[Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e e e e e e for those of you that made it possible for us to have a quorum we are really grateful for that studio we ready go live grateful for the opportunity to um have a meeting and to start it in a reasonable amount of delay so good afternoon I'd like to call our first B Council budget workshop for FY 2026 budget development into order as you know this is one of the most important and impactful policy items that we work with together each year in developing a plan to allocate the city resources in alignment with our strategic priorities and the needs of our community so I want to thank everyone of you that came in on time um today for joining us and I'm going to turn the meeting over to the city manager so mayor thank thank you mayor members of council um so we'll just jump right into it we have an economic Outlook and a budget update this is not the similar to what we've done in the previous years which what is a bit different is we tried during the annual strategy meeting to go under the hood a bit more in terms of what's in the budget uh in terms of all the different funds today we will be focusing on the general fund uh as well as what's happening around um Public Safety and that's a little Prelude to the uh conversation we'll have tonight also but with that said mayor if there aren't any questions if U I'd like to turn it over to Marie and uh the budget and finance team thank you very much let's see there you are behind that way Marie thank you thank you and good afternoon and as we get started the as the manager mentioned we're going to do a budget overview quickly economic Outlook and then get into some of the real considerations as we're moving forward with the development of our fiscal year 2026 budget and then looking ahead and first of course you're all familiar with your strategic priorities Council strategic priorities but we really wanted to make sure and put this front and foremost because all the funding decisions and decisions we make and performance metrics we come come up with are weighed against advancing your strategic priorities and along with that the budget is one of your main policy documents it touches all of your priorities and in particular well-managed this is how we allocate your resources the community's resources to advancing your strategic priorities and set a strong Foundation Financial foundation for All We Do work and then just quickly for your this is building upon what we discussed at your annual strategies meeting we talked about the AAA rating we have and how important that is to and and how we've built that over time and are continue to protect that we talked about how city services are provided at a comparatively low cost in other North Carolina cities and how property tax although it's our greatest um Revenue generator for the general fund it's also flat and not growing it except it doesn't grow when we get re-evaluation it only grows with new construction being added and we also talked about how we M even though we're a good value how we monitor performance and the trade-offs between efficiencies cost savings and performance and that Public Safety cost continue to drive the budget and each of these we're going to build on today further and again strong financial management practices this really helps the city we we shine forward with thatb and creditors it allows us to do more with our money it allows us also to be seen as a strong financial um foundation for what for institutions granting giving us grants and things like that as well and as we talked about in The Retreat the com comparing the cost of government and and one thing we talked about briefly at the um at our committee meeting you know some residents say yes your property taxes are flat but other fees increase and yes um all fees increase over time not just with our city other cities as their contract costs increase but this graph is not just property taxes it's fully loaded for average resident with property taxes for the city and the County sales tax our Solid Waste fee and storm water and water so we still are very low compared to our peers and our property tax is low too but that's something we have to keep an eye on how we can keep maintaining good value and the same time meeting the service expectations of our community and there's a whole lot of words on this slide but this is I believe at the strategy session council member Mitchell mentioned we don't do enough to highlight our success and and this is very much a success Council has adopted strategies recently that really support our Workforce and this just important to note in 2018 the minimum Aller wage was 1358 it is now $23 an hour that's a 70% increase that Council has put forward we've over time with covid and the health care costs going up the city of Charlotte's absorbed more of the cost burden to help relieve some of that cost from it still goes up for our employees but we've helped to balance it with the city in some instances taking on a greater share we've and Council has recently done shift differentials it was new in the last couple years and commercial driver's license premiums that really helped our operations positions and really this is a real highlight I know it's a lot of words on the page but do you realize in police fire and or hourly all since 2019 have increased over 30% in salaries and that's that is a really big deal and then as of November 2024 90% of our staff are making at least 50,000 so again there's a lot of words on that page but it's important to highlight yes ma7 oh sorry yeah that's sorry 97% are making at least 50 sorry yeah sorry and then this is also important because of the general fund 73% is Personnel cost and as we mentioned before uh Public Safety is a big driver and 73% of the Personnel costs are in police and fire so these are definitely budget considerations moving into 2026 and as you know as we discussed Summit the retreat in general we always look at revenues and Outlook of revenues and what are expenses are going to be and the incremental growth and then when we say incremental growth that's moving this current fiscal year forward into FY 26 with no pay plan and no enhancements just contract increases and annualizing things that we've already done in 2025 that's an increase of 30.4 million and we're projecting Revenue at 30.9 million so we're half a million to the good without a pay plan so that's definitely what we're working towards moving forward but this isn't different than prior years we've been here before and we're really working hard to analyze revenues and efficiencies and then I'll talk some more about that but right now I turn over to Dr Taza for for overall economic Outlook click or it's not working it's not the button okay good afternoon mayor and Council good afternoon good afternoon andum uh before I start I just wanted to um I wanted us to talk about where we are today um with regards to the economy and um so the most recent data that we have right now is for the year 2023 so as of 2023 the Charlotte MSA grew by 4 about 4.7% which was faster than that of the state and the nation so um if you look at the at the chart which shows you the the economic growth or we call it GDP growth um over time you realize that the Charlotte MSA which is the one the line in green we've been doing we've been fairing way better or better than the um than the nation since 2019 um as of 2023 the major contributors we're talking about industry sectors the major not not surprising finance and insurance contributed much to that growth um professional and business services information and and Retail trade trade so we've been doing well um as as a city and but looking forward what are we expecting so I I was looking at a couple of um projections from different banks and