uh i will stand and i am here at city hall so that the public uh wants to come in they can come in um our city manager melanie mescali is in city hall a city clerk is in city hall and council member uh schultz uh also is in city hall so let's stand for a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all now as we continue to move through this pandemic we continue to do things so that we can be open to our residents and businesses and guests who are interested in our meetings and today's meeting is virtual and also in person in city hall for those who wish to come and and speak in person we are available for that and those who would like to uh speak to us virtually i will give you the instructions for that so we continue to make sure that we uh comply with the executive order for masks and social distancing guidelines and we also continue to make sure that we are safe during this emergency for covet 19 pandemic so members of the public may attend the meeting in person and be seated in the in city hall in the lobby or join us virtually by a zoom webinar slash conference call to watch the meeting you can watch the meeting through comcast cable channel 16 or 859 online at www.burnsvillemn.gov slash meetings peg tv roku channels you may speak during the meetings in person or via telephone or zoom conference service um at no cost please notify uh the city clerk at city clerk at burnsvillemn.gov or 952-895-4490 if you wish to speak um to an item the meeting to the uh to an item on the meeting or if you have questions about connecting to speak during the meeting we ask that you notify at least one hour prior to the meeting time to ensure she receives your message or you can call um into the meeting at 651-372-8299 or you can use zoom to participate um and that's https um colon slash zoom dot us slash join the meeting id is 91609 and the instructions are also on our website under meetings so thank you this is a special meeting of the burnsville city council and we have three items on the agenda the first item on the agenda is the fund balance uses and future levy projections related to cares grant program presenting is our city manager melanie mascoli miss lee the zoom is yours thank you madam mayor good morning everybody we have a brief presentation for you this morning following up from your meeting earlier this week with discussion about overall tax levy that you adopted on tuesday as well as potential expansion of the business grant program my uh suggestion this morning is that we walk through items one and two together and then at the end the council can choose what action they wish to take on the resolution amending the grant program and we can go from there so with that we can go ahead and get started next slide please next slide please so um as we uh prepared additional information for the council we provided the preliminary tax living increases for our comparable cities uh within the initial slide so you can see that we are right within sort of the mid-range of our colleague cities that we that we use to compare to and again this is the preliminary levy um exclusively next slide i'm going to turn it over to our finance director jenny rhodey right now to walk through fun historical fund balances as well as a couple scenarios that we prepared for the council okay thank you um this slide that we're looking at um we thought it would be a good idea to to kind of revisit our historical fund balances and where where we've been we've got that really the past 11 years shown here and um while uh our palace our minimum policy for fund balance at that time was 35 for the last 11 years we really have maintained for the most part a targeted fund balance at or above 45 percent with with the exception of three years really and uh two of those years it was pretty close to 45 percent um 2013 was a little bit of a an anomaly that depletion of fund balance was really a short-term market value correction or adjustment um in our investments it was a really an interest rate change and it had corrected it's it really corrected itself within a couple months of that so um actually i think all many many all local governments experienced a similar correction at that same time so um can you also speak that even though we our fund balance was at 35 but with the 2 million dollars for unintended emergencies that uh brings us up to about that 40 yeah 45 the the 35 plus 2 million brings um our minimum to about 40 percent really yeah and we pretty uh i would say our practice as you can see from this was really to maintain a fund balance for the most part at or above 45 so these are actual fund balances from our year-end audits just for a historical perspective on that so one of that one of the things that this that you know as we look at towards our bond rating one of the things that impacts that is budget flexibility and fund balance really is a major component of our button uh budget flexibility um and with these you know sustained balances above 45 percent that did give us that flexibility um and with these we scored really in the highest um in the highest uh category for flexibility uh when we when we um went out for our bond rating uh yeah mayor do you see when someone raises their hand or do you have to actually go somewhere to find out if somebody is uh yeah if i am i keep uh monitoring so if you hit if you use the raised hand function it it should appear on your screen and i can see it i raised mine a few minutes ago have you seen it um it's not showing up on my screen um that's why i was asking this it didn't seem like you were seeing it yeah i am so if did you did you have ray stan on yours i'm looking at you now but i don't yeah it says it says well now it says lower because it's raised but huh okay it's not showing up on my screen i think it's the new ipad okay should we do our the old-fashioned way raise our hand like this yeah i mean that works so okay very good and you have a question for miss roadie yeah i'll lower my hand um the amounts that i see in this um appear to be in excess of our 35 plus 2 million which is true this is reporting the gross amount of total um including all the monies that were in excess of our 35 percent plus 2 million which we then chose uh certain one-time expenses to spend it down um these are the actual balances that we maintained we didn't necessarily spend these down i mean this is this would be what what we actually had and what you know like as we talked about this bond rating what the rating agency calculated they don't they didn't make the budget flexibility calculation on the 35 plus 2 million what our policy is they really make that flexibility calculation on our actual balances so for example in 2015 where it says 48 40 would have been our 35 plus about 2 million so in effect we had another 8 that we sat on and actually chose not to spend anything any use any of that in excess of the 35 plus 2 on any one-time capital expenses uh you may have cho you you may have chosen in 2016 to you know as you in the general fund you do use fund balance we do use fund balance for specific things so we would have chosen to do that yeah so we did you had 48 the next year you had 44. right and and each year so it's it's one of those things where these numbers are a bit misleading because they are a snapshot in time but they don't tell you how much we used of that 48 in the following year and then during that same following year we actually accrued potentially more so by the time we got to the end of the year um you know the the budget savings from