Council Work Session Meeting

4:26Hello, wow, that was loud. Welcome everyone to our June 11th, 2026 City Council Work Session Meeting on Thursday because we have budget to discuss. Our meetings are public and you're welcome to join us in person or by watching from our Council agenda page, Zoom or YouTube. We hope you continue to join us in whichever manner you feel the most comfortable.

4:52This is a work session meeting during which there is no public comment. Please join us on July 14th during our 7 p.m formal meeting to share your comments. We of course welcome your feedback anytime by mail and you can send that to P.O. Box 145476, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114. You can also email us at council.commons.slc.gov.

5:23You can also call our 24-hour phone line. That number is 801-535-7654. I'm almost memorizing all of these things right now. I'm excited. Comments we receive on agenda topics are shared with Council members and posted on our website, SLC.gov slash council. Now the first item on the agenda is fiscal year 2026, 27 budget, foreign result issues and it's a follow up.

5:57We're going to have our staff, the whoever Weaver and Jennifer Bruno, both directors, executive director here online, available for questions, Mary Beth Thompson, chief financial officer,

6:17and how do we schedule this conversation? How do we go about this? Who wants to break the eyes? Who wants to talk about all the genius ideas that you've been thinking about? Mr. Chair, really quickly, if you don't mind, we did receive some new, sorry, hi. We did receive some new information yesterday that I think is important to clarify from our conversation that we had on Tuesday, thanks to the attorneys and recorders office team for really digging in and understanding the nuances of the new law.

6:52On Tuesday, we were under the impression that the council was capped at the mayor's property tax increase proposal

7:01as of June 1st, because that was one of the last notices we sent out. We are now the understanding that the council has until June 22nd to decide what that property tax

7:16for lack of a better word ceiling is. So that is another tool. If you guys felt the need or want to increase over the mayor's property tax increase proposal, I suppose maybe one other piece of news is just the new growth numbers as they are right now are actually in a good spot in terms of being relative to the mayor's recommended budget.

7:42So there's actually a little bit more than is what is in the mayor's budget, but as we know, those aren't final until they're final. And as a conversation with the tax commission yesterday,

7:54Salt Lake City is complicated. And so they're needing a little extra time to kind of get those finalized. So with that, I'll leave it to you to decide how to go through it. I have a slide deck we can walk through, but there's been tons of ideas thrown out today. I just sent to the front office and to the analyst team.

8:18And so maybe someone can print out maybe a spreadsheet version of all the ideas that have been thrown out today. And so if that would be helpful, Council Member Young, I will email that to you right now. Not sure if that's, I'm not intending for that to be how your conversation is guided. And I would not be surprised if I missed an idea or two.

8:42So please let me know if I have. So Jen, one of the new pieces of information that you highlighted was that we do have the ability

8:59to modify upwards the proposed tax increase if you saw Wish, which was new information from what we understood since last meeting. That's correct, yes, I think. Yes, okay. Any, Erica Carlson, Council Member. So formal, Erica Carlson.

9:26I think before we get into talking about any changes to the budget, I feel like it's really important for me to at least clarify some values and some things that are guiding my thinking in response to the budget. One of those things that is really guiding my thinking, and I don't wanna speak for others, but the prospect of a property tax increase is not something that I really think about lightly.

9:57And it's not just a property tax increase, it's a property tax increase that is coupled with an increase in public utilities. And so these are necessary things that we have to invest in. And I'm gonna be looking to how can we mitigate the impact of some of those things by ensuring that any programs that we invest in for the public that there's really an opportunity for those programs to go to the neediest of individuals.

10:28There's an income verification that might be, I might be looking forward to make sure that those programs are truly going to those who need the support, especially in this difficult moment of time. So I just wanted to offer that framing, Mr. Chair and to my fellow colleagues, that I'm taking these things with a great sense of responsibility.

10:56Any thoughts that come to mind to continue the conversation? Eventually we're gonna have to discuss some of these specifics, but some of them are doing. I appreciate the comments and I agree with you here. I mean, I think the mayor did a wonderful job on the budget. I think the staff and everybody looked to everything very carefully and deliberately and we're very sensitive to all the needs and the community and the departments.

11:21And I also see that we can take another finer look at it, whether we have additional growth above what was estimated in our budget or whether we have a need to, if it's below that number. So either way, I think we can take a look at some of the line items we have and possibly we do set property tax side house and maybe shift some money, but also making sure again that we are taking care of everybody in our core values, but also, and very also sensitive to paying on if there is a higher number looking at some of our core infrastructure funding too and that fund balance.

12:14So I'm appreciative of all those conversations and I appreciate the conversation we've had over the last 48 hours as we look at the all these line items and try to find where to shake it from.

12:28Many of us been working through the budget and make notes. I know that we all have different ways of absorbing the information that goes through in the presentations, reading the book and getting feedback from the community as well and our own lived experiences. So it's a mix of all of those things. And I over the several weeks, I made notes on things that I was curious about.

12:58Some of those are in this list. They are not all mine. Some of them are mine. Maybe I have a few of those. But I want to basically, since you know, Council Member Carlson, you went through and presented your values first, I want to frame that conversation that way too. I, you know, that's very smart. And I think it highlights what lens I have.

13:25And the issue here that I see is the impact on the community. And with all of the impacts that are feeling,

13:39I felt like it is a responsibility for us to tie up as much as we can tie.

13:46At the same time balancing our own public servants in our city, they're putting so much on the line and working so hard to keep the city going, the stuff. Because in many cases, we're talking about salaries and positions and FTEs. And what I suggested generally and many of these things in the list are one time or ongoing, but some of them are capital improvement type of savings.

14:20So not employees. Although I'm suggesting or exploring the possibility of reducing a very few amount of them.

14:30It's hard, it's a hard decision. And knowing what, for example, Denver has done, or Las Vegas have done where they had to fire and let go, let go really, fire is not really the right term, let go hundreds of employees because they're feeling the same constraints that we are.

14:49And they want to minimize the impact to future budgets and feeling the same pressures here. I felt like we need to make tough decisions this year. And if not, we're gonna be in the same position next year. And it may be a harder one then. So that's how I'm seeing the budget. I am not saying that any of these things in this list

15:15doesn't have merit or they're not doing good. What I'm saying is stuff and I'm cutting, I'm suggesting or exploring the potentially reducing projects or programs that we may not be able to afford at the moment. So that's sort of the frame that I'm going through when I'm exploring these things. Council Member Pietro. Thank you.

15:39And I know you and I have discussed this. We represent some of the highest concentration of people at risk for displacement,

15:48working class who are not able to absorb $6 a gallon gas and all the other things coming at them. If we cannot prevent an increase, but we can provide us predictability. So as I'm looking at this, I would really appreciate us not just doing band aids for one year, but any cuts, any suspensions, anything that we decide needs to be enhanced, that we're looking at it with a lens of what does this do to us next year and if possible, even the year beyond.

16:20My goal is for my neighborhood to provide maximum predictability. So that if, for instance, we know water rates in our utility system is under constant stress, we may not be able to prevent increases, but I can tell you that I really want to see more private funding flowing into not just pet projects, but necessary structural work to ameliorate that, right?

16:47I can tell you that I want us to not do a property tax increase next year, which means ameliorating our dependence on general fund right now has to be a priority. So those are the sorts of guiding principles that I want us to be really deliberative about and make sure that if we have to ask neighbors to absorb a blow, that it's not just a band aid to get through a tough budget year, but it's something that sets us up for maximum predictability.

17:18Even people who have more significant resources in many people, in their neighborhood, if they're living on a fix and need that kind of predictability.

17:29And you, Council Member Wharton.

17:34Yeah, I don't think anybody up here wants to raise taxes. But part of the reason that we're in this situation, a major reason why, not the only reason, but that there are costs that come from years

17:54of state budget cuts, federal budget cuts, and a lot of those are in the areas of the people that are most vulnerable in the community. And I would love to be able to cut more, but I don't see how that is possible with, I think the price of doing that is having another tax increase next year, almost certainly. And also on top of reducing our workflow, asking employees to take a pay cut, and the employees that are not proposed to get a raise, like we're essentially asking them to take a pay cut by continuing without a cost of living adjustment.

18:40So I wish there was another option that allowed us to check all of those boxes and there just isn't.

18:51So rather than talking about reducing the cut or reducing the sorry to increase, I would rather talk about

19:01how to make sure that this increase lasts more than a year. I think that your thoughts go, maybe this is how we can start coalescing about some ideas. Your thoughts regarding that, if we, some council members, I include myself on that, have suggested additional introductions. And some council members here have told me that they want that not necessarily to impact the tax increase or reducing the tax increase proposed right now, but to cushion the general fund, to make sure that next year, it's we're not sort of cornered yet again into tax increase, which is quite obvious in some regards.

19:58So while you're not saying that, I feel like there is a general connection there as far as you want to see that whatever tax increase we end up doing this year doesn't really continue to perpetrate, it will happen next year and year again. So if there is no more general thoughts about this, any more thoughts about this, I will, maybe the way to go is let's go through this list that the council staff was.

20:30Mr. Chair, I'm sorry. Oh my God. I have my digital hand raised. I am so sorry for not seeing you, Council Member Young. No, I acknowledge you, I know you're there, but I didn't see your yellow hand. Maybe the yellow hand could be a little bigger. I mean, their little window will be amazing,

20:50but maybe we should put a screen in front of the table here for your face. So, Council Member Young. No, thank you. I appreciate it. I guess I just wanted to add two things. One is just kind of a plus one to the topics that have been raised by my fellow council members. I have nothing but trust and admiration for the service that all of you bring in terms of representation of the various communities.

21:19And I think we all share in that fact that times are very difficult in terms of both the economy and the pressures that we're seeing from things outside of Salt Lake City's control, while also recognizing that those impact our direct costs to maintain even the same level of service as a city. And working with each of you to try and figure out what that balance is just really does give me a lot of appreciation for the hard decisions that are being made here and the thoughtfulness that everyone has brought to the table.