other entities and a lot of them consensus is about 2.5 2.5% growth in 2026 so there are no there are current no projections of a recession um they expecting some growth but a slower so we've been we've been doing better as a city what you're looking at right now is the number of housing units that have been permitted and completed in the city of Charlotte and so the data you're looking at is from 2014 through 202 before um and you'll realize that 2023 and 2024 were very very good years for us um however looking um going from 2023 to 2024 you would realize I'm looking at the the dark green bars 2023 to 2024 you see a slight a slight decrease but it's still relatively strong so even though the number number of housing permits um declined it has remained relatively strong and um number of housing units completed has been going up since since 2022 yeah and growing and growing R growing really um rapidly so on average um I was looking at the data on average it takes about 7 to 9 months for um for a single family unit to get from when they get your permit to when it's finally when to get a certificate occup occupancy about 7 to 9 months um for multif family units it takes about 19 to 21 19 to 21 months and so um when I just look at that data of the number of housing units that have been permitted and completed you can tell again just looking at our average household size the current vacancy rates significantly this this year and the coming years and so when we look at these numbers and we're looking at the time it takes for um these units to be permitted and completed you can tell if you look at if you're looking at 2024 we have a lot of units that have been permitted and those should be coming online so they'll be at they'll be they'll be getting added to the property tax roads in the next um 7 to 7 to 7 to 8 months so the two key indicators that's usually in the media interest rates and inflation so the Federal Reserve has in my opinion has done a very good job in managing um inflation so inflation has fallen from a high 99.1% that we saw um sometime in in 2022 we're currently at 2 we're currently at 2.9% it's still not got into that 2% that the Federal Reserve likes however looking at that chart you'd see that that 2.9% it still hovers around where we were before the recession and uh so also talking about the um the the the interest rates the feral Reserve I mean like I said the feral Reserve has done a good job in managing um in managing the inflation and right now we're at 4.3% um at the last meeting they held the interest rate um and we'll just wait to see what happens um in the March meeting so so following up from that conversation about um inflation if you look at the chart You' realize that from beginning in 20 in July of 2022 looking at that inflation inflation was like again right around around 9% with such high inflation of course you would expect to see higher prices and eventually we see um higher sales tax revenues but however um if you look at the trend if you look at that Trend going down you You' realize that it's been declining it's declin it over time and so um looking at the data there's some evidence of um a slowing in retail and food spending um however I mean it it looks to be stabilizing to what we we saw um before 2020 um I was just looking at the data on credit card that it's at an all-time high now and again we just meant um households need to pay more more in um an interest rate interest rate payments um the other thing which sign iFly affects um consumer spending or gives us a clue about where we we think um consumer spending is going to be is the personal uh the personal savings rate the personal savings rate before the recession the 2020 recession was right around 6% today um well as of as of December 2025 um that's supposed to be 2024 that an error so as of December 2024 um that savings rate is 3.8% which which just means a lot of households are eating into that into that personal savings that might not have money to spend in the coming in the coming months so given all that information um what you see here is the sales tax growth and um uh forecast um so the latest data we got um for sales tax was for the month of November and it came in at about 3.2% um for the remainder of this coming months we are um projecting a 3.5% growth and eventually for 2026 we think or we are projecting a growth of 3.5% over our current 2025 projections so there's a lot there's a lot that's currently going on right now um from a national standpoint um so these are just some key indicators to watch um CU this will eventually um play a role in in our final projections for uh for 2026 so some key things to watch tariffs uh um I mean just for a start that I mean there's talk in the media about a 25% um tariff on steel and aluminum again that has significant that would have significant impacts on a CIP on a CIP uh projects so just so those are some of the things we just got to watch for immigration um we continue to look at how look at consumer spending we'll continue to look at construction Trends and unemployment thank you thank you thank you Dr tesor and then we're getting back into specific budget considerations for Charlotte and as you know we have a lot of different measures we put in place but this is an important one if you remember we talked about how the general fund is 73 sorry 73% of the general fund is salaries and our employees are our most valuable resource so we definitely track retention and Recruitment and as you'll see even though we've added 723 more positions our vacancy rate is still decreasing from where it was pree in 2020 so we're we continue to monitor that and we're making progress and in a positive direction and with and this is another example of of how we continue to hire more positions in the general fund and this is very important when we talk about recruiting and retaining people and um getting some of the best talents and skill set here uh we definitely need to work on budgeting for a pay plan and that's why it's one of our predominant focuses moving forward and as we mentioned the public safety budget drives a lot is it one of our core services and a lot of our the general fund staff are there 73% of the 73% costs of the general fund are for public safety personnel and just in general too the public safety drives the general fund budget 62% of the general fund budget is allocated to police and fire so they definitely are strong drivers not only is our strong core service but also when we're looking at budget development and recent investments in public safety we've made a lot of investments in facilities and staff and um pay ranges and equipment needed um one thing important to notice when we get a new fire Firehouse um activated we have to have a new company of staff to man that station whereas police or typically when we build a new police station typically we're moving from a leas facility into a city owned facility so it's not as intensive as far as FTE increases and then when we're looking at building the next year's budget some of the funding we've done in 25 are moving are considerations for moving forward into 26 like when we do a new Fire Company sometimes we don't have them all starting July 1 so it's not a full Year's budget in 25 but it would be a full year Budget moving into FY 26 so we've got new fire positions and we've got needs for technology and gear moving forward into 26 and that we know of so that's part of the base Budget moving forward forward and then we also have things in the Horizon like a new Miranda Road fire station that will need to be um staffed with employees and Equipment uh another big consideration is delay of ordering engines and we'll get to that further in another slide but there's a huge delay not just with fire apparatus but other big equipment that