good staff management would have essentially refilled it and in this case it we spent down quite a bit and it refilled it to where it maintained a 44 the following year but we did choose to spend a lot of that excess call it eight percent on one time expenses and then in that same year it starts to refill again so we get to the end of the year we get the snapshot and oh we're at 44 now so now we've got a little bit less than the 48 to spend in the following year on one time expenses that's what this chart doesn't say is we started with this but we actually chose to spend this much and then we ended the year through savings to be at 44. well i think it does say that because we did you know you can see that we did go down and then in in a future year we did accumulate more and certainly what you said yes we we did spend some down and we did accumulate and that's good management because you can see we over the course of time we sustain a very healthy fund balance and it it helps us respond to any uncertainties or any unexpected things that do come up so they're they're going to the rating agencies are going to use our actual balance yes in their calculation when they look at flexibility and so there has to be a point in time that they look at and you are you're right we did use some fun balance and it it is pretty clear to see that as you go even from 2015 to 2016 as you said we did go down a little but then in 2017 we went back up again and i think that's that sustained level at a healthy you know flex good amount is what they're looking for yeah andy the other part about that when you look at it at the end of the year when it goes back up is when we get our money from the county yeah we get our money in december and so that does help so ultimately what's missing off this chart is what was the actual amount that exceeded the 35 plus the 2 million that the council chose to do something with each year and we had a chart years ago we asked for something like that and we saw okay this year we ended up adding an extra half million to the unspent reserve because it was a tighter year we had some unexpected expenses or revenues didn't quite come in at the same and then the very next year we see oh we added 1.2 million to the reserves because that year we had good revenues and we ended up saving and you know things just in a budget year there's so many moving parts that you end up every year with adding more to it sometimes you add very little um and sometimes you add a lot like in 2019 we we added a lot even though every time we add to it we always chose to spend some of it if not all of it in excess of that 2 million over the 35 cap on a lot of wish list items like park parks department had things you know capital investments uh throughout the city and so what's not shown on this chart is how much we were adding each year and how much we chose to spend of it but i get where you're coming from this is the number that the rating agencies look at and and as you can see we've been we've been very strong well above our 35 plus two and and this is the general funds spending so really the capital investment except for some specific items isn't really coming out of this yeah and i wasn't speaking of capital investments at all that's that's not what i'm saying oh this is just excess and when we had let's say we just in one year we had 2 million so we had 35 plus 2 million plus another 2 million we said all right what's on our wish list of things that we'd like to get to that may not have been able to be funded and we would choose to spend and we and it might be one thing it might be four things that would end up spending that 2 million on and usually we didn't spend all of it we didn't leave exactly 35 plus 2 million we might you know we might spend a million and a half if there was 2 million but that historical evidence in the historical booking and those one-time expenses are all in our books so it's it's it is something that could be reported on though we didn't specifically ask for it i just want to i just want to point that out because that we're dealing with something that i've been dealing with for 14 years and i know this very very well we every single year took our 35 plus the 2 million said all right set that aside what do we got left oh we now have accumulated because we did such a great job in saving money an extra 2 million what is it that we want to use that for as a one-time expense because it can't go toward you know we didn't use it toward the levy except for the ice center that was a planned 10-year 140 000 a year use of that excess and so this is a snapshot in time and i don't have a problem with it but it's not the complete story of what each year's excess money was it isn't the complete story of everything that happened but it is the story that's going to be used by outside parties to assess our assess our budget bond rating as well as we didn't spend if we were 4 million over earth 2 million over we didn't go and budget a two million dollar fund balance use in the next year we looked at what we needed to do oftentimes it was much less than that that's that's where some of this accumulation comes from as well as goods good budget management as well like you as you mentioned um so while there are things that change and go on during the year and there are ways we do spend down fund balance this is what's going to be assessed when we're scored ultimately it's basically our starting point it's the ending point of the year but it's our starting point for the council when we decide all right we've got an extra mill or two or whatever it is what is it that we want to use these one time and sometimes we let it go if we only accumulated a half a million in one year we might have chosen not to do any one time other than the program like that 140 000 and a couple other things and i i think too you can the the accumulation from year to year even if you look like let's take a an example like between 2010 and 2011 if we went back and looked at the actual um activity we probably didn't plan to spend down that entire amount and therefore we did accumulate more it doesn't exactly we don't exactly spend down when we have when we head over that um you know it kind of depends what needed to be accomplished at that point in time agreed all right yep so i just wanted to point that out it's not not represented in these numbers it kind of looks like we have wow we we were 35 plus 2 million is 40 and we were always well above that except for 2013 of course and part of that is this number isn't isn't indicating of that excess what did we choose to spend as a council in that following year but ultimately it is in it is but it's reflective of the actual activity and sometimes the actual activity is higher or lower you know in the one year we had we had an unusual um three and a half i think it was over a three million dollar correction on our market value of investments and that you know we still went to 37 so you know and there's other times where we went down and we didn't go below you know our 35 plus 2 million because we had adequate fund balance and and these are the audited year-end and in time admittedly point in time but these are the audited fund balances um so it's a this is a con at least a consistent point in time over the last 11 years okay okay okay proceed proceed next slide please next slide please cara schultz has her hand up oh sorry oh okay um cara thank you oh my goodness you're in the same room and you didn't see her having both of you in the same room