21:52I also just want to agree with, you know, the statement of Council Member Wharton related to future facing fiscal years in terms of staff compensation. And that when we do say that, you know, there is not a kind of general adjustment outside of those individual considerations related to market rate for the positions. We are effectively, you know, asking our staff to be able to do more with less, both in terms of rising insurance costs and their own kind of economic pressures that they're facing.

22:31And so I'm very grateful to the staff of Salt Lake City who are, you know, really leaning in and dedicated to the work and working with us to weather this year, but that that's going to be on the table in future years at the risk of otherwise losing staff and having attrition within that space. The last thing that I just wanted to make sure, at least I'm being articulate about and accountable for, is the fact that we do have an expectation that utility rates are going to are not on a flat trajectory.

23:10It's something that I've heard from the Metro Water Board presentation. I've seen in our own analysis in terms of being able to, you know, continue to reflect, you know, the costs of the projects as it relates to the interest payments and things like that. And so that even from the property tax standpoint, as much as we can lean into not having to do that a year after year, I completely agree with, but that I do think that the landscape currently shows that we are on a trajectory to see moderate increases over time for public utilities in the future related to even the current infrastructure and commitments and projects that we have.

23:56And that that does factor in, like Council Member Carlson says, to the overall impact of the city services and decision and just kind of keeping that on the radar. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Green. Council Member Carlson.

24:19I would like to, I know it's not in order, but I would like to go towards item number 45 on our list, which is a request around restoring the high pass. And so, you know, so we're all on the same page. This was recommended to be cut in the Mayor's recommended budget.

24:43And although I know a lot of folks really love this program,

24:49unfortunately not enough for really using it to justify the administrative and operational cost of it. I know some of my Council members have changed some of their perspectives on restoring the high pass, but I feel like the administration put a lot of thought into thinking about what should be cut. And I would just like to say I am okay with that recommendation from the administration.

25:13I don't know if any other Council members who are hoping we could save it want to speak up about this. I wish we could save it. That I think that maybe all of us wish we could save it. I heard from a lot of my neighbors, that they use it about the value of it. And the concern here is sharing the cost of something that is useful for a lot of families throughout the city.

25:48In a budget like the one that we have in front of us, we have to make tough decisions. And that might be one of them.

25:57I might be in the minority on the issue, but I understand where you come from. I would like to see significant changes. Hopefully some of the things that maybe I brought to the table to fully commit to say we're also reducing all the things that are, they might know how the same impact. So maybe we can go back to one that is the exchange.

26:24I miss it. Council Member Dougan. And I've been one that's gone around in circles on the high pass because I think the public transportation is so important and I'd love to have just free passes for everybody, but I know that's a pipe train. But I also know that this program though hasn't grown, but we've also got UTA's got other programs and I almost feel like we need to work with UTA on, because we were spending a lot of administrative costs in this program that could have gone to the more passes.

26:55So I'd really like to work with maybe UTA on this and not having us have too many projects, just maybe one program. So I'm sad that we have to cut it, but I also understand that we also need to do it. So I'm with you and I've changed my, and I think it's a necessary, but hard cut. I think that to your point, the older portion that is still in the proposed budget, which is the portion that subsidizes kids to take under their parents.

27:30And that one is, and that was still there, and it's growing, the number of kids, we could hit over 800,000 trips on that one, and that's one that is growing, and this one was really flat line that Ann, Nellie. And we are not administering that, I think it would be a rubric. It's a partnership with the Foundation, UTA, and the city on that one also.

27:54It's a good combination of, you know, we providing something that maybe there's needed, but we're not administering ourselves, I'm destroying ourselves, so it's not costing more taxpayer money, and we are seeing an uptick on use. So I understand that. Any other thoughts on the high pass? Okay. I would like to jump to 31, which is the Landscape Exchange Program, which I think it is a good program.

28:28I mean, I'm not, again, and I'm going to preface this, maybe every time that I'm mentioning something, but this is not a passing judgment on the program, on the goals of the program, on what is accomplished, or what amazing work it does. But this is much like hype, so I think it feels similar to me. A program that exchanges lawnmowers and other, I think that's what it is, really, equipment to electrical one.

28:58Yes, no customer member, but. Yes, just like that. Almost, better than a customer member, I'm sorry. I just wanted to translate the numbers, because staff added a couple of items, so the line items changed for some. So this you're referring to 31 on the old chart and 37 on the one just passed out. So should we use the new one?

29:20If you don't mind. I think that's what people are working. Let's throw away the small one. Sorry, there's no time. I'm so sorry. Can we make sure that customer young has it? Yes. Yes. And I am sharing my screen just to make sure that at the very least it's on the screen. So I will send that updated version of the council member yet, which is actually added an item that I had left off that council member young reminded me of.

29:45So we're talking about 37 then, which is reduce the landscape exchange program. And I, you know, and I think that it's a good program, but this is not the year to keep it. So I don't know if there are any thoughts about this or in favor of maybe torn or against it. Can I use that quick question? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

30:13Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So this is more procedural question. I know we're approving the budget for this fiscal year and that that's the charge that we're tasked with. Have we ever considered like moving things where we're considering it like that one time reduction? So we're eliminating the funding for this next fiscal year, but still keeping it on a future list.

30:39Is there a mechanism for that or is it like no, you're making that decision? And if you wanted to bring it back, that would require council action in the future. I mean, just from my perspective, I'll jump in and then maybe Mary Beth or the mayor's office could jump in. There's nothing preventing you from making your intent known and we could note that on any changes to say one time reduction.

31:03In fact, the mayor's recommended budget uses that language in relation to the one time reduction in the transfer for affordable housing to the CRA. So I think that that's their intention was to just suspend it for this year and revisit it next year. I think it will take just institutional memory to end and a review of this year's budget documents to make sure that it doesn't get accidentally fall through the cracks for next budget year.

31:31But that can certainly be communicated. Thank you. So, Council Member Poi, I guess that would just be my question. Is this something that you would like to eliminate or would like to consider a one year elimination? I'm just curious where you stand up now. It's hard for me to completely eliminate when I'm torn. So to me, I prefer to say suspending the program for this year.

32:05So I'm reevaluating again next year with whatever budget comes to us. So, yeah, that would be my preferred method. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I appreciate that. And I look at this again, I'm just going to say the same thing I said just two seconds ago. These are hard cuts and you know, I'm being here and the quality is a big issue.

32:32The noise quality is a big issue across the city. And I know there's also a state program for this. Again, do we have, are we having a program? Are we administrating a program that the state has? How do we promote the state's program so that we're using the state's funds instead of our funds so that people can still get an incentive but not taking it from the city dollars from the state dollars?

32:59And so we're like promoting the state's program in one way but not using our funds. I think it's, you know, we did the e-bikes and we did the lawnmowers and it was like within a day everything was gone because everybody jumped on it right away. And I can see this happening again here. So I'd like to see it there but I also, again, like to see how we can promote the state's program.

33:25So we're using their dollars which have a bigger depth for it than ours. You know, is there a need to fully cut it all the way out? Do you cut half of it at this point? Again, we're having here and there's, but I see a need to cut it but I'm not sure if I want to eliminate it all. But I also want to see us promote the state so we're spending their money instead of ours.

33:51Oh, yes, Councillor McKorlson. I too feel the, the consternation around this program. I know people love it. I think it's hard to cut something that people really like and is a tangible benefit to them. But some of the things that are going into my thinking regarding this is the, is a reality that there is a state program that people can apply to to participate in.

34:15And the other reality that there is not a income requirement for this program. And what's really important to me is that if we are subsidizing this, that it's really going to the neediest of individuals for whom this is a state program. For whom this could make the difference for them to transition to electric equipment from gas powered equipment.

34:36So I am definitely open to the proposal of pausing. I don't know if that's a technical term, reducing, finding that balance. I would like to maybe propose, you know, a draft of it legislative intent that is in my mind regarding these things, which is that we study, you know, other organizations that may have similar programs.

35:05Also, partnerships with private sector. I know that that has happened before in similar program when they did the state, the water, the sprinkler controller, which I think that we should do it again. But also, add income requirement to programs like this. So we are helping people that, you know, they need it. And they need it the most.

35:29I think everybody will take a couple hundred hours, you know, extra, but it will be fantastic if we can prioritize those that need it the most. And they cannot afford to replace their equipment. And we can help subsidize those. So maybe that's something that could be used, we can form that idea a little better and maybe stuff can help me into a legislative intent.

35:54Yes, we'll be conducting that. We've done this conversation. Does that mean the funding would stay or it would come out with that legislative intent? Yeah, I'd like to keep the option open to maybe not fully cut it. But let's look at what would come out at the end of the day here. Nickel and Diamond. Nickel and Diamond, we're going to spend that 30 minutes on $5,000.

36:20I think maybe to that question, we could ask, you know, what is the administrative cost of running this program? And it may not make sense. But I will say to you that one of the, when I'm comparing, comparing is never fair, especially on these things. But comparing Hive to this, we're talking about users getting a pass they used throughout the year, you know, and exchanging a lot more.

36:51And to me, one personally have a bigger weight. Both of them are valid. Both of them are useful. But I lean towards one more. So if I have to keep something, I prefer to keep it on Hive. Right? And I'm not sure it's pertinent either. So that's why I'm like, I'm using Hive as this like filter to judge. I might be any rational about this.

37:19I agree with you. I wish I could keep it. But I'm open to that. Let's see. Maybe how we go through the cuts, but it seems like many of us have shared general interest in it. Any other thoughts on this? Sorry, Mr. Chair for the. It was hard for me to hear. I'm not in the room. Does that mean I should I back it out for now?

37:41And then we'll put it back in or should we just maybe highlight it to come back later? I think that maybe I received enough council members information to say that we probably should remove it. Okay, great. So mark it as that now and then we can go back to it. We are all here. We'll remember this conversation. Maybe unfortunately.