used to take a year to get that takes several years to get now from the time we placed the order there's ongoing need for equipment replacement you know we have radios listed here radios you know to the public might mean oh it's a radio it's nice to have in your truck no these are the public safety radios that police and fire use to communicate with each other and they are their Lifeline during crisis events and they are own a separate radio system and require specialized equipment and we'll also be for both Police Empire looking at making sure the health and contributions to the Retirement Systems remain and one and we're always looking at Cost recovery of all our services but for public service for Public Safety a big one that's ongoing right now as as you all know is fire department serves as First Responders for medic and that's been an agree agreement for years and years and years that one that we're looking at now more actively Charlotte also Davidson and Huntersville are independently working with medic and this is't just cost it's also service levels but since we're talking about budget we're going to say it does have a cost impa impact when we're moving forward with the budget current considerations include for the towns medic reimburses at a rate of 20.9 20 and 96 Cent per call for the city of Charlotte we have a flat fee that's just under a half a million dollars so those will be considerations moving forward just to give you an idea of the magnitude last year last fiscal year uh Charlotte Fire Department ran just under 85,000 calls as for medic as first responder um and that reimbursement rate that we currently get is less than $6 per call or less than 5% of our cost of the cost and we're estimating the cost fully loaded to be 10 million 10.3 million now we're definitely not saying we need that full 10.3 million from medic but that is a consideration when we're looking at service levels and reimbursement levels and that would be a big consideration moving forward when we're developing the next year's budget but the fire chief and medic and others are actively working and working through not only cost reimbursement but the service levels to ensure our community gets the same level of service and then for police some of the ongoing Investments some of the Investments you've made in your 2025 Budget moving forward and a big thing for police is looking at service models you know we've looked at different they piloted and looked at Best Practices and now we have civilian crash investigators that are new and up and running and and um those are trying to help I think you mentioned recently a council meeting about you know the lag time if it's a non-emergency um fender bender you know you might have to wait a long time whereas now we're the city's being more responsive be to be able to um get somebody out there quickly and get people trained up when it's not an emergency situation to be able to help you in those type of circumstances and also even more importantly frees up our police resources to to be able to have more capacity to to do the emergency calls and telecommunicators so we've got more telecommunicators to help with the burden on the 911 system and help allocate analyze the calls and get um the service providers out as quickly as possible and then some of the potential needs on the horizon is analyzing the demand for swarm positions so we will be looking at and I think I'm getting ahead but we we're looking at trending down and the vacancy rate okay we're going to need to analyze the Right Mix Of Swarm positions versus operation positions versus our population versus our calls for service employer contributions to the retirement system to make sure the health of all our Retirement Systems remain up to par and ongoing technology replacement the fleet the cameras again with the radios those are some essential equipment but that also C is costly and has to be replaced over time and long-term considerations for police again the vacancy rates are trending down and that's great um that shows that we doing great better at recrui and retention and that's another impetus for us um being able to develop a strong pay plan moving forward for the new fiscal year vacancy rate vacancy savings though have helped to cover some staffing um needs some equipment some needs for overtime that have been offset the the overtime has helped offset some of our vacancies and that's going to be something that we're going to look at and analyze moving forward into the next budget cycle and future Staffing allocations you know when we get to that point what's a sufficient level of officers and how do we fund a sufficient complement to meet this community's needs and now I'd like to turn over to our budget manager Ethan Smith to talk some about compensation and benefits all right good afternoon May and city council uh my name is Ethan Smith I'm your strategy and budget manager and I I get to talk a little bit uh about one of the essentials of a well-managed government which is all the things that we do uh to recruit and retain uh the best and brightest employee Talent um and to start out uh it's been an extraordinary time to be a city employee uh the positive vacancy rates uh and hiring Trends uh that Marie talked about uh those those did not happen automatically or overnight they were the result of a series of uh historic Investments some of the largest Investments uh in employee pay uh that we made in in decades um and to be sure some of that was was targeted at a specific moment in time um where uh inflation rates were high and and and in a incredibly High uh highly competitive uh job market um but but some of these were structural improvements as well um that that will continue to pay dividends and drive costs uh in this budget and and in the years to come and and some examples of that um we we added Shi differential and uh uh commercial driver's license incentives that continue to Compound on the annual in uh increases that employees get um we made structural adjustments to the public safety pay plan um and and as we added some top steps most of of our Public Safety employees did not benefit from those top steps at the time but many uh have become eligible uh in this budget cycle and in the next budget cycle to receive those those top steps for example um and as you can see here uh these Investments have been proportionate to the distribution of of our uh positions overall which means that an overwhelming majority of of those Investments are are Public Safety Investments and while inflation uh has impacted the effect of of these uh pay increases uh it's a tremendous competitive Advantage for us uh that that these have kept pace with inflation uh for most employees and and is something that that not not all employers can say so uh prior to these three extraordinary years uh in the preco times uh a typical pay plan would look something like this um Public Safety uh would receive between 4 and 6% uh comprised of two components uh 2 and a half to 5% step uh for most uh Public Safety pay plan employees and then a market adjustment um typically around 1 and a half% um which was designed to protect the purchasing power of those uh employees that had already reached the top step and received all the eligible uh step increases in the public safety pay plan then General General employ employes uh would receive closer to 3% uh for saled employees that was all distributed through uh a merit pool whereas hourly employees that would be split between some sort of General wage increase and uh and a merit pools comparable to the salary pay plan and while uh inflation has remained stubbornly above the 2% Federal Reserve Target um uh at present each of these plans uh for for most employees would keep Pace with inflation ac across each of these plans but