let me that's why melanie is outside may or perhaps try to mute okay so okay so what um council member keeley is asking for and i also get what our financial director is talking about as well [Music] and the problem is the information being given is talking about end of year to be shown for our bond rating and the information that we're looking for right now is for making a policy decision as a starting place and how how we do that from year to year as starting place to what we do during the year and the end so i think the discrepancy is both information is correct and there's a place for both sets of information but we're in a starting point policy discussion area where we're looking for information on how have we treated fund balance historically not a snapshot in a year but how do we treat that historically through the year year to year and that was probably a miscommunication on our part over the information that we were looking for because you did provide the information that we asked asked for literally we just didn't i don't think we articulated well enough what we were looking for in this as a policy discussion so i i think it's it's just a difference in um where we're at at this moment to help make decisions right now that's that's my thing of it um all the information is correct it is what we asked for but we did not ask for the absolutely correct defined information perhaps so apologies for that and i think that's where we're getting off and i think that's why we're going back and forth over this particular piece and um i i think that there is maybe i don't know if this will help um yes we do make decisions to spend down a portion of fund balance policy each year as we go through the budget process we may not it may not be if we don't necessarily plan to spend exactly what is over our policy minimum every year that has it depends on what projects are there and what's yet to be done so um maybe and maybe we should go to the next slide and and we can take a look at some of this some of these projections and and we can go from there um this scenario just is what was presented and approved tuesday as the max tax and projected property tax levy this incorporated an additional 1.2 million dollars in fund balance use um above the original 677 000 that we um that we had budgeted or that we had presented earlier and an additional reduction in 120 000 in expenses for 2021. um the uh four percent max or the tax levy total this um this just shows our projections at this point uh for the future years with with this it really is very consistent with the august 25th projection um given with really there's changes in 2021 and 2022 based on the reduction reduction in the 2021 tax levy so but we kept the out years consistent just for comparability uh fund balance it and what what it does to fund balance this just shows where where based on these tax levies and these assumptions where the fund balance would be um over the next five years it gives us a little historical context with 2019 and 2020 as as project or as shown on tuesday night that was assuming the 3.4 in cares use we just wanted to show this as as a as a comparison it also shows that we are well within policy out the five years we are a little under that 45 target but it does maintain some some budget flexibility going forward next slide please this this second scenario here shows um what we presented plus uh the action that was taken on tuesday night with the additional 24 grants totaling 480 000 um that that will be funded out of cares cares funding prop property tax levy amounts projections remain the same we didn't make a change there in order to make make a comparison to what it does to fund balance fund balance levels at um at this scenario do decrease a little bit we're a little bit more under that 45 target it gives us a little little less flexibility going out um 2021 we are above that 47 percent well consistent with what we have where we've been in in previous years next slide please this scenario does expand that cares grant funding to those additional 46 businesses it also includes additional 161 000 in hospital funding with those additional 46 cares grants for businesses we're assuming um joint effort with the county where we're funding an additional 10 000 and then the other 24 at 20 000. so so it's it's totally about 1.1 million dollars uh yeah i see your hand yeah i'm i just okay uh councilmember keely thank you madam mayor you know the um the and i i appreciate this is the slide that i was most interested in and i know that we have had some contact with dakota county and they've given us a preliminary good feeling that they're interested in partnering they have a policy decision to make they're not going to meet until the middle of october the board unless they call the special meeting and so i think they're they're they're trying to find a way to support this partnership where um these remaining businesses would get who have already been given 10 000 or or notified that they've been awarded 10 000 from the county if we were to add another 10 if in fact they were eligible for 20 if we were to add that additional 10 would they leave it alone right or would they want to claw back or then disqualify that person because we had given them 10 to try and get them to our 20. i'm i i'm very um you know i i feel hopeful that they will and do you know pursue that partnership but my concern is if we were to move on that decision on this decision as presented where those remaining businesses would just be allocated 10 from us if something doesn't work out at the county with that relationship they might end up just with 10 and that wasn't the goal and why we're even talking about trying to do this so my comments at our last meeting was i think we ought to just go for the whole 1.3 or whatever it is and if the county ends up partnering with us great we'll save a couple hundred thousand but i i just don't want to strand these these la this last group of businesses with ten thousand from us if we were to pass this particular example um and and if something doesn't work out with a county um and and they end up you know not wanting to partner with us and then we're back to square one where um one is canceling the other out and and we can't get to the spirit of our 20 000 that we're trying to help them with um and i'll maybe let jenny speak to maybe how that that program will work later or i don't know now i i can go over the numbers for now um you know you can see where this gets us i can give you a percentage on what that 1.6 would be because that would get bring us really at an additional 1.6 with a total of really two point eight and because of the hospital and and the other etc yes yeah so anyway this scenario you know we're we're still above that target range um this does you know lower us below that target range um pretty consistently and and we're kind of you know pretty consistent at that 42 percent in those last three years um just for point of reference that 2023 number and it granted this is a year in number but it is the number we're measured by yes it's the lowest since 2013. so right um one thing i want to point out if i may yeah and because we've been through this multiple times every budget cycle we have this discussion and there's one um there's some there's two numbers that you cannot include in this and that is and and i think uh council member workman was asking for some some shot at it right so if we know we have a lot of projects in the pipeline we know they're going to come online