38:07Any of you have the courage to pick one of yours in this list to bring about? I'll bring up number 23, the drone pilot program. I think it's a drone system and the drone program has been very beneficial for the city. And I really appreciate that. And we have a number of drone pilots or qualified individuals who can fly the drone around.

38:47If we had the money, this would be great. I know this is 10 months because I think the ongoing cost is more than the 136. But I can also see you saying let's review this at January after six months of the budget. After a few months of the tax, the sales tax, maybe above the amendment and other things to see where we are in front of balance to bring it back.

39:13But I would like to reduce that by half. So from 10 months to 5 months and take a look at it at that point and we can bring it back on a budget amendment. It's not a big cut, but it is because I think it's a worthy program. But I also don't think we're in desperate need at this time. Council Member Young. Thank you. So I think I just had a clarification question about this.

39:40My understanding was that the request for the drone pilot funding, some of that was in infrastructure, not in operating costs. And so if we reduce it by half, I don't know if that achieves like a feasible five month effort. And so I guess I'm just seeking clarification on whether it's for operating costs so we can go down to a factor of five months, or if it's infrastructure related, in which case it may just make more sense to hold on those infrastructure improvements to achieve this.

40:19The 136 is for the FTE itself. And then, but we can confirm that. That's just, that's what's in the budget book, but we'll confirm that unless Michael Sanders is in the room and clarify. Sorry, Michael, to put you on the spot. If you know, if you don't. He's coming on down. Great. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. So the 136,000 is related just to the drone pilot.

40:58The infrastructure costs is related to the other line item for the real time crime center. Got it. Okay. So if we might, Michael, if I can ask a follow up. So then if we're reducing the FTE component. Does that impact them that infrastructure ask in terms of like a similar reduction? I'd have to ask the chief to get back to you on that. I believe that the structure cost is mainly for like drone repairs and things of that nature.

41:32I don't know if they actually what they need in terms of infrastructure hundred percent, but it's mostly repairs and perhaps another drone doc. Yeah. So, and I guess that's my question. If we can get clarity around the cost of the additional drone doc, that would also be a space where it's just not an improvement. We can make it this time. And I think I'll maybe a little bit different than than the FTE approach. So thank you for that.

42:00I will open to discussion on this. I am torn because I was shown evidence that the drone program will save us a lot of money and it's saving us money on FTEs from the police department. And for those that have concerns about the concern about the use of data and all that, the city is looking into improving the policies and whatnot, and the records and that.

42:37But also it reduces interactions with police officers, you know, when there's no need it. So there is a lot of efficiencies and all those jurisdictions are seen. A lot of efficiencies with this. So I want to make sure that we keep an eye on it. I'm open to to discuss that. I will love more information about why 10 months could we reduce that to less months could we reduce that to part time or other versions.

43:05So Council Member Carlson. Thank you. I would love to hear a little bit more about, you know, what would be the impact if we we to Council Member Dugan suggestion. We, you know, started this position in January and we saw what the impact of it was. And to Council Member Young's question about the infrastructure, do they go hand in hand? I'm open to learning more about, you know, what the right balance is on this.

43:34I am not just to be clear. I'm not open to cutting it totally. I would like to still maintain funding, but maybe we can do some budget magic and reduce when those that funding is, you know, is appropriated. Hopefully that makes sense. Yeah. I think we should ask a lot more questions to the police department and we are looking for efficiencies to continue the program to keep expanding the program. I think it seems like we have been talking about this, but we were interested in if there is any way that they can potentially keep the, you know, growing without the need of a full pilot, other reductions in there that they can.

44:20Or efficiencies that they can find as an option. And to Council Member Young about the infrastructure, could we reduce that instead of the FTE? Okay. I just did look at the staff report one more time and saw that one of the line items is for the drone dock specifically. And it's a $250,000, a little over $250,000. It just says that it's related to ongoing costs.

44:44So I don't know if it means a new drone dock. And I don't know specifically if it's like one drone to one drone pilot. So I'll follow up with the chief. And whether that's part of that 397 or. It's separate. So yeah, it's separate. So there's a 397 for the real time crime center and then there's a 252 that's specific for the drone dock.

45:09And chair, if I can just add one other additional consideration. So I agree with you in terms of the efficiencies that we get related to reducing additional FTE needs versus utilizing technology in ways that allows us to save money for places that we don't necessarily need that police interaction. I think the other piece that I consider in terms of prioritizing maybe a reduction in the infrastructure as opposed to the FTE when you adjust that FTE level.

45:41That is oftentimes harder to maintain staffing for because now all of the sudden you're either offering somebody, you know, a time limited position, or you're changing somebody from an ongoing position to time limited. With the point of review, sometimes that means that we don't necessarily get the same expertise and or experience in those use cases just because they're a little more like I'm not sure that job is going to continue.

46:13And so I lean towards infrastructure so that we can still get, you know, top quality individuals who are participating in this program. That's a good frame. I was wondering how why one or the other from from this conversation. So that helps me understand what your train of thought is. I think that we have some questions to for the chief about this and we need some creativity. I think that we're looking for some creativity to see if there is some option to to to grow for less money.

46:50So we want to do both. So it seems like what is the proposal for Jennifer to mark? What do we want to put half of that in there? Yeah, my thought was to delay it. So you're going to delay and see basically basically delay this cost of five, five months from ten months to five months. And because I don't want to cut up the drone product program, but I also want to make sure that we have drone pilots that are qualified, but they're also flying the drone so they're very comfortable flying it and using it.

47:24A lot of part time drone pilots, then you end up with safety issues. You have other kind of issues because you don't have enough experience by actually operating the machinery and the equipment. And so let's look at that. But let's just delay it really is what the point here is delay it and let's see how it works and then we bring it back.

47:44So with the lane, you mean not putting any money on the bucket? No, no, no, it'd be half that. No, like half a year. So start the funding in February. Yeah, whatever whatever six months is. Yeah. Right. Because it's 136 is for ten months. That's usually how we do an FD. We do FD for ten months. So I just got in half, making five months.

48:05Okay. Anybody else wants to speak to this or bring have the courage to bring their own? Well, since we're here. The next line item 24 around cameras, supplies and equipment. I have a question about regarding this line item, how much of this goes towards repair and replace versus repair, replace and purchase new equipment.

48:42And so would love to get an understanding of how does that break down financially and to name, I have a slight preference towards repair and replace at this point in time. You know, I struggle with that because public safety is our core, one of our core services and this has been a tool that has helped us a big time to reduce hot spots in the city.

49:13It has, I seen it with my own eyes and my own street. And I don't know if this is the place that we should compromise, but I think having an idea of how this money divides into these three packets. I do struggle with cutting public safety, especially when we have good data that approves that is effective. So I struggle.

49:41But this is where I see the value of doing this tightening up of our belts. If we cut other pieces of the budget that seem less important is not the right word, but like less urgent or less impactful. Or they have a positive impact, but it's more limited. So if we are able to make some of those, then I understand maybe next line is not buying a new one.

50:10So I work through Explorer. So getting more information will give us the actual number. Is that how you expect that? Okay. That's 397,000. We'll see where that looks like. Council Member Carson. Sorry. The last item is number 25, which is a leadership development program. And I would love to explore not cutting this totally, but maybe reducing the cost of it from 100,000 to 50,000.

50:45And what's informing my perspective on this is that I saw other, I saw just, you know, across the board, many departments, police department included, but everybody really tightening belts around a lot of different things. And I saw some instances where leadership development and other departments were, you know, either cut or paused or delayed.

51:06And so I felt like this might be one of those areas where we could reduce the investment of it. And see if that can help alleviate some of the weight. I know it's not a lot, $50,000, but, you know, I feel like over time, all of these things really add up. I'm supportive of that. Okay. I do want to be careful not to undermine.

51:38I spoke with Councilman Carlson earlier. We are unabashedly pains in the neck. And it comes to our public safety apparatus and our police force demanding a lot out of them in terms of professionalism, how they show up, how they handle creative situations, how they are innovative and forward looking. And so I don't, especially because we do rely on recruitment from foreign military.

52:04I don't want to inadvertently create a situation where we're expecting a culture that we're not investing to cultivate. And so I would like specific information on how we're cultivating that. If this contributes to that, I am really apprehensive to cut it. I think we're asking men and women to come off the streets of Fallujah and to recognize Salt Lake City is something different.

52:30And I'm so thankful for the people who keep us safe and who are willing to do that work because it is not my calling. But I want to make sure that we are equipping them, especially from if we're going to be traveling to everyone else, we have to be traveling to our own staff. Yeah. I struggle with it too. And I think that maybe for many of us that have been in the council where we were losing police officers left and right, and we had some issues retaining them.

53:02And morale was probably we had some issues with morale. I will struggle with sending some messages, mixed messages there. And not only impacts the force itself and the recruitment and the retention, but impacts how they interact with the community. So I'm open to explore it, but I want to make sure that if we end up doing that, that it's fully cushioned.

53:29And very valid points because leadership train is so valuable for cross-border. It's kind of sometimes hard to quantify, but you can also see that the leadership in the police department is fantastic. And our staffing level is great. Lower all is good. And we're seeing a lot of productivity from that. So you do, we want to make sure that the leadership train is still there.

53:53And that's why I think the idea of this reducing it because we know it is valuable. And maybe we can find some grant money to offset some of that funding. And the police chief can look for that because this is the kind of training that keeps our leadership strong, which then keeps our leadership strong. And keeps our core values strong, which keeps our boots on the ground strong too.

54:17So I think this can still be a plus and it's not really a minus in that case. I'll open to discuss a little more information. I think it's really good. Mr. Chair, if I could just share really quickly, since this is the first item we've touched in funding our future. So this particular line item was funded with the funding our future category, which is that extra sales tax that the council levied.