certainly something we will will continue to monitor going forward so put in the context of the general fund Outlook um with a typical if you add a typical play plan on top of our uh general fund expenditures uh leaves about a $16.5 million gap uh that numbers closer to 22 million uh with a more enhanced version of the pay plan and uh this is uh typical for where we are at this time of the year uh and and in fact uh we believe we've solved about a third of this um with a combination of Revenue and expenditure strategies uh we are certainly continuing to evaluate those and vet those and work through additional options um going forward and and we're we're not going to rest until uh we we balance this thing um uh there is I will just add one kind of word of caution uh that as in Dem kind of indicated uh there there is slightly more economic uncertainty at this point than in previous years um so consistent with our kind of theme of a bridge year budget um we'll we'll continue to be very deliberate and thoughtful as we evaluate uh both compensation packages and and the rest of the budget uh going forward with that said um any well-managed government is is going to compete for employee Talent um so there may be some areas uh that we can have some targeted Focus where the data shows that we can be a little bit more competitive here's some examples of where we've done that in the past um we boosted City minimum wage um we've targeted um our lowest paid employees more broadly um with minimum pay increases for example um giving them at least a $3600 per year increase that helps a broader pool of those hourly employees um boost boost their pay we've made changes to the public safety pay plan for example adding steps to the top where uh retention is an area of focus or or boosting starting pay U when when recruitment is an emphasis for us um and then added certain types of incentive pay um where where there are areas that need to Target so um as always um we're going to continue to evaluate and consider if there um areas that require some added emphasis and where uh the data shows we can we can be a little bit more competitive so the city's approach to uh competitive compensation does not uh end with wages uh also focused on uh total compensation uh which includes competitive benefits uh and Sheila and Christine and their team uh they do just an incredible job of prioritizing employee well-being uh health and and the financial uh stability that comes with that um most of this comes in the form of our uh our three health care plans uh 30% of enrolled employees take advantage of our health savings account uh it's a high deductible plan uh the other 70% take advantage of our preferred provider organization our po plans um with the the smallest contingent uh they're taking advantage of of plan e uh which is our higher premium lower deductible plan and that's just slightly below 12% of enrolled employees and uh the these are really uh these medical and prescription benefits Drive 80% of the health care costs for the city um and and unfortunately uh these healthc care costs are not immune to inflation um since 2020 uh medical costs for the city have increased just below 6% uh per year while prescription costs have have incre increased closer to 10% per year uh and even though the city uh that you can see here with the green bars uh actively manages our costs below National Trends here in the blue bar something we can we can certainly take some pride in uh these costs are are still higher than General inflation and certainly higher than uh general fund Revenue growth uh nonetheless uh in the spirit of being a competitive employer uh the city prioritizes employees by has prioritized employees by taking the brunt of these inflation healthare costs uh in recent years um and and this is consistent with what other employers are doing um in a very tight labor market um and while our these have been intentional efforts on on our part to cap the growth uh in employees health care costs in recent years um it has had the effect of skewing some of the cost share uh of these plans away from the traditional targets so this certainly something that we will continue to monitor going forward so uh as always uh we're going to balance uh being an employer of choice uh with what is financi financially feasible and sustainable for the organization uh so just a couple of budget takeaways here uh we've done and will continue to do um what is necessary to remain a competitive employer um but it should be clear that that these uh Investments are not without cost um since 2018 uh the city's contribution in healthc care have increased 29% so in fy2 general fund terms that is uh $12.4 million and these are recurring costs that we will need to budget for in 26 and in the years to come and that is before you factor in the cost of adding new employees which we have done and will continue to need to do um and so I I'll just conclude uh by saying we we will continue uh to assess our our benefits and compensation packages uh and how best uh we can remain competitive uh while also as always balancing uh the city's Financial Outlook I'll pass it back to me thank you thank you so all with all this information wrapping up into okay what does this mean looking forward funding look ahead okay we're always in LS in our account accounts and as today we talked about some at your annual strategy session again today we're balanced but for a pay plan we have have half a million dollar Surplus in terms that could be put towards a pay plan but that's not enough but we're as always continuing to look for efficiencies analyzing our accounts looking at revenues looking at our chargebacks for services um to be able to develop a a solid pay plan moving for your consideration moving into 2026 and then how do we do that here's just a little handful of some of the things we do we definitely look at team of teams approaches how can we capitalize on expertise across departments and um efforts across departments instead of each department trying on their own sometimes redirecting funds to core core Services some of our services you know with flat revenues we really need to make sure and hammer down and make sure our core services are fully funded before we Branch out into any enhancements um so that's something we're really taking a hard look at processing and Reporting efficiencies through Erp this won't be realized immediately as we're still getting our new Erp system up and running but we should be able to have some efficiencies more reporting capacity um capabilities and some you know hopefully streamlined services that we can reap the benefits for in a future budget cycle also technology efficiency such as artificial intelligence and other kinds of automation we're really exploring those and how can as that world is evolving how can we roll that into like for 311 when you get a call that's M might can use AI to get a quick answer and then save time for the actual person called Aker to be able to serve the person in the community that has a more complex need and also as we mentioned a cost recovery options and before and it just even the budget cycle if you look at team of teams internal team of teams is your budget cycle as well you know you see a handful of US during the budget season but it's also Sheila and her team her whole team some over here some over here Teresa and Matt and their teams and then with and we have some of our main Department customers over here in each department there's people that were tapping their expertise and their knowledge of their day-to-day services and their funding needs to be able to pull together to present through the manager to to the manager and then um roll into our 2026 budget but it's a it's really a team of teams internal team of teams approach but some of the