with property tax and there's going to be a development fees can we at least estimate that on the revenue side and then the other thing that you can't include in these projections so so there's missing revenue you can only go with the revenue you can guarantee you can't you can't right there is no there is no way to go well we think we might get this right and at the same token if you look historically every single year the city saves money against the budget it's it's um it's almost predictable that unless a really really really dramatic drop in revenue and an increase in cost oh like 2020 which is very rare right first time in 100 years but if you go back 20 years 30 years i mean every year the city says this is our budget this is what we've been giving and it's almost been the culture of burnsville like we're not going to spend that much we're going to figure out a way to pinch pennies to get the same results but we're going to do it for less and so we end up with this unspent budget reserve against the current year that goes into that kitty and so that's the other thing that you can't put in these forecasted numbers you can't say oh we expect that we'll save a half million a year or a million year and you also can't say oh we think we're going to have these revenues come in so these forecasts are always a absolute worst case scenario and historically that's been proven because historically they've always been far better than what the forecast numbers are so i just want everybody to understand that these 44 3 and 42 9 and 421 that is if zero revenue additional revenue comes in and if zero budget savings is realized by our staff and we know both of those are uh well the budget savings i would bank on because we have an incredible staff to do that we can't bank on the revenue boost but we know there's already some things in the pipeline that are in fact going to enhance those future numbers so the other thing that i would like and then uh into response to uh council member keeley's remarks it's not only the projection of uh new revenue coming in but we also need to take into consideration revenue lost because of uh properties being devalued i.e the shopping center and we also know that that has already uh that that income has uh has reduced has been reduced and there are many properties that have been devalued so that that income is not there so you have to look at both sides of the equation and agreed matamira that's a good point yeah we we know that there are um those are still out there and we still haven't seen the full effect of that and so you know we're kind of trying to weigh that where we realize we do have these additional developments but we do realize we have these other factors too and so really trying not to be worst case scenario but more realistic and not not best case not worst case right trying to trying to to get a realistic picture and certainly certainly you're right our staff has done a great job managing expenses and coming in under budget most of the time um and and that's been pretty reliable um over the years very yeah um and we do just have i think you know as you said we just have an additional layer of uncertainty going forward not knowing really when things are kind of going to get back to a more normal you know so that also adds complication when you're looking at projecting out and wanting to make sure that we're we're conservative enough so that we um we don't leave ourselves short and we are able to respond sure respond to unexpected circumstances yep we did when we went into this we didn't know the feds would put the cares act fund together and and we didn't know we'd get 4.7 million we don't know even though the feds are working on a cares act ii uh and the republicans and democrats have not been able to come together on a number but they're the democrats are putting together 2.4 billion so they've come down from their 3 billion they're moving a little bit the democrat the republicans are moving up a little bit eventually they're going to find a place and we may end up seeing a karzak 2 come together but we can't plan on it that's not something that we can forecast and plan on when it happens it happens and then we're just benefited by it okay all right miss rhodey can you go proceed so that we can get through your presentation this um this was my last slide on that um i did i can give you uh just kind of verbally a flavor for what would where we would be with uh um full 1.6 and um it would it would really take us kind of below our target for the same four years with a fund balance um maybe in the fifth year it's a good comparison at 41.2 percent so that that's it's just going to give us you know it just gives us less flexibility and we probably need to to look at other you know even in this scenario we probably need to kind of look at other budget adjustments or other areas because sustained um if we sustain or maintain a fund balance below our target or below maybe what's typical for us that's probably not going to reflect well um you know on our on our rating score or budget flexibility also remember keely now that just i there's something on your last slide i'm sorry there's something on your last slide that i thought was i i really appreciate it because it kind of gets to what i was talking about earlier when we're when we're trying to turn a percent into a dollar amount and that difference um go to your last is that the 1.2 million yeah you had actually gave us the information to say this is 42 point whatever it was i can't remember what but you're if you were to factor 1.2 million that would put you at 39.8 right so that would put us almost exactly at that 35 plus 2 million because i think that was just a hair under 40. um but that was good that that actually assigned a dollar value a specific dollar to the variance right the variance between this percentage displayed and and a number that we're more familiar with so i appreciate that that was actually a tidbit of of little addendum there under that last box that was very helpful yeah and and we definitely want to make sure we're above 40 right so that just gives us an idea of you know if we had something unexpected in the even in the range of a 1.2 million that's going to bring us there but it is it's just nice to put it sometimes put a number to a percentage yes yeah like how how close are we right oh we're 1.2 million away from being 39.8 so maybe it's 1.1 or whatever about about a million away from you know sort of that basement level that we will not go below type of approach which is what we got what guided us for many many years right so ms rody can you please then um what happens because you said you you can give us a flavor of uh what 1.6 would look like i i think that's including the hospital yeah i think um they they just headed up before this i think they maybe can bring it back it's the 1.6 option um we didn't have that in our backgrounds did we no no this is this is uh just uh this was as to not give you too many too many charts well that was the one that i thought when i looked through the background i went okay we got to the point where we uh we got to where i thought we would be assuming the partnership with the county but what happens if they choose not to right what's that look like because i think that's what we have to prepare for yeah this is i think what um uh councilmember keeley and council that you're that we're interested in taking a look at the the uh four percent max tax the 1.6 for the 70 cares grant and the 161 for the hospital