54:47Several years ago, time the council committed to only spending those dollars on certain categories. Those are the categories at the top there housing, transit, public safety, infrastructure and parks maintenance. So that's why we keep it tracked in a separate column. So as we go through this list, we will figure out sort of what the balances of everything.

55:09You don't have to figure out how to balance everything in funding our future. That doesn't need to be balanced the same way that general fund needs to be balanced. Although, obviously you have to have enough money to pay for all the things you want to pay for. But I just wanted to make sure to flag that for everyone. Thank you.

55:31That's what we're doing. All right. I'm just going to go down the list. Number 28, the abuse of seasonal employees, a new property tax proposal. And again, I'm not reducing wanting to cut this all, but I'm just trying to look at some of the trimming. We're asking public lands to do a lot and they've done it some tremendous work.

55:50And I appreciate all the work they've done for my district on the parks and everything else and taking all my calls of trimming when I need it trimmed. Because I have some needs up there sometimes to do some of this kind of work. But I also look at this time, hey, we're not reducing our watering, so maybe we need to reduce our cutting of that lawn.

56:16And so is there a way to reduce some of that? Maybe it's already in the budget, but we do some of the seasonal employees that are doing the seasonal work in the parks, keeping the grass longer, not cutting in all the areas, and just trimming that budget. We're using that, we're going to slice it in half. That's just an easy number to use.

56:37I'm not sure if it's a full half, but how can we do set number by even if 100 grand? What does it look like as far as the maintenance of it and just cutting the grass and maintaining the stuff that we can do without really affecting the trees and the overall. All the operational systems. Anybody else? Seems like there's only three, okay.

57:08Councillor McCarson. Thank you for that suggestion, Councillor Mabry-Dugan. I actually would love to hear a little bit more about this, understand so if it is reduced, what would be the impacts? I didn't see as much and it could have been that I missed it in the budget, but wanting to understand more of what types of things this would fund.

57:32Right, because it talks about the new properties and we have new properties and we also have new stuff coming up. We got Alan Park coming up, we have other things coming up, so I'd like to get a little more. My mistake of not asking these questions two weeks ago, I'm to public lands, but I'm asking them now. Okay. The staff knows what we want from this.

58:01Yes. Sorry, thank you. I guess we're going through the list and order. So there is version 29, you know, that's you. Who's 29? Is there more people to speak to 29? Okay. I didn't specifically request this one, but when I asked my neighbors, if they've seen park rangers, the Cottonwood dog park people are the only ones report that they did and the function that they observed was picking up dog poop.

58:43As I still don't have what success looks like for this program or what a metric of success is, it feels like a place where we're not getting in past and of concrete r oi, at least in my district. I know district three is going to come for me real quick as soon as I say that. And I understand that, but it's a hard one for me to justify with my neighbors and it's one that I hear a lot of static over.

59:13So, but I did not request this one. I'm just writing the coattails. I'm like people who did. Anybody else want to speak to it? That's a little more important. I do because we. I would rather see maybe like a shift in focus. If that is the concern, then eliminating the program because for me, this saves us a lot of money in terms of calls to the county for animal.

59:52Animal control. This saves on calls to police for issues that are happening on the trails. It helps with a lot of the camps in my district. And calling in nonprofit partners to come and answer those calls. If we eliminate these positions, I think that we're just going to see more calls to the non emergency line as opposed to.

1:00:24So, I know I also have a not officially a constituent, but I'll call them an honorary constituent that is frustrated with this item and doesn't feel like it's generating the return that is necessary. I don't understand that criticism. And so I think that there's a way that we can adjust that in terms of what programs they're focusing on as opposed to eliminating.

1:00:53The position. I do think this is one of the alternative response models that we initially rolled out and that we have said that we. That in past budgets, we have expanded. I don't want to go back on that. I struggle with it because I don't know if cloud watching is an alternative response, but I do what I do believe that some of the functions.

1:01:19I do do fit a space that is an alternative response versus con with the police. But there is no data to back it out as far as I know. And I would love to base these decisions a little more with some information. None of the proposed here are eliminating the program altogether. They're like reducing it. So I feel like maybe reducing it and re-scoping it to keep the things that you value that we all value.

1:01:48It might actually accomplish the same thing. Maybe the cloud watching portions of it can be removed. But the parts that are essential to us in the alternative response are more enhanced. So we still see the value as an alternative response. But I would love to get more information. I again proposed 29, but I proposed 30, which is eliminating three positions.

1:02:16So two park rangers and one manager. That is $100,000, $105,000. And that is, again, I think that with your idea of re-scoping some of the portions, I think we can still see the value in our streets. Well, I guess the concern I have about, I appreciate clarifying, yes, we're not eliminating the program. But we would be laying off some employees.

1:02:43And I feel like the data argument goes both ways. But if this was neutral and we weren't laying somebody off, then I could say, okay, we need more data before we expand it. But we're saying we don't have the data to justify keeping these positions. The other way of saying that is that we don't have the data to eliminate the positions either.

1:03:08And these are individuals who currently work in our city. I don't want to just eliminate them based on anecdote. And if we're going to talk about doing it based on data, then I think we have to acknowledge the lack of data cuts both ways. And so if we're going to do it by anecdote, then I would be happy to offer many anecdotes to counter the cloud watching or wildflowers.

1:03:39So I want to see if I can step, because I'm noticing I'm getting a little confused myself here. So I want to just like step in and clarify a couple things. In the mayor's recommended budget, there is a recommendation for the reduction of three park rangers. That's correct, yes. Yes. Okay. As I think about this issue, if you've got a reduction in, let's say, front line staff, it makes sense to me that there may be a corresponding reduction in either lead or super visceral staff, because what is within their scope of responsibilities has decreased.

1:04:21And my question is not reducing the program. My question is, what is the right balance with the already proposed reduction in park ranger front line staff, a corresponding reduction in super visceral or lead positions so that the organizational structure matches? I can't answer that question, but we can certainly pass it on.

1:04:48Actually, I believe Director Kim is here. Yeah. And I would love to further ask, and I, you know, what I'm not interested in, in this meeting is necessarily to have it back and forth with the administration. I would love to get feedback, quick feedback, top-up line feedback, but ultimately deeper questions answered in writing if possible.

1:05:15I would really appreciate it. Because I think this is a really good, it feels like a safe space for council members to, you know, express their mind and then like get actually good answers, not that they've never been bad, but like more answers that we're not influenced, you know, to be ashamed to say. It's hard, and I would say, I would like to preface this conversation by saying that I still value the program.

1:05:48I think that it's a lot of amazing things that they do. But maybe my question to the administration to add to that is, if we are shrinking the things that they do, and one of those may be, and I'm not saying there's no value in cloud watching, bird watching, flower, and understanding nature and valuing, you know, putting value in our public spaces, and there is a lot of great value into that.

1:06:17But when I'm cutting, you know, transportation passes, because we don't have money, it feels, again, they don't compare to me. You know, I have a struggle to fund one versus the other. If there is a way of reducing the scope of the work, could the program continue with less people, with a few people? Kim, if you really want to, I would love to have you.

1:06:44But you can always answer the questions after. I would like to provide a more thoughtful response by Friday, is that what I heard? But I do just want to mention, I appreciate the reference to our cloud watching program. It was one of actually our most attended programs, so it's not Lakers. Some of them, at least, did enjoy that.

1:07:09But some of the supervisor duties are that go beyond just direct supervision, like payroll, things like that. They're actually developing our interpretive programs. And that workload, we wouldn't think would change with the reduction in staff. So we're happy to provide a more comprehensive response to the questions, but I appreciate the thoughtful dialogue.

1:07:29Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate, I mean, my frame of work, my frame of seeing is, can we find some savings? So I'm trying to find that. Council Member Wharton. So, sorry, so what was the answer to that? You're going to be able to give us some more. I'm happy to answer the question that I understood to be what, with the reduction, what is the appropriate balance between supervisors, lead, and frontline staff?

1:08:02And then with the reduction proposed in staff, what does the programming shift look like? And how we might change patrol hours, interpretive programs that are offered, things like that. So the council has that information, they should make you the decision. And when would we be able to give that? I would do my best to get it Friday.

1:08:22Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much. That's, I don't know, it's a lot of work. Maybe we all need to do some thought watching. For the record, I do like the cloud watching. I may be the only one, but I think a student of meditation of mindfulness, I see the value with it. I recognize I'm in the minority. But I think we have to acknowledge we are in a need to have budget, not a nice to have budget.

1:08:53ARPA is gone. And our neighbors are experiencing inflation at the highest right now in seven years, according to today's headlines. And those working class people who we invested millions in thriving in place to not displace are literally on the line with our decisions here. So understanding what you said, you don't think the default is to ask neighbors to continuously shoulder more burdens.

1:09:20And I think that if we love to live in a place that has nice to have things, we have to be very serious about what we're doing. Consulme-emor Young. What is the proposal is to rid you? Sorry. You never interrupt anybody. It's okay, Consulme-emor Young, if I give him the time. He never does it. I'm always like losing the chance for him to say anything.

1:09:41You okay? Or you have something? Please like, Consulme-emor Warren, go. I'm happy to go after. So I understood this to be that we were going to, that the proposal was to eliminate these and put that money somewhere else. We haven't gone to that place. Okay. Because I feel like that's kind of, isn't that kind of integral though to the question?

1:10:10I mean the two options are reducing the tax increase or putting it into our general fund. I mean we're never compelled to spend money. If the state's any example, we don't even have to spend it on our statutory responsibilities. However, we're going to spend it on our statutory responsibility. But we're never compelled to spend money.

1:10:38I think for me, I've discussed this with several of my co-councers. As I'm looking at these decisions, I'm looking at this from the lens of not only what does it do to this year's budget, but what's the likelihood that in the next year we will be in another position where we're having to make really hard decisions. Are there decisions now that I can make?