considerations for 2025 that we're definitely keeping our eye on moving into 2026 we have some overtime and Public Safety and solid waste that's um affecting us right now in 2025 that we're looking at and monitoring closely some of it we'll get reimbursement for but when we have like a snowstorm we won't so there's things that we're looking for and accounting for and increase demands from growth we're also looking at and I briefly touched on it before Fleet Maintenance costs before if we ordered a fire engine we' get it in roughly a year and a half now it's taking four years so for four years from the time we placed that so we're already at um projecting the a piece of equipment that's into use of a life and now we're having to pay a lot higher cost and maintenance and creating downtime for our staff by having to maintain odor equipment that's past its useful life so we're working into upsize our ordering and understand the impact of that and getting ahead of that fouryear cycle moving forward but right now we're having a uh deal with impacts of higher maintenance costs around that so those are just a couple of things that are happening now in 25 that we're going to be addressing when we're developing the 2026 budget and then that's pretty much wraps it up but just again here's the highlights we're planning and the and I believe you got this all at the council dis committee discussion session last month but or earlier this month actually but the interprise funds are going to the committee and uh I'm sure the chair will reiterate you all welcome to attend any of those committees you have interest in but the they're um presenting at the committee level and then our next time together in this room will be March 24th for that budget Workshop we'll be giving a capital projects update looking at our solid was services and Financial Partners and um I think we mentioned briefly Cherry's got our hands full with 51 Financial Partners and we're going to be um analyzing that and get you that packet as soon as possible but definitely well ahead of your March 24th meeting and thank you and that's all we had we'll take definitely take questions thank you um you have really um introduced this um in a very easy to read and lots of diagrams and thank you for the work that you all are doing to get this accomplished but now I think that we have to remember it's now the council's turn to do some work and think about what they would want to do and how they see and so we're um my suggestion I think would be to start with Miss Mayfield and come around and maybe we could do this you know three to I'm sorry oh do you want to go before the manager I mean the manager after and then we can just go around and have council members comment after the manager makes this presentation okay I'll be super quick thank you mayor members of council Marie can you um just go back to the vacancy uh slide so a couple things that I want to um highlight before we go into the the round robin um we ended the FY 24 fiscal year with about a half a million dollars to the good on the expenditure side right the reason why we had a sizable Surplus is because of the revenue side so if you start to think about many of the discussions it is pretty tight on the expenditure side um Marie more or less said today that at the current fiscal year will be tight also there are some things that going on that we um expect some reimbursements but may not get them but we're not sounding any alarm we will figure out FY on the current fiscal year one thing that's also super important it's year-over Year we We scrub accounts and uh Marie is not really liked right now folks so she could get you know some some encouragement because she's making sure that every department is really going into their accounts and not having um any fluff or things of that nature and that's what the the budget office is is doing I I will say this some of the stress that we will have and the reason I I'm here is that in 2021 2022 in the same room people were concerned about the ability to retain folks and to be able to provide minimal Services cities across the country weren't collecting solid waste so all of your strategies around retention have really paid off I know the question comes up to Sheila every Year I'll try my best shei to answer it people will say what is a good vacancy rate or what is a a standard I think we've been saying 10% if I have that right so so you're by every measure we're doing much much better than we were in 20122 what occurs U before I'll end with this mayor is that we find problems like um fire inspections that wasn't working so what we had to do was change the way we paid people we had to ask some people to you know work overtime or maybe even get folks out of retirement same thing with 311 call takers we're having some stress around 911 now in some of the response times um but what we do is we try to lock into those areas where we're having a dip in some level of service and try to address it and so I don't walk away from now there there have been some good compensation packages over the last few years and they were needed and so I don't we shouldn't walk away from that because it put us in a position so that we have the number of staff that we need to provide um you know great services but we will have our challenges in the current fiscal year as well as FY 26 okay thank you Mr Jones all right Miss Mayfield thank you Madame mayor Marie and entire budget team that's here thank y'all for a very comprehensive breakdown of where we are so manager thinking about what you just shared since this focus is really around compensation and the bulk of our compensation is around the support we need in police and fire as the city we're anticipated what by 2030 almost another 100 100,000 plus individuals moving to the region the question I have for you Mr manager is we're in that conversation which you and I have discussed previously our training facility at fire and as we're we have experienced a number of fires that are unusual as well as when we look at how we built today versus years ago you may have a proper have a building that's on an acre plus of land we're doing a lot of infield building unfortunately a lot of these buildings are the fire is moving much quicker then unfortunately we just had this past over the weekend another fire that moved pretty quickly are we in a place even though there may be some shortfalls coming for us to have real conversations around Council where we can at least get some proposals or at least get a IDE of the numbers to do some of the upgrades that may be needed in order to make sure that our class shout out to our chief who was here I was able to attend Friday we graduated fire class 124 13 started 13 graduated but wanting to make sure that they have the proper training resources a great question council member Mayfield what we do uh during this budget Workshop period we also give you an update on our facilities and the facility needs assessment so that will be later in the workshop but we'll take note of that and uh have not just what we're doing in terms of fire but also all of our other City facilities and what kind of needs are there yes that does help but I definitely appreciate our budget team working in numbers and manager Jones your leadership with the increases that we have seen because as we want to be a city of choice we definitely want the city of Charlotte to be an employer of choice and we know with the rising cost of everything that increasing our salary has helped some of our employees to stay within the city limits because there's also that conversation where a large number of our staff police fire do not live within City Limits so that also means as we're trying to attract you to the area where you're paying property tax maybe in the county some may