfield and most of the sample cities are below the state median in terms of their household income. So that's the chart on the left. Springfield's orange in all of these graphs and the state of Oregon is green. And then the the inverse, you know, Springfield is um above the state pover poverty rate poverty rate, excuse me. And the the order goes in um is third third lowest in terms of income and third highest in terms of poverty rate.

54:40 I'll note here that Eugene and Corvalis um both being university towns, they do have large student populations and they would be included in census data. They they're likely skewing the data uh a little bit lower in terms of income or higher in terms of poverty rate. Um but they're the best available data that we have to look at these cities in comparison to each other. in employment in terms of employment and higher ed. So Springfield's Springfield's employment rate is above the state. So I I think of Springfield also as a as a working town. It's second highest above among the sample and and and significantly higher than the state. Um and and but in terms of higher educational attainment rate, at least in terms of looking at four-year degrees,

55:26 this the city is uh lower than the state and lowest among the sample of cities that we looked at. Um and you can think of this, you know, it tends to go handinhand maybe with the income being a little bit at the lower end of the cities that we looked at. Uh people work in Springfield, but they may not be working in jobs that necessarily require a four-year degree, which sometimes can be can um be correlated with lower incomes. We looked also at housing. So, Springfield's housing does tend to be um less expensive than the other cities that we that we looked at and less expensive than than the state of Oregon. On the left, we're showing median home values. So, in Springfield, the median home value is uh lower than the state

56:12 and lowest among all of the samples. Um, this is census data, so these numbers, and it's 2023. The numbers might look a little lower than what you would maybe be expecting to see, just given that census data do lag just a little bit. Um, if they're actually published in 2023, but they're probably from a year or two before. Um, but I would expect that the ordinal ranking would be the same um, in today's dollars or excuse me, in today's prices. And um also that assessed value I would note goes in this kind of rough ordinal ranking as well. We'll spend a little bit of time talking about that at the end of the presentation and its implication for taxes here in Springfield. And the same order um you can see uh the rent on the right is also in the same order. And I'll note just that I didn't say that housing is more affordable in

56:58 Springfield just because we did talk about how incomes are a little bit lower here. Um, so we think of it as less expensive but not necessarily less more affordable. We also looked at age. So compared to the state, Springfield has a slightly higher share of the population who are children. So again, this maybe goes handinhand with the household size um data point that I talked about earlier. Um, so that that's the uh chart on the left shows the population that's under the age of 18 and Eugene and Corvalis are skewed down probably by the college students. And then on the right you you can see um that Springfield has a lower share of the population who are of retirement age. And I think this goes handinhand again with that um the employment rate being higher in Springfield than in some of the other

57:43 cities that we we looked And then our final slide on community characteristics. We did one we did want to take a closer look at at some indicator on uh in the public service or excuse me public safety arena since that is an area that we knew would be of interest to the task force. Uh the chart on the left shows property crime per thousand residents. So Springfield is just a little above the state in that um that data point. Uh lower in 2023 and 20 then 2022. And on the right, uh, you can see it the violent crime, um, coralary. This is violent crimes per thousand residents. And these are from the FBI uniform crime lab. Just to kind of give

58:28 you a sense of where Springfield falls, uh, in terms of of crime rates, which would be an indicator both the public safety service and public safety demand. So that was kind of our, you know, the this the task force had just done a real deep dive into finances. um and that was our contextual scene setting for a kind of higher level view of um their their budget data in the context of these other cities. So these are the questions that um were asked and answered in in uh in this presentation. So um how we looked at budget size and structure. How does the budget compare to other cities? Is it is it structure similar? Does it have more fewer different responsibilities than other cities? We're we are going to look

59:13 at expenditures and FTE in a number of areas and then we'll take a closer look at the general fund um in terms of both FTE and tax burden and then what other other re revenue sources um cities tend to utilize to pay for operations. So for this um presentation we used uh fiscal year 25 adopted budget numbers for all of the cities and then there were a couple cities that had bianual budgets. We had to um annualize uh their their budgets just to look at at fiscal year 25. Um so these are the total budgets. The the like lighter shade is the total budget. Um Springfield's is gosh I can't even read that. I'm realizing how small the font is.8 $118 million um total fund budget and

59:59 $46 million um general fund budget is the dark uh colored bar. So Springfield's general fund budget is the smallest of all the cities but um that in terms of total fund but budget it's the second largest or excuse me second smallest of of all the cities that's behind only Redmond which is of course much much much smaller. So for this analysis again we we um focusing on operating budget we excluded debt service transfers which kind of make the budget picture confusing and we excluded capital expenditures as well. So in term on a per capita basis um Springfield's total expenditures were the second lowest in the sample um ahead