1:10:56So I've disclosed to everyone, I think, except my new colleague, that my predisposition is to take anything that we are able to save this year and reduce our reliance on one time funds from the general fund. To make sure that next year we are mitigating the gap that we have to cover in the same position. Okay, but that makes me feel like it's being framed as like this one line item is what's going to make or break either having to do a tax increase, having to do a second tax increase, or make or break one a household's budget.

1:11:36And recognizing that all of these things add up, I do get, I do understand that. But like even the aggregate of all of these numbers on this column, like we're talking about a $13 million structural deficit. No, our structural deficit is not 13 million. It's growing much lower. It's growing in the past, but it's growing in the past, but it's growing in the past.

1:12:13So I'm going to use, well, no, I'm not going to use that phrase. I was almost going to use my favorite budget phrase, Penny, wise, pal, foolish, but I'm not going to do this time. Sorry, Lindsey. Yeah, I guess I guess I would want to understand more about like how like these particular cuts in these particular amounts.

1:12:35Like what do we get for the cut? Yeah, Council Member Young. Yes, and if I can just, I guess, add to the request from Director Shelley. I know that you guys have a really great website for park rangers, where you are kind of breaking it down by those core six core activities you've identified for rangers. I guess I had two questions. One is with the reduction in FTEs impact the allocation of how that time is being spent against those six core activities.

1:13:14And are those are the reduction of FTE specific to certain parks or is the intention for it to be a pool that's been absorbed across the city. If we can just get clarification on those, that would give me the information. I think I'm looking for it to help inform my decision. You're getting a thumbs up. Thank you. I will love any information I know how impressive that department is.

1:13:42And I think that the argument of re-scoping some of the work and how that could potentially benefit the program as well to keep it going but do it in a different way. But I think one of the questions that this council asked for a little while and I think they're there is about the data as far as all the alternative response tools that we have in the city.

1:14:15One of those suggested to fire to expand three, the third chat team. So to me, when we're talking about what it does, potentially we could save some money and put towards a chat team that we actually have more evidence of their direct impact, not that they impact the parkour interest is bad. But I think that we could potentially subsidize the creation of a third chat team, which I think that to me is something that we all value.

1:14:54And so I'm hoping that maybe we can find some funds to do that. I'm not an idea to add the chat team here. I don't know who added it. Councilor Young. So I want to make sure we give credit where credit is due. It's also Council Member Dugan. And again, I think to Council Member Puoyu just spoke very elegantly to it. You know, as we think about what the needs are in our city and how they are more diverse.

1:15:27You know, then, then some of our surrounding municipalities, the addition of the social workers really makes a difference. You know, and not just in terms of anecdotally being able to see it, but also really looking at it in terms of expectations of a general city safety response and recognizing that there are emotional and psychological impacts that also need to be attended to in the same way we attend to.

1:15:59If somebody, you know, has had a major injury. And so I appreciate that we have the existing kind of paramedic side of the team that's already available. So really what we would be looking to do is to fund two social workers that would complete that into a whole chat team so that we have three available kind of on rotation in the city.

1:16:25Does this amount represent any PPE or other things that those social workers will need or is this exclusively for their salaries? The estimate came through Salt Lake City Fire. And so I would need to follow up on if there's additional operational and equipment costs. It's a good question.

1:16:49Can we ask the administration why they didn't propose an additional chat team? I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but I assume if the administration had the opportunity to consider it, maybe I'm missing something. We would have loved to. We couldn't balance by having it. That's all it was. But you also see the need. It was just a matter of a great program.

1:17:17Rachel, send me a text saying that we aren't cutting the high program because we don't have money, but we're cutting it because there is very small ROI for the cost. And the second one is on the alternative response models. There is some data came to us, so we're going to review it. So thank you. Any other items that we want to talk about?

1:17:46Have we talked about other reasons? Okay. So I want to go on the record. I didn't propose any of these increases or decreases. I am low maintenance this year. However, I've talked to some other council members who are looking at the food micro-granting program. And I do believe that there could be a cost savings there. However, I would like to propose that it's just a reduction.

1:18:20So we've done 58,000, and it's been typically 250 for individuals, and then community programs could get between one in 5,000 to promote food growth in individual contexts. Super highly supportive of this this year, but I would like to take it down to just 20,000, and I would like it to be up to 200 households eligible for $25 a month for the four growing months to help absorb the anticipated increase to water bills.

1:18:57So that would be June, July, August and September. Have them send a picture of the boxes where it's growing. But I want to encourage people to grow food. I am worried with 100% crop failure and rising fuel costs about the availability and the price if available of food later on. So I would like to make $100 flat grants available to subsidize the increase, particularly with a special emphasis on those who exist on fixed incomes or who are low income.

1:19:29So I had two senior women in my neighborhood tell me they weren't going to grow gardens this year because they were worried about it. And then the rest of that money to be either re-appropriated or just returned to the general fund. And we see we're appropriate to the. Go ahead, Jennifer. Sorry, so it would be $20,000 administered by sustainability for the program you just described.

1:19:54And then 38,000 sorry, $20,000 to the program you just described, and then 38,000 to the general fund. Yes, and Jen, you know me, I would hate to be accused of legislative overreach. So I would never tell you that sustainability has to do it if you found another home for that money. Just that I would like you to do your most purpose.

1:20:14I had a short conversation about this because I look at the micro food going, this is a program that we want people to have food on the table that they have. And I also understand that the public utilities has a program to support people to help pay for their water bills and that's increasing. But I also, this is the balance of on that funding side and also it's going from $250,000 to $100,000.

1:20:42Can we ask sustainability to do you have any, can you tell us a little bit about the micro program? Thank you. I don't envy any of these discussions you're having. Very tough. I just want to say this program is one of our leading edge affordability programs that we have in our department and I believe in the city as well.

1:21:13And taking the tools of the toolbox away for this food resiliency program would be quite devastating. We do know that over 30% of the people who did apply for it are using it to change out turf grass, to put in gardens, to do water drip irrigation for their gardens. There's a lot of concern about the impact of water costs on vegetable growing.

1:21:42So that's very much in line with also the applications that we received for it. Also, the high number of people that share their food with their neighbors, it's a big majority of people that are kind of using it to help bolster their budgets around food. Is it 250 is at the minimum or is that the maximum is that what you're.

1:22:07I think it was a flat. Yeah, and I would say the residential impact of this program is hard to overstate from our perspective, maybe understate sorry, but yes, it's a flat. So maybe if you would just do you think reducing it to $100 would be. The original proposal as it came to me was to eliminate it altogether or suspend it for a year.

1:22:33I don't feel comfortable with an elimination or suspension at this point, but I do feel comfortable with. Tapering it this year, making it very focused on this one thing instead of buying the garden box or the soil. Making sure that the people who have historically done it are able to continue. That was when the suggestion to cut it was brought to me.

1:22:58This was my suggestion of repurposing and mitigating some cost. And then just reducing the flat fee from $250 to $100. And that up to me amounts to the four months that people will be watering gardens. That's the expected income. That's what I'm expecting the increase to my bill to be between $25 and $35 a month. So that would just allow people to have some stability through the growing months so that they could, if they had historically grown gardens, continue to grow them.

1:23:30So comes up with Carl's and then comes up with warden. Are you sure? No. Okay. Okay. I'm interested in Council Member Pietro's idea. I definitely like the idea of it being more limited to food or really more necessity than something else. I think the theme for me is that if I don't want to make inadvertently make something worse or harder when we're trying to do the opposite.

1:24:11So can you talk about your thoughts on this proposal? Is there a way to do that effectively? In fairness, you just heard about it. So while I trust your brilliance, Sophia, I do acknowledge how unfair it is for us. Several minutes of past since you brought it on. You didn't want my opinion. No pressure. I completely agree with the intention of what you're saying, Council Member Pietro.

1:24:34I think that while the organizational side of these grants is also really, really significant, I think that that residential side is where we feel like we're doing the most good in terms of helping people who are facing so much affordability challenges right now. And we hear that time and time again in the feedback we've gotten and we included some testimonials and the responses sent to Council last week.

1:24:59I think I might suggest maybe keeping the 250 but maybe not doing the organizational grants and adjusting it down from there. If I could jump in. So as I understand the program, it is up to $250 for residents and then grants of the size of a thousand to 5,000 for organizations. And I would like to keep the emphasis of the program on residents and individuals and rather than grant towards organizations instead see can we reallocate some of that towards our public utilities assistance fund.

1:25:42Can we clarify if it's up to 250 or just I was only impressed it was just 250. It's just a plat to pick. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that we do have people that have asked us to use the funding for water. We do point to that program and then this is just to help them perhaps with other things but I. I'm. I'm okay that if we increase the amount we decrease the impact.

1:26:09So if we do choose to increase the amount I want some parameters around it for those who are on fixed incomes. I'm very worried about my seniors. I need people who are fixed incomes to be prioritized. I need families living multi generationally who have a high water burden because of the number of people in their households and it needs to be restricted to food.

1:26:31I, you can let grass die. You know, it doesn't look pretty. I've done it. My yard is terrible. Just like grass. I don't have to have green. Like when we're talking about prioritizing money like this. Yeah. Food. Yeah. I'm not sure if you have a question. So you wouldn't want it to apply to water because then people might use it for grass.

1:26:51Is that what you're saying? No, the point of the water subsidy was to grow the food. So originally in the original thing it was to like you have to send in a picture of the garden that has the food growing. You know, some like low threshold kind of barrier that demonstrates we're not just growing zinnias because someone has a intensity for them.

1:27:11Got it. Absolutely. So that's in there already but we have run income verified programs before and I feel confident we could do that. I'm not upset with a higher, a higher amount. I do want us to make sure it gets to the people who need it the most. And not just the people who are most connected to city initiatives and know that click 250 is theirs.

1:27:32So I think that maybe that goes back to the legislative intent to make sure that many of these programs that go directly to individuals have an income requirement. I think that we should apply that throughout unless administration feels differently. I just do want to clarify something that I sometimes forget but we are awfully on the administrative side of things.