be even a little further than the county but how does that help our city continue to grow those are really the only questions I had Madam mayor mainly just wanted to tell staff thank you for all the work that you're doing I know it's difficult because I know I wouldn't want you telling me that I have to cut my budget 5% 10% so for all the department leads that are out there know that you have a staff and a team that's really trying to make sure that you have the resources you need but also make sure that we are a growing city and not a city in deficit thank you thank you Mr barari thank you uh first Marie if you need any help or tips being the bad guy I'm here I'm happy to help thank you absolute pleasure pleasure uh I I I just say one theme of which I would like us to focus and prepare for proactively through this budget process that we're now embarking um takes from what we did at the end of last budget and kind of it it you know we had a group of of us that were interested in seeing where we could you know Make Some Cuts potentially lower taxes put our fingerprint on in a little more meaningful way to the budget process than normal and I think the flaw last time was one timing we kind of all got behind it at the very end and the big punch line was man we should have started this three months ago we would have actually had a shot so I think we're in a good spot now uh to to take that on and and then the second piece is line of sight and visibility into the underlying pieces where we could have that exercise uh and I think that boils down to like three major buckets that hopefully this will be a helpful guide as we figure out it's not all one-way presentations we have some offline work we need to do and we have to be armed for that um but you know the first bucket is you know while everything that we do is awesome in some way we don't always have to do everything and we can prioritize by stop doing some things um and rep prioritizing those efforts and capital behind other things that we want to do at even higher level I think a good example of that one I'll just throw this out there because it's one takeaway I'd like to have but um in general uh you know that that uh EMS and uh the slides that were on uh fires relation to emergency calls medic yeah the medic stuff like it the only punchline I take away from all of that is we do this stuff cost us 20 bucks a call we get reimbursed six bucks so I I know there's a lot more underneath the uh the the surface of the iceberg going on there and I don't want to step in the way of that but I would just say I I think that's something either we should continue doing at 20 bucks or not do and I think that the bigger theme in all of this is not just us but our touch point with the county and other bodies as it relates to maybe this is the process with enough lead time where we could start you know saying okay you take these things because that makes sense we'll take these things but our budget should be fully contained in a way that you know we don't have these huge outliers where we're spending a lot of money on things that started as some kind of favor along the way and turn into a large thing so I think that's one example the second bucket are things that we should continue to do but we should do more efficiently and I think this requires us to have the insights and ask the questions I just recently asked um staff your staff for some data points to help me in one specific thing which is permitting and you know post Udo and the world we're in is there not just like here's how many people it takes to run the permitting process how many things are passing on the first pass versus not what are the buckets why are they taking so long and can we adjust some processes that we find efficiencies as well not just throw money at what's necessary and then the third bucket is things we should continue to do but really prioritize the impact we're trying to make and figure out what policy items need to go along with what budget Investments are being made and too many examples there are uh you know cmpd is by and large our largest kind of you know uh FTE uh expenditure um but I I really want to be able to see things like um employee satisfaction reporting how they view what's going on because it isn't just about percentages of okay here's what you get it's how are we aligning our policy to go along with that investment to make sure that we are moving the needle and we're looking at how that improves over time and the second one is also I've just been getting a ton of ton of calls and messages and things lately from former cmpd officers and other First Responders who are injured in the line of duty um who are medically retired uh they have they are required to be and they are struggling and these are terrible stories as it relates to they just the system is not set up to help them now there are going to be some State aspects to that which could go to our legislative agenda but I definitely want to you know it's been more than one it's been a lot more than one and I think people are really struggling to figure out what to do so looking at those kind of things to prioritize in those buckets would be what I would hope we could get out of it and the big punchline message here is we will fail and we will probably be in a frustrated point if we are in the last two weeks of this budget process and we start to get vocal about this I think we learned last year we have to start early but if we could have a meaningful um impact in a way that we I haven't had an eight or nine budget Cycles here now that we learned that lesson last year we saw what it was like when we got behind I've already had conversations with some my colleagues that have already expressed interest in doing that again so I think we can do it in a productive and collaborative way with staff if we can just get organized and make sure we have offline work that's armed and um uh locked and loaded for us to to figure out where we want to focus okay Mr D oh Mr Jones yes uh thank you council member barari Marie just I want to make sure that u a little bit of level setting the medic piece is that the towns are getting like $20 a call the city correct sorry and I didn't want to interrupt M barari but the real cost is a lot more than the 20 I think is the right we're getting half a million running approximately 85,000 so I mean the it it would vary by year based on because we have a flat amount but closer to 120 per call is our actually fully loaded cost okay so it's worse than the shocking example I used got it so I mean that to me like I get why in the in the bureaucracy of multi- government agencies and things it's difficult it's a negotiation but this is a great one for US policy makers on both bodies to sit back and say like what are we doing because that's that's to me like that that should be solved we shouldn't negotiate to a slightly worse less worse deal so I just want to say that this is not just us it's the every every morning the northern towns and the southern towns are thinking about this so it's a it's actually a regional um concern with that and so we'll see with that how that can play so with that um anything else yes chapter two ask that question isn't that isn't chapter two um bankrupt see it's question mark profit Mr dggs thank you mhm so uh I appreciate the presentation frankly there's not enough here yet for me to kind of get into a detailed critique um I did want to ask uh when I look at the expenditure growth forecast there's actually a lot that goes into that and so I'd like more detail about how we arrive at that are we what what kind of growth assumptions are we building in I assume we've got the whole year adjustments in there for people that join during the year uh but kind of interested to know what the basis is for that um