1:00:44 of of Medford and its general fund your your general fund expenditures on a per capita basis are the lowest. That's the the chart on the right and we'll talk about um what we think is behind that in a minute. We also want to talk about budgets as um not just as a on a per capita basis but also as a share of aggregate income. Um and this is sometimes an indicator that's sometimes called the price of government. Um it's it's sort of an indicator that can tell you how much how much a community's tax base is bearing in terms of your overall size of government. Um this doesn't mean so Springfield's expenditures as a share of household income are 6.3%. This

1:01:30 doesn't mean of course that Springfield residents pay 6.3% of their income toward city government. It's just sometimes used as a helpful kind of indicator um when looking across cities or at a city over time to um to kind of benchmark So, in terms of expenditures as a share of income, Springfield's is second lowest. And that's I'll point out even though Springfield's income is at the lower end of these cities, um its expenditures as a share of income are also at the lower end. Uh and general fund expenditures uh as a share of household income are very low at the at the lowest end of all of of the cities. So, what is the um those expenditures paying for? Like most cities, Springfield's a large portion of

1:02:17 Springfield and these other cities um budgets are paying for for staff or full-time equivalents. So Springfield has 446 FTE and the this is in again FY25 budgeted. Um the Oh, I don't know what happened to the headings. It's weird. So the um the first column is the population and the second column is total FTE and then the third column is supposed to say general fund FTE. So the cities are or are um listed here in the order of the middle column. So, uh, Springfield has the third smallest, excuse me, staff, um, of all of these cities, and about half of Springfield's, um, FTE are charged to the general fund, which is pretty similar to other cities, um, that we

1:03:04 looked at. We weren't able to get that data point for Albany or Bedford. And then this is a chart that shows you um, where these FTE are um, are working. So, we with the help of city staff um we uh just did a scan of budgets made a had to call them for a couple of the kind of central service functions, but put together a table here that just shows you um Springfield's workforce and each of these different departments or functional areas. Um I think that that we talked about the sort of outlier areas earlier that Springfield is the only city that operates a jail. So you can see there are 19 FTE that that um that work in the jail and it's the only city that does not operate a parks

1:03:50 department. So that's uh kind of from the bottom there. You can see the size of the other cities um parks departments and and in most of these cities parks are a general fund um function. Medford and Redmond do not have um libraries. Uh Redmond does not have a fire department but it it does have an airport. And there are some other anomalies too um that we can talk about when we look at the public safety slides. Have any questions about this one? Why isn't the FDA for Medford listed on the airport? Sorry. Um Medford. Oh yeah, it might be in public works. Um I I was kind of pulling from from budget budget books and they are all organized

1:04:35 a little bit differently. And some different governments don't detail it out. They'll have a lump sum versus Eugene you see was pulled out. Yes. Yeah. And I I think you can kind of see a little bit too the um the central service functions being a little bit leaner here at least when you compare Springfield and Corvalis. I'm looking sort of at the finance, human relation, human resources, IT um lines. I think uh Albany is maybe a closer comp than Springfield when you look at those functions, but Corbellis definitely is larger staff in those

1:05:24 areas. So what does that mean in terms of population? Springfield has 7.1 FTE per thousand residents. Um this is makes the second smallest among the sample ahead only of Medford. Um and again about half of that those 7.1 would be uh paid for by the general fund in mo in most of these cities. Oops sorry. Oh then they're missing again. So um on this table of the populations on the left that the police is in the middle column and then fire budget is on the right there. So, police and fire and life safety in the city of Springfield together cost $51 million. Um, this is the largest general fund expenditure responsibility. So, 32 million out of the 51 does come from the general fund with the remainder coming out of the um

1:06:11 the levy funds that um that uh city manager talked about. Um, and I'll note that Albany also has a a local option for public safety levy. Uh but I believe and Eugene has its community safety payroll tax. But in most of these other cities, these are general fund responsibilities and that 27 million for Springfield includes about 5 million to operate the jail. So on a per capita basis, um Springfield's police expenditures were third largest in the sample, but again that does include um a portion of spending for the jail. So if you remove that orange portion of the chart there, Springfield's police expenditures per capita would actually be the lowest

1:06:57 among the sample. And on the right, you can see the per capita fire expenditures put it third among the sample. Redmond, of course, does not have um uh fire services. And the city of Medford does not operate um ambulance services. So that might be a a part of the reason that their expenditures for fire a little bit lower. Are they? They have a um a separate uh district that provides it. They they do have some sort of um like good intention ambulance service, but not a full ALS or BLS ambulance service that's operated out of their fire department. Oops. Did you have questions more questions about this one? So, we talked a lot about expenditures and then um we we're going to talk a