1:27:54And I, you know, we could say you don't have the money. Sorry. Or we can say the only way you have the money is if you do these things. So we could share some ideas as far as like how a program maybe what we are trying to accomplish with the program. But we're sort of changing things and the administration may choose not to use that money because they don't want to.

1:28:23They can't or they have a different or they disagree. But, you know, I think those are all good ideas and I love them. I will love your department's thoughts into them. We're trying to squeeze from all the places. They don't know speaking about the value or how useful they are or how great they have been. We're talking about tough decisions moving forward.

1:28:54Any other thoughts about this one? Thank you. So was that a majority of council support on that? It's in the property tax proposal. So. The way it would be reduced from what I understand is with the general fund. The contribution towards the E&E fund unless you have other ideas. I will say that this may be three council members that have expressed opinions about in favor of reducing it.

1:29:32I don't know. Councilwoman Young texted support. What councilwoman Young texted her support. I'm supportive for. For. Great. I'm okay. I'm. Yeah. Five. Okay. Yes. You mean to cut the cloud watching? I know he will like that. The who brought that's 42 right? That was similar to you mentioned you spoke to about 40. Right.

1:30:11I have not spoken about 40 but this was actually councilwoman Carlson suggestion. I don't want to take your. Well, I think what I ended up doing was just putting that into the notes on 36. But maybe sorry council member Carson. I didn't mean to interrupt. Oh, no, no, it's okay. No, I think that just to clarify. What we talked about previously, I just have a desire to increase the assistance that we're offering to public for this public utilities assistance program.

1:30:45Because this is an income verified program salvation army administers it and it goes to the neediest of folks to help them pay the increasing cost. So I think we're okay with not discussing this because we already talked about it. But the comprehensive proposal then would be to take the original 59,000, parrot down to whatever we decide like maybe we say 25,000 since 250 is easy for them to do that's 100 households.

1:31:09And the remainder would then instead of going to fund balance would go to the public utilities assistance to bolster that. So that would be 34,000 if I'm doing something like that. So we're still spending 58 grand. We're spending it in a different place. We're just focusing it really on the water aspect of people's lives.

1:31:32The food grant would go to individuals not groups or institutions. Great. So 33,000 would go to the. So 25,000 would go to the public utilities assistance grant. Sorry, I have to do that math backwards because it's like a negative expense. So patients will try to do that math. And then you would spend it from the property tax increase proposal.

1:32:09Okay. Good on this time. We several was mentioned the IMS innovation program. I do see the value on it. But I also think that maybe that's a way of reducing some of our costs is a one time money is not ongoing.

1:32:40I know that there was some information that came to us about this. I don't know who can speak about any information from staff from our staff about the IMS innovation program. No, maybe not.

1:32:59I don't know if anybody else wants to speak about potentially removing. Cool. Okay. Council members who wants to speak to it. I am a little bit agnostic on it. I could be convinced to suspend it and to delay the implementation of it for a year. If I see it implemented, I want to again, I get that we're getting into administration, but this is the only time you really control me of any meaningful say.

1:33:27I want to make sure that the innovation is innovation that is meaningfully beneficial to our constituents to either their engagement with the city, the ability to get access to a resource, their ability to be connected to the things they need to weather the storm that we're going through. If we're going to innovate, I really want it to put, and I'm not sure how to do that, to put parameters on it to make sure that the innovation is one that is in the interest of efficiency and effectiveness.

1:33:57Anybody from the administration wants to speak to this? Anybody that wants to? I think you have this information, but I want to make sure you received it. While it's a new program, it wasn't new money. By taking this, you would be taking more than 5% from my MS's budget. I don't know, Zach, though. I'll let you speak to the program.

1:34:32Yeah, for sure. A couple of things. One, I fully recognize this is a top-selling in the tight budget year. The returns are nebulous, and I fully admit that. The Denver Peak Institute, when they implemented it, saw something like a 3-1 return in their first year and a 5-1 return in years after that. Those are really difficult numbers to calculate, and they can't be guaranteed.

1:34:58My feeling is that empowering staff has really great results. You tend to have people with good ideas that don't necessarily have the ability to bring those ideas forward and give them a form to do that. That said, I fully recognize this is a top-line. Since you've looked at other models, I love the numbers 3-1 and 5-1.

1:35:24Those are inspiring. Can you give an example of what a return looked like? Gosh, it's going to be a top-line. I didn't bring any examples with me. If you want to email me later, just... I do remember, so I went through this training years ago, and they were generally things. This is where it gets a little bit nebulous, and I want to be very transparent about that.

1:35:44Some of their calculations were things like constituent time as they were able to reduce wait times in lines. That's not going to be a direct dollar savings to the city. But you do have greater customer satisfaction. You do have greater engagement and efficiency in folks walking away. Not quite as negative about the experience they had paying a bill or going after a business license.

1:36:08This is why I'm agnostic. This is a need to have year, but oftentimes scarcity mindset leads us to not invest in things that could, if we can give predictability to our neighbors and be the one level of government that doesn't make them want to become an anarchist, I feel like preserving institutional trust at any level is a good investment.

1:36:35So this is why I'm a little bit agnostic about it, and I'm not sure what the matrix for good decision-making looks like on a program like this. That's one of the courses. I think my question is that given the fact that the returns might be nebulous, we don't yet know what they are, I'm curious what might be the impact if the allocation were reduced by half instead of 200,000, 100,000.

1:37:04How would that, if it all lead to a reduction in possible anticipated outcomes from this program? So it would be, since you want to cap the funding in each of these, because you want these to be small, innovative ideas, and you cap the funding, it would call it 25 or 35,000 dollars, you're just going to approve fewer programs.

1:37:24And that might be beneficial. That might mean that we come back halfway through the year and say, look at the great work that was done, and we've been able to accomplish these things. Some of them have monetary value, some of them have return ROI, but it's non-monetary. Do you want to increase the funding or bring it back up to that 200,000 to do more work?

1:37:42I like the idea of reporting the results, and we may come out of this six months, eight months, 12 months from now and say, we actually didn't accomplish much. And the ability to pull back and kill the program, if it's not actually delivering, I think has value. I would love to explore different iterations of this funding, short of removing it.

1:38:09But what can you do with 100? Is it something that doesn't work? Maybe there is an explanation that you can give us that keeps some of it, but maybe no other way. We are trying to escape from workplaces. And I think maybe I might propose that we go through the initial funding round, and depending on how it pays off, come back to the council and say, this might be worth additional funding throughout the year.

1:38:40That's almost exactly what I would love for any pilot program to come with really clear metrics. I don't expect anyone to prognosticate accurately. I anticipate that I would like to know what we are aiming for for success. And then even if we accidentally hit a different positive outcome, I'm not going to be like, oops, that wasn't the one we wanted to cut it.

1:39:03But especially if we are asking for this to be an ongoing thing, I would really love to see clearer parameters for what we are aiming for, what success will be, and then an engagement around if we achieve that or not to see if whatever we decide is something that we should continue. What I would say is that I would think that each ask should have its own definition of success.

1:39:27So what I found, frankly, the county, one of the challenges we have is we demanded it be a monetary ROI, and that severely limited the request, and frankly, it limited into things that we would have done anyhow. If you knew that you were going to get a two or three or five X return on your investment, that's not even a budget proposal.

1:39:48That's just the way we do business. Thank you. Any other thoughts? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The Mr. Chair, is it okay if I put in a hundred thousand dollar cut in that one with the understanding that as Jill clarified that this is existing money in the IMS budget that is being repurposed. So this would just be increasing the reduction to IMS from the general fund for operations.

1:40:27I would love to hear that information from staff about a pilot program and how it looked like in my guide this decision. But yes, let's put that one for now. Pending is opening. Nothing is final. So maybe a legislative intent for that mid-year report on the pilot program. I like that. Can we request? I'm not sure how this fund is going to work.

1:41:00I would like to know before the mid-year what the goals are so that when we hear it mid-year we can see. But I don't know how the program is going to work. So that might be two in the weeds. But I don't like reverse engineering metrics. I've written enough grants that you should be a little forward looking. The goals could be provided in writing so that the council is just aware of what those are.

1:41:31I think Zach's point is really great. We don't know where the innovation necessarily is going to come from. We don't know if it's going to be in business licensing or if it's going to be where it is. So I don't want to be unnecessarily restrictive. But if there's a way to set parameters for rigor in setting a trajectory for success and a metric for it, just like some kind of general framework for that, I would be deeply interested in something like that.

1:41:59Okay. Maybe. So Jennifer said I was allowed to come up if I wanted to make a statement. So the 200,000 sits in the IMS fund, not the general fund. General fund is about 65%. So if you're going to take 100 from the general fund, it's going to reduce the funding in IMS more than down the road. And then down to just 100,000 dollars.

1:42:26Does that make sense? Because IMS has 200,000. You're saying we're going to take 100 from the general fund. So we're going to reduce IMS by 100,000. That means IMS will not have 100,000 dollars to do this innovation work with. They'll have less. So I just wanted to make a statement on that. Maybe. I think that maybe saying that we want to, however the money lines up, we want to IMS to have 100,000.

1:42:52So that would be a 65,000 dollar reduction in the general fund. But you know, this work with the premise is accounting and it's good. You know, I'm just thankful for Mary Dash. Did we talk about number 37 yet? We. Okay. Council Member Pietro, anything else to add about 37? I would. I think at this point anything that I'm suggesting or supporting, I would like to be suspensions, not full cuts.

1:43:29And I would like there to be a revisiting. And to go along with what you were talking about earlier, Council Member Puig, I would like a legislative attempt around any sort of voucher we give out as a city. I'm not convinced that our vouchers have accomplished what we say we want them to accomplish, which is to inspire transitions to cleaner energies or to lower emissions.