cmpd Staffing um I think we are intending to step up Staffing at cmpd uh if I understand I think we need to frankly and I'm hearing again complaints about unsafe conditions Uptown lack of visibility of cmpd um so uh I mean the chief can advise us about that but that's that's kind of a noise I'm hearing and and uh I want to be sure that we adequately resource uh anecdotally I mentioned at an earlier meeting that some of the officers down in South Division said they couldn't get those those display screens for Speed uh you know the the the robot uh speed traps speed measurement they're not traps but um they and they were told there's no money for that and I don't understand that this is like a $440,000 item that they feel is quite effective they were talking about how Matthews and Pineville have these great things these displays and they are told we can't afford them so that's just an anecdote but uh want to make sure we're adequately resourced there and I guess that gets me to my most General comment which is there's a lot of talk about inflation in here and how a lot of these costs have gone up uh the revaluation process does not include inflation and there are some slides in here I don't know if we talked about them but so in essence if property values go up by 40% and inflation was say 10% uh then our costs have gone up by 10% because of inflation but then when we do a reval based on 40% and reset our rate that gets taken away from us so in real terms the revaluation process is eroding our ability to pay for services because those service costs are going up and the property tax component is not um so I said last year what concerns me about that is uh we may be setting ourselves up like if we're not careful we may be setting ourselves up for difficult decisions in the future I don't want to be kicking cans down the road and during this budget process if we have some kind of alchemy that says that we can we can do it without a tax increase you know Count Me In yes uh but uh the question is how and are we eroding uh any kind of fundamental Services of the city uh in order not to have a tax increase while still maintaining a lot of our investment and corridors and the other things that we're doing um I want to make sure that we are properly attending to the basic responsibilities of government and that we are anticipating what it going to take in the future to continue to do that and if it's too easy for us to absorb an erosion of purchasing power because of the way our our rate is reset I have to ask myself what were we doing before like how what what was it that we were able to do that let us absorb uh an erosion of those dollars uh at at with no pain and I'm just you know careful in terms of talking to the community about a kind of alchemy we look at the wonderful things we can do and there's no pain involved so uh I don't want pain I certainly don't want a tax increase but uh I I am just concerned that somehow it's being made to look as if we're a ble to digest all of that inflation without a commensurate increase in revenues and there is no cost associated with that so as I say this is just something as we go into the greater detail in the budget process that uh uh I'm going to be looking at particularly Public Safety uh in in this expenditure growth forecast have we built in an increase in sworn officers is there an assumption about that no there uh not an assumption about that Council Rodriguez but I will tell you this the way that we are planning the FY 26 budget would be we would not put ourselves in a position that if the either Chief wanted to have a recruit class that they couldn't do it because the lack of position so there's a concept called over hires which allows you to have the the people come in with the assumption that by the end of the year you may be at the same level that you were in terms of personnel because you have some retire retirements so there is nothing in this budget that upcoming budget that wouldn't allow for um recruit classes there's a little bit of a difference of opinion about when we will be fully staffed and but either way you look at it we would not put ourselves in a position to not be able to have recruit classes I to the point that you made which is very very good uh councilman rodriges about this budget and and moving forward and I guess that's why I said what I said at the beginning um we'll have some pain there'll be some decisions that we have to make because we are at the point where on the expenditure side it it a half a million on 900 million is you can't do it significant right so so we have been very lucky or fortunate because the revenue side has come in so much that we can one support our 16% Reserve that we have to do and then have almost $14 million one time that's left over so indm talked a lot about um sales tax so when you think about the property tax and the sales tax together I think it's almost 70% of the revenue 70% of the revenue that we have and as you've said um part of the that Revenue stream the property tax we just don't get the growth when you get to a rebil and when you have sales tax coming in at 1 Point 1.6 1.6% we have to be careful about the revenue source which has bailed us out each year moving forward so sales tax is roughly a half of the property tax if I remember something like that um and it does go up with inflation it also goes up with the economy property tax doesn't do any of that right you get reset back to the break even number in nominal terms and then that's what you get and you have some organic growth because of new construction which reflects the growth in our population but that's my point though I just don't think these Revenue sources track they rise in our expenses to which inflation applies to all of it right and we have inflationary growth and sales we have no in and but all of what we spend so uh in that sense I just see in a big picture a kind of organic tension sure uh and I want to make sure we don't resolve that with shortcuts I think we're cutting near the bone frankly uh and there are always opportunities to achieve greater efficiencies to look critically at the lowest priority uh uh programs that we have and spending that we do um but by now the disconnect between the historical property tax rate and the our Reliance on it to pay our bills is getting pretty large okay thank you thank you Mr Graham yeah thank you madam mayor uh I I really don't have a lot I wanted to thank staff for again the work that they're doing and Foundation setting for us I think that's the exercise that we're going through today and so I look forward to um uh being a lot more vocal as we get into the more specifics the details of the budget uh moving forward um I will say something because Mr mcari brought it up I hope that as a council uh that we operate at uh uh an environment where there's no surprises right because last year uh was not our finest hour from my perspective and we ended up going right back where we started from because there wasn't a meaning in the minds of all the members and so hopefully we can do better thank you all right Miss asir thank you Madame mayor great job Murray and and the team um I have four items um well some of the uh things that I wanted to say have already been said um in terms of so first um cost recovery so you brought up uh medic example are there other cost recovery uh agreement that we need to look into other than the one that you had mentioned earlier not so substantial as that that's a emergent um more sharp example but every year we look at Cost recovery so be it user fees Solid Waste fees you know like we mentioned side waste fees go up because the Tipping fees that the landfill goes up but you know so we're always analyzing that to make sure and update those costs but not an example like that got it so I