that's what's reflected here correct miss rhodey yes yes thank you so and you're um so and what melon do you have any questions about this before i go uh back to our city manager miss lee because she wanted to have item number three number two also reported on and that's uh miss faulkner has that is that correctly let me um i mute myself yeah madam mayor and council that was our suggestion is these um these two issues are interconnected yes they are balance and levy so we thought it was appropriate to um present the information together so okay there are no further questions at this time for miss rohde we can turn it over to miss faulkner okay miss faulconer good morning madam mayor members of the council so um we've had a fun week uh giving out checks today for being there i shared some of those photos yesterday um we did have a discussion with the county this week a couple of them and as councilmember keeley indicated they went well they seem to want to partner with us they need to figure out how that process could look on their end um i think they don't they're trying to figure out if it's my understanding if this goes to the full board on october 6th or can they do this administratively so we do not have a commitment from them at this time um and how that would shake out but on the surface things seem to be very open and willing but uh i can't i can't tell you that that they're all in today okay i'm gonna ask mr trainer can you take the um consider expansion of burnsville cares business grant off so i can see all of the members of the council and um if the clerk could note that um council member workman is uh is not with us today so all other council members are present but councilmember workmen so let's make sure that we have that okay so um i did provide for you the resolution to dot the eyes and cross the t's from the action on tuesday that was to provide funding uh up to 480 000 for those 24 grantees now i will tell you we're down to 22 on our list because from the original million allocation remember we have five businesses that didn't take our funding so we just kept going down our lottery list and then there was one on there um that actually took counting funding that was not noted on the list that we had received from the county so there's actually 22 that are would otherwise be unfunded instead of 24. okay i would still suggest that we keep the resolution at 480 as things have been low uh but we need a little cushion there because not everybody has their checks or all their their documents okay councilmember keeley just a clarification uh miss you mentioned there was a business that accepted funding from the county uh county being ten thousand was that business eligible for a amount greater than that um i don't recall council member keeley um i i honestly don't recall the number it was an error i would say um at the staff level on letting us know which ones were getting county funding and so it was just simply one that was highlighted versus it should have been and it wasn't that's all okay so under the like under the current policy even though we're talking about working some sort of partnership with the county but so it sounded like that business might fall into that that final group where if they get county funding and but they qualify for more you know 20 or more then they would still be considered by us uh as a where we stack on top of what the county does currently we can't do that because we have not changed our policy absolutely you're absolutely correct okay thank you um madam mayor i will stand for any questions so um if you choose to fund um the 480 as motioned on tuesday the resolution is there that i need you to adopt and um if we won't end up changing the dollar amount today that should be noted as an amendment to that resolution but we're going to be good to go okay members of the council i will now go to you for discussion uh do we want to go to the 1.6 plus the hospital and and if the and uh if we have um a partnership with the county then we will that that number will be reduced because then the county will have the 10 and we'll we'll cushion it with the other ten and so our uh our portion will be reduced and then it'll go back into the fund balance councilmember keely well i know it will come as a shock to everyone to hear me say i believe we need to plan for and allocate the 1.6 and and if the county does come through with a partnership and we're we're gonna save two or three hundred thousand i'm not sure what the actual savings would be now that the numbers are bouncing around a little bit i just the staff could just clarify what that difference is going to be that we just let that savings come back into our uh you know into our general fund or or back into the cares it doesn't matter i think this is all coming out of cares right so then we just save that right and that goes in toward what we want but i i think we have to at this point because we don't know we have to plan for the whole amount and if they partner with us great we'll save some so are you making a motion but you need to include the hospital if you're making that motion please uh yeah i'm happy to but i certainly don't want to take away a motion that kara councilmember schultz might have thought about making uh because she was um very vocal at our last meeting and supportive so i would make a motion that we uh allocate 1.6 million um madam americans 161 000 and change i'm not sure the exact number uh to the hospital to complete to once and for all finally complete our small business and nonprofit grants from our cares act funding okay i'm going to go to um our city manager miss lee and then i'll go to miss rody and then i'll go back to uh miss faulconer miss lee thank you madam mayor i just wanted to make note that um miss rhodey had her hand up so i wanted the opportunity for her to comment sorry miss rody i just was gonna clarify that i believe that 1.6 first of all it does include the hospital oh good projection um and and i think you know if if we do end up funding that whole 1.6 i do think we're going to need to look at some future adjustments in some other areas i mean we'll have to look at that but i don't think our fund balance probably can handle all that alone going forward we probably need to to do some different um you know projections or adjustments so i just wanted to note that yeah and i and i do want to make i we have always been prudent and conservative and i will continue on that being to be prudent and conservative because we have an unknown future that we're uh going into but at the same time i understand that we want um to help our businesses i also understand that we need to help our hospital so so there's a motion on the floor um yes i'll go to uh miss lee um i think mrs hochner wanted to comment and then i will follow in general okay and okay miss faulconer thank you madam mayor members of the council i just want to make sure we get this right so council member keeley's motion is to amend the attached resolution to provide up to 1.6 million dollars in funding for the course business for an additional for the core uh cares act business program and to fund the hospital request i just want to make sure the hospital request is not part of the business programming um i don't want them to get caught up in having to get us all their documentation when they're directing out directly yeah okay but the thing is what's important is the 1.6 includes the hospital correct miss brody yes okay miss mescali uh thank you madam erin council because