1:43:55And instead what I think we inadvertently do is just enable people who were already on a trajectory towards those things and make it more affordable for them. So I would like any time we provide a voucher for anything from the city to find out how do we achieve that goal or I would like to be corrected if I'm wrong about that being our goal.

1:44:16How do we achieve our goal through a voucher program of actually incentivizing a change in behavior instead of just enabling one that was going to happen anyway? And that's not exclusive to this. This is to any voucher that we do. It's the food voucher. It's that you know, all of it.

1:44:39I like that. I agree. CIP, a section of CIP reductions. That's what we're doing. Yeah, I'm on the 43 I think I would say we need to keep that in 45. I'd say we need to keep that because I'm always talking about deferred maintenance and I'm I don't want to cut any deferred maintenance because deferred maintenance means it's going to be more expensive the next year when we need to do that deferred maintenance.

1:45:06But item number 44. I'm again, you know, it hurts me because I'm a big proponent of the trail system. But if we're looking at, you know, some ideas here and we just fought hard to work on our trails program and get our trails underway because they're loved to death. I also think that back to the deferred side of the house.

1:45:31Is there an opportunity to reduce this not limited? Because we the trails are. That's why I spent some time on my time. And I think there's a lot of people who do spend a lot of time out there and we we know again we love them. So I would like to see the possibility of reducing this number. But with the opportunity if there's funding come back that comes back the full.

1:46:00I feel the same way about the urban trails and I know it's been a commitment from our city to do it. Yes. We have worked very hard to make it happen. But this is not saying no to the goal here is saying no this year and saying let's start it. Or let's continue this progress next year. So saving us $450,000. Well, I would like to keep some of that.

1:46:29So I would cut half. Okay. Let's see what the administration did. Maybe they're here if they want to speak to it. And then I'm okay with the rest of them. To keep in them. Yeah. When you read the Washington Square Septic. Yeah, but this is one of those things again for my deferred maintenance. Boy, we have a you have an emergency on the sewer.

1:46:58This is a septic program. So this is what the the the explanation has said. We are pumping in a lot because it gets full a lot. Yeah. And basically we are listening like it's being used more than as ever as one of the most used places. And my question is can we not expand it and keep add more money for pumping for this year and saving us.

1:47:28It's almost a million bucks. And I know that it's kicking the can down the street. Yeah, the what I had here was that the this program would would save the city. Good about a money every year. So it actually made it save up to $80,000 decreasing significant decrease of $8,000 annually maintenance operations. So in a couple years your return on an event spent, especially if it's in any emergency is pretty high in the facility world.

1:48:06This is replacing the septic system at Washington Park, not Washington Square. Yes, this part. Yeah, so it just says Washington Square. So I just wanted you all to know. Thank you. Thank you. So it says it directly to increase of up to 80 grand annual maintenance operations in emergency costs. So that's 10 years of love years return on investments.

1:48:26So I'm some people, if you go to businesses, I'll say I want to return investment for years, but they're always skeptical. But when I can put my solar panels on, I got to return investment 10 years. I said, yeah, I'm taking them. Yeah. And I'm no loving against it ever doing it. I'm saying, can we do it next year? It seems like it's getting full faster.

1:48:44Yeah, I just don't know the cost of things. How much it goes up in the year that says that that's and I, it would be a I would keep it just for the deferred made aside. Yes, go ahead. Please, please, please, please. I can never miss an opportunity to talk about septic. So it's undersized for the amount of use that we're getting, but it's also in a sensitive watershed area.

1:49:13So we don't allow dogs in that park as well. And so if it does overflow, there is a public health risk. So I just want to make that point for council. Thank you. Any other thoughts about this one from anybody? Jill.

1:49:43I'll just share, can you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason why this really was prioritized by the mayors, it's one of our, it is the most used park in the system. It's by Mountain Dell and we are having to limit events there because of the septic take. So the park is, we're having to close it down at times because of the septic.

1:50:05Yeah. My question for the administration will be, can we increase the pumping for a year? Or what? Or power parties? Can we increase the pumping for the year and kick the can one year? There's almost a million dollars. And I get, there's always a building that's falling apart and we have plenty of them and I will have maybe some information.

1:50:35I'm not sold on cutting it though. I'm just a little bit more information and see if we can kick it for one year. Can I provide this tomorrow as well? Okay. That would be great. I think there would be to council member Dukes, but there would be significant cost. And so I'd like to get those numbers for you so you can make a decision.

1:50:54Thank you. We talked about Washington, not square park, thank you, urban trails. We talked, we have a not talked about the facilities maintenance. There's no. Yeah, I'd add some more. I would keep because again back to the deferred maintenance on the facilities of the house. Yes. And I would love, and I understand, you know, we're looking at all this.

1:51:27And this is when just like our street stuff in the deferred maintenance, the price never gets lower. And I understand that we need here, but I also go, we have to balance that $13 million property tax increase. And the price of this though high, the return to the city and the community and the residents is very high also.

1:51:58And delaying it could be. Do we know what approach the buildings there are? That was going to be my question is that if we, is there a list of buildings and then I appreciate the priorities one through four? Is this a life and safety thing a structural question would love to understand a little bit more? What are the buildings in anticipated allocation of dollars to those facilities?

1:52:25And I know that administration is prioritizing all of them. Yes. Go ahead. I have some information. Sorry. What was that Jennifer? Oh, sorry. Oh, I see. Hey there. Sorry. Yep. And then Kate emailed some information just right before the meeting that you probably haven't seen. Okay. All right. I will allow you even without short because you guys won today.

1:52:50You'll have your turn. You'll have your turn. It's going out. That's a very exciting, by the way. I know it was. All right. Yes. We should have this with Kate and it sounds like you're a city as well. I can just speak for the amount of money that is on the table. 1.6 million. We have about 10 million dollars of identified assets that need to be replaced across the city.

1:53:21Some of the priority ones that you will see in your list include assets in City Hall, as well as multiple fire stations. So HVAC systems and fire stations are pretty expensive to replace. These are not repairs. They're sort of full replacement of the HVAC system. And you will see the estimated amounts of replacement for each one of those items.

1:53:42We don't like to lock us into saying 1, 2, and 3 will be replaced because through the year, once funding is available, we may need to shift a little bit. For example, if we have a catastrophic failure on an over-hoard door, we will replace that immediately. It is in the list. We just bump it up. Same with HVAC. So we identify about 10 million for this coming year.

1:54:17You will see that many of those are way past their useful life. So if you have specific questions about those assets in the list, we will be happy to expand more. Will the department consider if we had to reduce the overall request, what will you give away? I will put you on the spot right now because I know that you probably need to look into it.

1:54:45But knowing full that the risk is high and that you might have to come back to us for a budget amendment, which is no idea because it's fast, you need the money immediately and whatnot. But will you consider maybe looking into that and if you can bump with an answer? I know you are already doing that. The first thought that I had probably only one council member remembers is the boiler, the infamous boiler.

1:55:18It was a catastrophic failure. It was a fair maintenance. We kept pushing it. We kept pushing it. It was a very expensive replacement and it literally blew up in our hands. And so that the disruption that it caused, I mean I'm looking at fire stations with HVAC if it was catastrophic failure, it basically says during the summer it will be miserable and perhaps not even occupyable.

1:55:42So it is hard in good conscious saying yes, we can push this to next year. But understanding that we don't have the full amount to begin with and we try to prioritize and be nimble to those, we can certainly do the same. One more thing I would say is that over the last four years we have been making huge strides on taking us out of that whole of the fair maintenance on the facility side.

1:56:12So this is, it will be just a step back. But we understand we will respond appropriately. No, no, we know, fasting judgment on the efforts of the department, on making good on years of the requirements. We really know how hard this is. So thank you for the effort. I appreciate the information. And hopefully you guys win.

1:56:38Some games, good luck. Don't get used to it. I imagine, so I can't help myself. Can I ask about number 50, do we have the ability to negotiate our LLC membership? Yeah, we can actually terminate it. I believe so. We can terminate it. We can't negotiate it. Oh, you were asking if we can actually negotiate it. So this represents us terminating the NLC membership for a year.

1:57:12Yeah, I raised as an option. Yeah. And I also suggested what Denver did, which is terminating the mayor's conference on NLC as an option as well. It sucks. We learn a lot of things from these conferences. I believe that the mayor does too. It works well like City and all of us have our representatives, members and our fellow.

1:57:43So I wonder, I would love to see the real impact of making these things happen. What will happen if the city would have taken a break for a year from those two? And I would like to make sure that the other piece that is not here that I mentioned, which is the mayor's conference, including, I would love to talk to the administration, the mayor, staff, and the mayor itself.

1:58:09We want to overstep on what she might see a lot more value on her side than ours. That's when we're young is raised hand. I was just wondering if this could be another one in that consideration space of a one year one time reduction so that it's revisited next year in terms of being still on the list for discussion, just not this year when we are where we are.

1:58:42Would we still, would we still plan a visit for all of us to the delegation, just not in coordination with the NLC conference, or would we table that? Because the savings then is significantly higher. Yeah, I think those are the discussions. I mean, attending the conference at registration fees to this membership cost, so potentially untravel expenses.

1:59:07So potentially we could make a savings altogether for this one year as a pass for all of these two conferences, but I think it's worth discussing. As far as like, do we want to still do the visit as a different conversation, I believe, but I think it's worth to ask any other thoughts about this? Is there any new chair?

1:59:35Sorry, Jennifer. Sorry, Jennifer. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I don't need to interrupt people. I just wanted to point out the conference of mayor's budget was moved to the mayor's budget. So if you wanted to cut that, that would be in the mayor's budget. I know. I hate doing that. I just want to add feedback because we are also sacrificing our own NLC potentially, discussing about NLC attendance, which the mayor also attends.

2:00:03And I've seen her work quite hard on those conferences too. It's a tough conversation to have. I would not like to do that without the advice and the feedback from the mayors and the mayors administration. But yes, I know that it's got moved to the budget, to the mayor's office budget. So tough conversation to have could potentially significant mean a lot of savings.