1:07:42 little bit about how uh city operations are are funded. So Springfield's taxes per capita are the second highest after the city of Eugene. Uh that's on a total fund basis. So 739 per um dollars on a per capita basis in terms of taxes, but its discretionary or general fund or discretionary portion is the second lowest among the sample. So that's the the dark portion at the bottom and that would be primarily your um permanent rate, your property taxes that go to the general fund. Um, and so that was something that we, you know, felt that the task force needed to understand is that, you know, at least half or almost half of the taxes that the city does receive are are dedicated and can't be used for or reallocated for other

1:08:32 purposes. And this is a this actually the title I should have changed that to say revenues per capita. So this is total revenues um per capita. Uh the green bar shows you charges including some of the charges that the previous presenters just talked about. Um and then the purple purple portion would be um oh sorry the orange portion would be licenses, fees and permits. So other types of revenues that um cities collect for various uses. and the purple would be um all other um uh and this is really just intended to show you that Springfield's um revenues that are dedicated to specific uses make up a large portion of the revenues that it collects. Taxes being the blue portion. So last we'll talk a little bit about property taxes. So um Springfield

1:09:19 um levies a police and fire local option tax as you know as well as a bond repayment levy. Um although that's not subject to measures five and 50. We included it in this chart on the left here just to because of course people pay that tax and so we wanted to make sure the task force saw the full rate um in context and city city of Springfield's rate is the third highest among the sample. That's the the chart on the left there. And then when you look at the city of Springfield's um property tax rate in the context of the county property tax rates in other districts, school districts, um other government, other special districts, it's still the third the third highest. Um but of course that that does not give you the full picture of how much prop revenue the city can raise because we um

1:10:06 as we talked about earlier, assessed value here in Springfield is a little bit lower than than other cities. And that's um partly to do with that or almost entirely to do with the measure five um freeze of the property tax base back in the 90s. So um well the next chart is to this state this slide kind of shows you that property tax rate in the context of the city's budget. So although the city of Springfield's rate is in the higher half of the sample um the city's not able to bring as much revenue to the as you know um to the budget as other cities. So uh as an example here at the bottom you can see the cities of Corvalis and Eugene. Corvalis has a lower um operating rates that be its permanent rate and its local option rate. Um and Eugene has a higher rate.

1:10:53 Both cities have higher assessed value than the city of uh Springfield. So they're the the um they're able to to generate more property tax revenue with their rates. And in the middle here, you can see the impact for a typical residential dwelling um in terms of its tax bill. So residents in Springfield do have much lower tax bills than typical residents in these other cities. Although, as we talked about earlier, because incomes are uh do tend to be a little bit lower here, it's not necessarily less of a burden. It just means their tax bills are a little bit lower. And so that was kind of the the thousand foot view. Um lots of data. I um if you have any questions about any of it, I'm happy to take questions.

1:11:41 I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. you want to con up the next step slide. So people and and we're happy to go back over um the data, but if you're like me, you've sort of seen enough numbers for the night. Um but we're happy to go back to any of the slides if you want to look at it again if there's more information. But what you got was a taste of of what the committee saw. So to to give them a good grounding in um what's possible uh what uh how we compare to others. Um so as we think about this this is sort of what the committee went through in the process. The next part of the work that

1:12:26 they did was then to to look at options to look at in all four and I often talked about them as the buckets the cost cutting the revenue legislative and economic development. So the committee walked through we had presentations on any of the possibilities they added things um for revenue for cost cutting. Um, to be honest, the city of Springfield is uh really exceptional on economic development and uh legislative options and does a lot with a very little. So, I'm not going to say that the committee came up with new ideas for legislative things. They more gave priorities for that. Um, and talked a

1:13:12 bit about uh what their priorities would be for economic development as well. Um, so we went through a process of looking at all of the options, coming back with ideas, talking through, narrowing down, expanding out till they finally came to consensus. So what we will show you at our next uh work session with you uh is the report and the recommendations from the committee. Uh we're hoping to have several of the committee members here to talk to you a bit about the process from their point of view. Um why they came to where they came to um on their recommendations and uh give you sort of

1:13:58 their first person uh experience with this and then we'll uh be here to also answer questions. Are there other questions about the process or how we got to where we are today? I appreciate this presentation and what you brought, but it for me it I it didn't say, "Hey, this is the this is what we're we're short." It didn't talk about specifically like what you're looking for in terms of dollar amounts, you know, and so I mean like you're just showing me all these charts and stuff and saying, "Yeah, you guys are at this low point, but you're not saying, you know, you guys are going to be $2 million short next year, $3 million next