we did not include that slide in your packet i did want to call your attention to the ending fund balance for the out years which is something that you would ask for it uh brings us below our target it's into the low 40 percent for the years of 22 23 24 and 25 which does significantly reduce our flexibility um to respond to unanticipated changes i also want to remind you that with moving the levy down to four percent the um the projection for a 2022 levy is 9 so those are those are some numbers that i want to just make sure that uh we uh we visit about before we're done thank you okay uh councilmember keeley thank you madam mayor um i just want to put a couple things in perspective um back before this year when we had the 35 minimum and we as a council chose to keep an additional 2 million of taxpayer money in reserve for emergencies the emergency was triggered by the 98 straight-line winds that damaged a lot of trees and property and we thought let's always have an extra 2 million beyond what the state required us to have it for cash flow but for emergencies and i started to think to myself isn't what we're going through right now an emergency it was declared as an emergency by the governor and yet we have maintained untouching that 2 million and we're still in excess of that 2 million even with this 1.6 spend and we're going to end up at 41 point something worse we actually have never even touched the 2 million in an emergency year something that we set aside for an emergency so not only are we not spending the funds that we set aside for the emergency but we're also padding on top of it and so i have no concerns whatsoever about the 41.2 or 9 or whatever that chart showed because not only is that a still a very solid number it still doesn't even dip into the 2 million which i believe we should have by rights we could have been able to and should have considered dipping into it and going down to the 35 in a year when there's an emergency the size of this pandemic and so i think we're still on very solid ground if that doesn't qualify as prudent conservative budgeting setting aside 2 million leaving it there for 20 years and then in a pandemic we still don't even touch it we actually increase it i think we're on good solid ground i don't think we have anything to be concerned about and i don't i don't want any of this these these warning signs of you know well we don't have any we don't have anything or it gives us doesn't give us much if there's a future issue my goodness we still had 2 million and we just added another half a million or million to it on top of it just how much over taxation does this council feel we need to do in anticipation of an emergency and so let's keep in mind we never even touched our emergency fund in an emergency year never touched it okay so i think we're not only on good solid ground we're on even stronger ground than we were before so i i feel very very confident going forward you have so one of the things that i'm hearing is uh miss muscali and miss roti uh you will bring back as we continue to look at the budget uh when we get to it to the adoption uh of the budget in december um and see how all of this is impacting so i hear what you're saying councilmember akili you already made the motion for 1.6 which includes the hospital am i correct in here in in in your motion that is correct and appreciates clarification by ms faulkner that uh or miss rhodey that the 1.6 actually included the hospitals allocation but it's going to be a dollar amount for the small business grant plus the 161 for the hospital yeah and uh okay and uh once uh miss faulkner continues with her negotiations with the county and uh they agree to uh fund allow us to fund the ten then we'll have that money back into our fund balance council member gustafson i i just wanna clarification looking at this one point some million here that's assuming that a four percent levy takes place this year yeah and what happens if if we dip in even more and that doesn't take place what's this uh i think that's the calculations miss rhodey has talked about with regard to coming back um to us as we continue to work on the budget and and and how that erodes uh our fund balance and i guess looking for the future okay i'd like a little clarification if we were at the 35 plus the 2 million coming into this year and that's all we had what conversation would we be having now right uh yeah miss roadie we yeah we wouldn't well we wouldn't have the option to use fund balance um and certainly you know our new policy sets a floor at 40. so we are gonna that we cannot we really can't go below that consistently and um and not have a negative impact um financially in the bond rating um so if you dip more into the four percent that's that depending on how far you dip you would go below your policy floor and you know you'd have to we'd have to implement a plan to to build up fund balance a little bit in order to in order you know you really sh it's not you really don't want to go below your fund balance floor so did our reserves grow through development and redevelopment or it grow through is just overtaxing people miss brody i think it's a com it's a combination of development budget savings um and it fluctuates and we didn't grow we didn't grow every year you can see some years it declines and some years it grows because we had some like probably some unexpected things come up maybe revenues didn't come in what we thought they were so that's why you have it not to grow grow grow but in order to respond to things that you didn't expect and um that that's what i would say um and certainly um we did have a couple years where it was below 45 it was 43 or 44 or the one year where it did dip below but consistently we aren't growing it a percent every year it is it is gonna it is gonna fluctuate depend on depending on actual activity you know does that answer the question it does thank you yeah okay uh let's see i don't see any other hands up um uh yes ms mescali did run a calculation of reducing if mr golden or can you check miss mescalise my place it's difficult we can hear you but there's a lot of electronic garble interference that's making it very difficult city manager lee i'd just suggest hopping out of the meeting real quick and coming back in that usually clears up the problem with audio well i think we've got computers next to each other so i'm just going to walk over here no we don't that's not it yeah yeah it's just your microphone or the connection to your zoom just somehow is interfered with somewhere in the audio leave the meeting and come back in okay so the thing is there is a motion on the floor there isn't a second yet uh and uh we'll wait and hear the um uh councilmember schultz are you seconding uh yeah i've been trying okay i've been uh i have a question yeah no i've raised my hand and hit the raised hand feature and yeah i don't see the raised hand feature yep okay so i i have a question as well so on the 1.6 million and i realize that that the hospital of you know 160 000 um that's outside of that cares act funding um so is that inclusive of the 480 that we passed okay yes so it's it's not an additional motion before 80. yeah we're amending the resolution that's in our background to increase it to one point six point six very good including what does it clarify which includes the hospital right no yeah and so i second that separately because it's not in the um small business grants program yep okay miss mescali can you hear me now yes we can hear you now um i did want