I know that uh parking was one of the cost recovery and we had raised that I was looking at it through uh from the budget and it looks like we are at the recovery point at least from the parking fees and how much expense it it uh acrs for us to maintain that or how much we were paying uh a vendor um I I would like to see if you can uh provide a list of cost recovery um models and in terms of the contracts that we have and where there is a significant variance um uh second in terms of the health care costs it's great that we are using that that certainly helps with retention because we have seen health care costs continues to rise and Sheila your team does a great job with walking us through year-over-year our health care plan and the health care options I would be interested in seeing uh our uh I know we have this very Innovative model um that is probably one of the first in the state and that is our Clinic our marathon now it's called Marathon Health um where when it was first implemented or at least when I around 2017 2018 time frame uh we were one of the first in the region to have implemented that uh and as a result we were able to get a same day appointments now they have partner with other organizations um including um the county and certainly um I have seen where walking appointments are no longer available or same day or even two days I wanted to see um in terms of the service levels and appointments access has that gone down as a result and has how about our cost so if we can just sort of look at that uh in depth uh that would be helpful and uh number three I appreciate uh Murray you and your team going through efficiencies every year right uh where that's where all the Departments start looking at uh it's sort of level setting right uh if you can see in past 5 years there have certainly been uh a lot that we have been able to we have been able to successfully identified in our efficiencies list I would like to see uh we have been given number but I would like to see what uh contributed to that yes uh if you could help us get that list and the last um uh certainly not the list um I have uh you mentioned a couple of things when it comes to fire uh cfd and how our leading time has gone up with apparatus and other equipments um do we have I've heard this from firefighters that current Curr ly uh less than what it used to be and I would like to see less than what it used to be and I would like to see from Chief um if we can get a list of you know how many do we have in reserve and what it used to be so that we have a we can really get sort of a more relational um relationship as to whether we need to be ahead of it just because the lead time time has gone up do we need to start planning you know a year or two in advance uh and and one example that I've been also given um of of from firefighter from firefighters is commercial burn building uh do we have a need for that um from my conversations with some firefighters they said that we need to build that as part of our fire training academy um I would be interested in seeing uh I'm learning more about it um I'm not an expert but if he can uh get Chief Johnson to respond to that uh that's all I have for now um I'm sure there'll be more coming and I know we are going to take deeper dive into our Enterprise funds so I have some questions about Charlotte water and other uh but I certainly appreciate the work that uh the staff has done and Mr Jones uh for your uh leadership is it's it's great to see what um team has done thank you okay Miss Johnson I know that you came in and I'm hope Bishop had a great birthday party and lots of candles and cake and ice cream so I don't know if you want to start now we have Miss watlington to go next or you tell me which way you'd like to go I'm fine I just I'll just be I'll just be brief thank you for saying that no the party well another party's tonight but I'll be missing that one so but that's okay I'm here for the people anyway anyway thank you for the presentation I um I look forward to the details I will just continue to lift up uh we we spoke about courageous leadership during our Retreat um the budget is where the rubber hits the road so I think I hope that council's ready to really look at the budget from an equitable perspective and make those tough decisions while considering that people are hurting you know uh people are hurting in our city so I I hope that we continue to remember that um as we're looking at any increases property sales tax or or anything so um I want to continue to lift up things from an equitable lens and um and just hope that we keep that in mind thank you thank you thank you Miss watlington you're up couple of things I will say that in addition to many of the comments that my colleagues already made I do think that we need to take a strategic look at how we approach this we have been having this conversation since last year so thank you for the work that you've done um to date here uh and analyzing our accounts um and I see the notes around efficiency um I do agree that we need to take a look at our budget as a team um in working sessions uh I still fundamentally believe that we need to start at the very very beginning um and really analyze what we're doing but beyond that I ask the same question every year and I'm still waiting on an answer that I already have and it's associated with our revenue and the real cost of growth we talk about how growth is saving Our Lives because if it weren't for the growth we wouldn't be able to offset these dollars but if it weren't for the growth we wouldn't need as much expense so until we are ready to really deal with that conversation and what it means to be strategic about how we grow and when we grow I think that we're spending our Wills in some cases around this budget so that is what I would like us to be spending our energy on is really truly understanding getting with policy econ uh economists and understand for cities that are this that have this dense Urban core and have these surrounding um regions that are benefiting from property taxes that we never see while folks may be coming in and working uh we really are not seeing that um offsetting much of our cost in terms of infrastructure so that to me is the elephant in the room and that's the piece that we need to really address in a serious way um as we look to not just this year's budget but our outer Year's uh budgets as well thank you thank you okay thank you um I believe that is has everyone had an opportunity to speak and I think that we've gone around um to the staff is there any further Marie do you have any further comments Mr anything else then with that it is time for us to go into a closed session the motion for close session you would please okay uh the motion should state that uh to uh that the body will go into close session pursuant to One n Coline Journal statute section I mean 14328 um section um1 A3 to consult with the city attorney to preserve the attorney client privilege in the matters of Michael Kumer versus city of Charlotte uh 23 CBS 4 4394 and the matter of Rob Sheran III versus City of Charlotte 24 uh CV 0343 3 0 that would be the motion may I have six council members um make a we've have we have a m you still have a quum so if we can have the motion so Mo made by Malcolm Graham second it okay I couldn't hear made by Mr dgs and who second Miss Mayfield second no uh Mr Grigg second and thank you you okay all right so we'll give everybody a moment a bathroom break motion we can come back as soon as you have to vote on all in favor of the motion all in favor raise your hands I need six one two three four from Z I need six you don't need no you have you need a majority of the council at this point majority there we go then all right thank you all right thank you we'll be right back [Music] [Music]