1:14:44 year or something like that." So, it's like it didn't really put it in context for me. Good, very good question. We'll show a bit of that. Uh the charge to the committee was to uh remove $4.5 million over a period of time or yearly. uh in total, but it was uh for over a time horizon of five years. Okay. Obviously, we had to get to a $4.5 million number. Um either in revenues, cost cutting, um the earlier we get the money, the cheaper it is to us. If it's further out, it's much more expensive. So, um, if we were able to make more cost cutting or raise more revenues

1:15:29 earlier on, um, it could be maybe a bit lower. Although the $4.5 million was our our charge and that's significant when you look at what your budget is and and where you have so it was a significant amount. Mayor, may I please? Um, I just want to provide a little bit context. That's an excellent question because one of the things that we told the task force as they kicked off was that while they were meeting, we were also developing our budget on a concurrent kind of parallel track and I gave them the uh cuts that are pre-existing that will be coming um forward to the budget committee in uh

1:16:14 next month. And so they were aware that there were already some cuts contemplated um and what those amounts were. Also they also knew that although their uh recommendations would be you know were their recommendations they came to consensus on that it was we made it very clear that it the council has the ultimate deciding authority over what to do with those recommendations. They could you know take all of the recommendations implement them. They could say some not. they can tweak them. It's wholly up to the council to to do that and and I they understood that. Also, they understood that all of the product that they were working on in these meetings are are public records. So, one of the things that we will be

1:16:59 doing and are in the process of putting together a web page that will house all of this information, all of the data that you saw this evening, every piece of information that the task force received, including answers to questions that they had, so for followup as well as uh the video um recordings of the meeting. So, if you wanted to do a deep dive, you could and see that process and how it played out. Rebecca So, and the other thing, Nancy, when that goes out, could you identify for everybody what the what the two critical meetings were that where all the deliberations happened, right? Because that's going to be a that would be the ones that I would think you were most interested to uh to hear. Um, one of the

1:17:44 reasons I asked for this, you know, to start with this data, right, was because a we we needed to get, you know, the report still be finalized and we're going to see that on we're going to see that on the 19th. We'll have the report obviously before then, but that's what the discussion the 19th is. The other one is the uh the demographic data or and the and the city data I think told us a lot about what we already knew about the community, right? It is a fiscally conservative community. It is a very working-class community and even though we don't spend a lot on government, every one of those dollars that we do spend is felt by people in this community very very intently. And so to me, I thought it would set the grounding for this next discussion, which is okay, how do we as a as the

1:18:30 elected officials in this community adopt the strategy to get us to to sort of fiscal stability? And this is going to take two or three conversations, but at the end of it, my goal would be that we agree about what the path forward is and give Nancy clear direction to go out and implement that. So there so that's what the conversation is going to come from the 19th through the 30th. Also, I just want to echo a couple things about the uh about the committee. Um I haven't read the final report because it's not done yet, but the the results, you know, and the discussion was completely different than what I what I had expected. And I think that says something about the process, right? Because it ended up in a spot that kind of worked for everybody and developed

1:19:16 organically. And the other piece is um there there's been a lot of pre-work right now. Now it's up to us to kind of get our heads around what our community recommendations are going to be because it's going to require a lot of conversations with different groups in this community about how do we move forward. And with that, if you guys have questions, I know this is a lot of data, which we're good at consuming a lot of data, but about 24 hours later, you're going to have all the questions. Anybody have comments they want to jump in or are you guys ready to be done for the evening? Go ahead. How's the community outreach going to look? There is a piece on that that some community outreach is that that is up to us to define. Okay. So, um to me that could look different ways based on how we go how we go

1:20:02 through the report. We could look at the report and say, "Oh, this is great. Go for it." than do um the thing I think that's important is we need to get kind of to our initial opinion by the 30th because that way we we actually have something we can go show people and and respond and then we as a you know as a as a council can um look for those opportunities with staff to say okay how do we communicate this to the community you know it might look like when we when we're out talking about levies right where we're going to rotaries and and whatnot but that is up to us to decide how we want to talk about this with the public. So the two things that we're responsible for is to choose a strategy to solve this uh to solve this uh uh fiscal issue and then talk about how do

1:20:48 we want to talk about this uh with our else? All right. I appreciate you hanging in there. I know it's a lot of slides and it's a lot of data, but But it does, you know, it will help help us through the end. All right, I'm going to adjourn us for the evening. Thank you so much.