to there's a question about uh from council member gustafson about a lower tax levy and we did run a couple scenarios um under what i would call um the the most oh boy the most aggressive scenario frozen now or maybe she's good i can hear her okay we did run some scenarios um with the most um generous cares grant allocation as well as a reduction of our levy um and so that really does um it it pushes the levy down for 2021 but it increases it um for 2022 of course and then it does um have an impact on our oh that's yep that's a um a scenario of the zero percent max tax with the funding that the council is discussing right now can put that up on the screen for us to look at so you can see um the drawdown from 20 to 21 and then subsequent years um in the in the impact so just want to make sure that we're looking at again those short-term um impacts as well as a long those longer-term impacts as we think about our overall budget picture so thank you okay uh councilmember schultz so my comment is um on this cares act funding that funding is for us to administer and we can administer in a way that you know we are also someone who gets that funding and gets you know uses that funding for needs that we have incurred um because we've been complying with the executive orders and all that kind of stuff um and so that's a reimbursement for us but i like i don't want us to have this um attitude that that is our money to put in our piggy bank and to use for us and perhaps we split some off for other other purposes and i just get this impression um that we're looking at it as well that's all of our money and if we take some money away and and fund these grants then that's money we're taking away from us and that is that is not true that's uh that's going to go to perspective on that money because yeah i'm going to go to miss mescali because in reading the exact the cares act funding um from the federal government how municipalities through the allocation from the state is to look at mitigating covet uh 19 expenses to city and that we can it's that we can use it uh to look at our small business miss mescali because you've been taking uh been working with the um with the department of revenue on all of these questions madam mayor and council i just want to clarify that staff is simply presenting information these are policy decisions and we want to make sure you've got the information available to to make the decision that you want so um the grant program it is an absolutely eligible program it has been very popularly received um so it is not in intended to say this is our money or their money it's intended to say there are options in how you can spend it but there are impacts of that that we want to make sure you're aware of okay so there is a motion on the floor for 1.6 which includes the hospital and so there's a second and i'm going to call the question all in favor please say aye i'm going to have the clerk uh if the clerk can take the role please thank you madam mayor um councilmember gustafson no mayor cowans aye councilmember keeley unmute councilmember keely sorry i just rejoined i lost the meeting for a couple minutes and rejoined and it defaulted to mute i didn't even notice that i sorry councilmember shells yes what was that yes yes okay all right the clerk has the division of the house okay all right now um thank you everybody we now go to uh item number three and um this is the mayor and council members uh salaries uh presenting is um our city clerk ms collins thank you madam mayor as you can see from your background we have done some survey information on the market cities and burnsville is still as it was two years ago uh the lowest paid account mayor and council our staff have looked evaluated this and to get us to where we would be for our compensation philosophy we recommend an increase to the council member's salary of 200 and an increase to the mayor's salary of 250 per month okay council member kaylee sorry which hand i moved my thing because of the lighting um i asked to have this brought back up and um there's a lot of reasons for that um number one it's been 14 years we've we've basically had a pay freeze for 14 years through those early part of the 14 years was a bad recession so it was a great uh i think the right thing to do what has happened over the last 14 years is for anybody opting into health insurance um the pay freeze and the constant increases in health care costs have been gotten to the point where if if any one of us council members wanted to participate in the health care plan and have a a lower deductible it might actually require you to write a check every month to participate because the 700 no longer is big enough to accommodate the out-of-pocket healthcare healthcare costs as far as a premium so that was one thing that sort of crept up over the last few years that i started watching and going this doesn't make much sense if you offer a benefit and and then a council member has to write a check to access that benefit and so that kind of tells you that maybe the the the health care costs have gotten so high that and and because we've been at the same number for so long that it's become a little lopsided and challenging uh the other thing is i started to look at just what are we making per hour and on a 32-hour week at 700 a month we're at 5.38 cents an hour and honestly and i want john to hear this 5.38 cents an hour is kind of a little disrespectful to the people who run for office and and do what they do and commit to the job they're doing it's it's a bit challenging now other cities do have some per diems that they add on for meetings i mean we spend an enormous amount of time in meetings and we've decided that we did have a per diem at one point that we got rid of it it's really a lot of paperwork and yeah it's a lot of paperwork and it's a lot of people you know and so so i thought all right yeah we don't really i don't want to go there and there's a couple cities that have very high council salaries over a thousand dollars that also get per diem and also have benefits so my actual suggestion today because i believe it probably will be another 10 plus years before the council ends up doing anything because this is a this is truly a as i've witnessed over the last 14 years this is a slow moving [Music] process as far as salaries being changed and and it's worth saying none of us are here for the money period end clearly at 5.38 cents an hour we're not here for the money we're doing this because we we have a passion we want to make a difference in our community and so when when we see the other salaries kind of grow up over a thousand and some with benefits some without you look at how much we're making and we i'm very very happy that we offer benefits to our our council members as 32 hour part-time or semi-full-time i guess 32 hour a week employees i don't think it should be a situation where a future council member comes on board wants to utilize the health insurance and says oh i have to choose an extraordinarily high deductible otherwise i have to write a check to the city to be able to get the benefits and so um that that is um i think that's that's become a problem and so that was one of the triggers that caused me to say all right maybe after 14 years it's time we really do look at this my suggestion is based on using a number that is just i would call it just a barometer when you look at the federal unemployment wage of seven and a quarter and you take that times 32 hours times 52 weeks it comes out to be a little more than a thousand dollars a month which would be my suggestion is we go from 700 to 1000 to 300 increase because it's probably going to stay there for at least 10 years okay he's frozen out um remember keeley if you could uh get off the meeting and join back in yeah councilmember keely leave the meeting and come back okay um miss my scally can you text him please okay [Music] uh miss comments did you want did you want to say something miss collins no okay okay i know that um mr brian knapp may want to address us ms collins is is checking ms ryan from the hospital madam mayor and council he did um make a note a thank you note in the chat feature that i can read for you it says thank you mayor council members and staff bridges hospital appreciates your support in helping us provide safe patient care during the coronavirus pandemic through a federal cares act grant best regards brian knapp oh wonderful okay great thank you uh council member um schultz thank you um happy to happy to do that um definitely to support our nonprofits as well uh and have we found out and have we heard are our our surrounding towns supporting taking some of their care or taking some of their their funds and supporting the supporting the hospital where are we i mean are we it um miss muscoli madam mayor and council um as of uh earlier this week um i think we are the first ones in dakota county to take affirmative action with this action this morning i know that other cities are considering it whether it's the request made by the hospital or or some some percentage of that but i don't believe there's been any formal action by our our pure communities in dakota county as of yet well we have only control over our actions and let's hope that they will follow suit council we will boldly leave finish your remarks regarding the council salary yes and thank you and i'm sorry i don't know when i froze or lost connection uh could someone maybe may have met here if you could say what you last heard from me what you uh refer to is that it doesn't make sense when somebody uh becomes a council member or uh that they have to have a high deductible right if if you were to ch and that's funny go back many many years charlie crichton councilmember crichton may rest in peace was was in this situation where um you know to keep and that was a different it was right he had to pay in it was a different health plan option back then it was probably a little bit more uh you know lower deductible and that our options today are all major medical related and they're very good you know uh plans that are not cadillac by any stretch we don't we don't have any of those plans anymore but there are a multitude of uh or i think three different um deductible options and if you choose the lowest one it could actually trigger writing a check to be able to participate so that along with uh the the fact that our we have some cities out there that are higher than a thousand that do offer benefits and even offer some uh some uh meeting per diems and such so we would not be going to the highest we would not be but we would return from the bottom to maybe in that that upper third and for the next 10 years we'll probably slide down so my motion today is to recommend that we uh for 2021 that we change the council salaries to a thousand and the mayor to 1500 representing a 300 a month increase um are you making that a motion council member keeley yes i i think i just said that i'm sorry i'm making a motion to do that yes okay can i clarify that you want the 300 for both the mayor and council correct that is correct this i'm sorry my my audio might be breaking up my rec my motion is to increase the council salary starting in 2021 by 300 a month including the mayor so the new salaries would be 1 000 for council and 1500 for the mayor for uh is it 1300 for the mayor what does the mayor make now 1200 oh 1 000. so it'd be 13 000. sorry i'd say it'd be 1300 a thousand for the council and 1300 for the mayor would be the new salaries sorry okay there's a motion on the floor is there a second well i'll second that american okay council member gossip son makes uh seconds the motion all in favor please say aye with them would it would the clerk take the role please councilmember gustafsson aye mayor coutts aye councilmember keeley aye councilman no okay and the motion passes so um those are the items that's before us and now i'd like to recognize um mr brian knapp from uh the hospital um yes just make one point of clarification mayor this uh the motion to amend your salaries as part of our city code and we'll be uh we will need to adopt an ordinance at the next council meeting to ratify that yeah it will be ratified but uh but the motion to increase the salaries has been um adopted today okay um mr golden or mr trainer um can you let mr knapp in the room please i believe i am in oh okay but we don't see you on camera okay hello mr knapp yes yes thank you thank you mayor coutts council members and staff uh ridges hospital greatly appreciate your efforts to support us in providing safe patient care during the coronavirus pandemic one of the questions asked that i heard at the end was about the status of other support from other municipalities that are part of our primary service area and so savage uh has approved uh in excess of 47 000 and we received a notification or i did yesterday that we should receive that check next week um we believe rosemont uh and egan are going to be uh moving ahead with something as well and we're just trying to stay connected everybody's uh in process uh to varying degrees so uh and we think uh your support and the the funding of the 161 thousand dollars uh will really help us actually and set a standard as bridges hospital is located in burnsville and burnsville represents the highest market share highest number of emergency visits etc so we think and thank you for setting this as a bar for other communities in our primary service area so and as you can imagine some of the challenges related to funding continue and we have not updated our requests now that we've closed july and august because i think if we submitted today we would probably be in the 210 000 um dollar range that we otherwise for costs we're incurring that otherwise aren't reimbursable or fundable under any other source so um thank you so much um it's it's a blessing that we are located in your city and we appreciate uh the support of um you mayor couts the council and and staff here so thank you very much well thank you for um watching and also speaking um you belong in burnsville the hospital belongs in brunswick hospital i was part of the chaplaincy program you were and we're just and we're actually just getting volunteers back um yeah and not necessarily patient facing but we're getting them back to do uh activities just in the last two weeks so thank you okay well we're glad that we can help and so thank you and have a wonderful uh weekend thank you thank you all okay thank you uh members of the council there are no other items to come before us this morning and a motion to adjourn us in order move to adjourn council members and makes motion second by council member keeley the clerk please take the role councilmember gustafson aye mayor couts aye councilmember keeley aye councilmember shalt yes we stand adjourned thank you so much everyone thank you staff for all of your hard and great work we really appreciate all that you do and thank you also for your service to the members of our community you meet and exceed all expectations thank you