2:00:34We'd love to see what the overall savings could be between the registrations and the travel. I think it could be very useful. Could I also see there was a significant increase to our Utah League of Cities and towns? You want to increase? No, I think I saw in the budget that there was a significant increase to it. I don't.

2:00:54I would never want to withdraw from that league, but I would perhaps want to negotiate an increase with them. We have tried that in years past. They stick very strictly to a formula. The increase this year was $8,000 over $245,000. So I do math in my head. It's based on your population. Well, then I want to renegotiate how we handle the homeless mitigation fund during legislative session.

2:01:28Actually, Jill could probably speak to the last time we asked the league to change the formula for how our dues are calculated. I mean, for pension pennies. Any old with dawds? I wanted to. I'm line number 47. So as I am learning, golf is an enterprise fund that has been supported over the past few years with general fund dollars.

2:02:00Though the degree to which it's been supported has continued to go down over the years. Oh, I'm seeing Jill. Sorry, Jill. And I am wondering, you know, what might be the impact on operations, on delivery of services, et cetera, if we decrease the from $500,000 to another amount to find some savings. And I'm looking at Allison.

2:02:32I know Allison did some, got some additional staff data that was shared with us and also director Kelly. But this is truly a question. They're all truly questions. So the subsidy to golf from the general fund, we completely eliminated this year. And it was a big hit. Originally, we thought we were going to face this over three to five years.

2:03:02But we did it all in one year. About 500,000 that is left is to pay a debt on ESCO. Mary Beth could probably answer this better than I. ESCO was an energy efficient program that the city entered into a decade or more. We've been paying it off for that decade. We had general fund ESCO initiatives like at the Steiner Center and we had some at the golf course.

2:03:31We made a decision in building this budget that it wasn't fair to golf to have them pay this off. It ended up really not being what the city had hoped it would be. It wasn't something golf wanted to enter in. It was a city council at the time and I hope I wasn't sitting there that I might have done. We thought it was a great initiative citywide to save energy.

2:03:57So that's why we made the decision to keep paying it out of the general fund even though the initiative was intended to help golf. Thank you, Jill. To build on that, the $500,000 that are being reduced in the mayor's recommended budget will impact our CIP projects that go back into the golf courses as an enterprise fund.

2:04:24The revenue they generate must go directly back into those courses to improve playability player experience. So that could be something, for example, our Rose Park golf course irrigation program project could be impacted, cart path repaving, things like that that improve the golf experience. So we would advocate for maintaining that 500 subsidy if you will for that ESCO because it does make a difference and it's to no fault of golf for making that decision.

2:04:56The last thing I'll add in making this decision is knowing that we greatly reduce the subsidy from the general fund this year, completely eliminated with the exception of this ESCO payment, is we didn't want to impact golf's ability to be competitive with other courses because we want them to be self efficient. So having those capital dollars to do constant maintenance on trails and things like that was really important to us.

2:05:25Thank you for that context. That's helpful. Sorry, one more question. What will it look like next year? Will it look like this again? Yes. Yes. Yes. Mary Beth does it goes to 2030? I think it goes to 2030. So this 500,000 is something we'll be paying on. The ghost of city councils passed. And you say we can't bind future councils.

2:05:57Oh, with debt, we can always do that. Good information. I think that was a huge accomplishment from the administration to reduce the subsidy. Like huge. And I know it was hard to do. So I... Yes, it hats off to the golf for what they've done with that, their capital improvements because they've done a great job with the courses and with the reduced internet.

2:06:30Yeah. It's a hard thing to do. So I mean the amazing work the administration has done like reducing this budget is quite impressive. I mean finding $13 million in savings and it's just really impressive. And they're going to have to find more savings next come up here. So any other items in the list or not in the list?

2:06:55Hopefully they're not in the list because we are getting close to the end of the budget. But I have one. But anybody else? Could I ask just for clarification on the NLC membership? Should we leave that as is or was there support to make a change? What do we feel about it, comes members? Is it a tough decision? I think I would like to see what the true cross savings would be including travel.

2:07:31I don't know. Would $12,797,000 in the general fund be nice to have when invariably the next fire or root collapse or whatever is coming first comes? Yes. Do I think anything is going to cost $12,000 in the city? No. So I'm caught where Chris was. Like is this a drop in the bucket that's meaningful enough? Is the membership give us more ROI?

2:08:00So it's a hard, I would actually appreciate people with more insight than me helping me create a matrix on which I could evaluate this expense. Yeah. I agree. I think that maybe it's the answer to you, Jennifer. I'm not sure that that gives you the direction. I would say that my experience and maybe it's unfair to use it to use my experience this year on NLC.

2:08:26But this year was significantly different than in previous years. I agree. From the conference perspective. From the conference perspective, yes. And I would love to see whether administration and the council tell us we lose by losing this membership. And I know many cities have made this tough choice, but maybe there are things that we are losing access to information that may be worth the money.

2:08:52Same with the mayor's conference. I leave that up to them. I would hate to make a decision for the outside of the table. But the conference was very different this year. The impact, the members of the federal administration that came to the conference was very limited if any. The attendance to the conference itself was very thin.

2:09:23Probably the smallest conference I've seen in NLC in years. So I was shocked to see it die, but it makes sense when you have a federal administration that's not helping cities and also pulling cities that I see less value of going to this city to lobby for resources. So I wanted to put that in there because I also don't like to see some banners in some buildings that I wish they never existed.

2:09:53Like that. Any other thoughts? Yes. Okay. Three maintenance. There was a public utility, a hundred and thirty six thousand public land. A reduction that I would love to see if this could you do something with some little more money? Could you save some more trees? Maintain more trees? I struggle with the maintenance of the trees.

2:10:30I've seen too many trees struggle and they're so important for so many things. So if I can scrape some money from another cut and put it there, will that make a difference? I'm not sure that one hundred and thirty six thousand dollars is possible this year. I don't think it's even zero as possible, but I wonder if you could see some value in some funding there.

2:10:59And you don't have to come. Thank you. Thank you. I'm struggling with a tree reduction, a tree maintenance reduction. Okay. You're okay with that? Like flooring this question? We have some trees dying in yours. Okay. You have an amount? In my Mr. Chair, or should we just kind of leave it open and work with the department to figure out what might be impactful?

2:11:29Yeah. If the department tells us that we cannot do anything less than one hundred and thirty six thousand, I get it. My hope is that they can tell us for this amount of money and for this amount of money and for this amount of money, I can make this impact. And again, and now I don't want to cross too, too far into administrative sites or things.

2:11:55I just think that is every year that we don't maintain and our trees die quite quickly in this and our weather. I mean, they don't, you know, they literally last the summer if we don't take care of them and they are gone. Any other intense thoughts, budget, Chris Warren? No? Your microphone? I guess what I'm struggling with is like trying to just be strategic and among like what everybody has expressed here today.

2:12:41Because I do feel like we're to kind of contextualize what it is that we're trying to do. Because I feel like we share a lot of the same sentiments, but I'm not sure what the collective goal is with this discussion. Are we trying to cut so that we can tell residents that we cut even further, which is not a bad thing? Are we trying to cut in one place to put in another place?

2:13:23Are we just, is the purpose of this just to like be vetting and like really give our thorough oversight? I think these are all worthy things. I just, my question is kind of the same that it was on Tuesday is if there's a goal of that like a specific goal that we can all be working towards, I am on board with that. But I kind of feel like we're getting a, I don't know, I just would ask what we're working towards as a group.

2:13:58Are we moving towards a consensus on something? I'm happy to answer that. Those of you that I spoke into, my goal is to make sure that we're mitigating reliance on fund balance while showing up that fund balance. There are always unforeseen things last year. It was a fire that took out four of our downtown restaurants and that we could not sit by while they just suffered.

2:14:28And our fund balance is in no way in a healthy enough spot for us to absorb that. I anticipate we've already had a fire in your district. I do not anticipate an easy year. And so for me, every penny saved becomes the insurance and I'm just really mad at myself that two years ago I did not make the case with you all for that emergency savings account with the legislative parameters.

2:14:50I should have pushed harder but I thought I was being a wet blanket. But that for me, that's what I want to do is our fund balance is in no way healthy enough to be able to absorb any unexpected thing. So for me, that's where I'm going and I found alignment when I've spoken to a few of you. Is it to get to a specific number or just any increase in fund balance?

2:15:14For me, any increase is sufficient. If we can justify that the indemnification against the likelihood of something coming is of greater value. Like, if the 12th, 13,000 for NLC is of less value than the possibility that we have that and it's meaningful later on, for me, that's a good metric. It's a really weird metric to try to operationalize for me.

2:15:40That helps me understand where we're going. Our new colleague had our hand up. Who else feels that way? What are your other goals? Hello colleagues. I've just been sitting here observing. Thank you for your patience. Well, I get up to speed. I really appreciate the thoughtful analysis. I think while these surgical cuts do add up and I do appreciate that, you know, trying to support fund balance, it does feel like so much of this is at the margins.

2:16:23I guess I would ask council staff, what real difference is it going to make on the tax increase? Is it going to be $2 for household? That's kind of where I want to ... We have a chart in the unresolved issues. You guys are way ahead of me. Sorry. No, you're fine. In all the 10,000 pages of information, we sent you on to see fine.

2:16:57I'm just pulling it up here. My computer will cooperate. I just sent that. Can you pull it up? I'm not trying to diminish symbolism. I think it's important. I think we also want to look at it really easily. In real terms, what is this good thing for our taxpayers? Yes, totally. Oh, yes. Perfect. Thank you. For $500,000 reduction, it's $4 a year or $0.37 monthly for an average residential, $12,000 a year or $1 monthly for a million commercial property.

2:17:39We say $1 million commercial property, so commercial property owners can kind of easily do the math. Obviously, there's very few million commercial properties that are city. That's helpful. Thank you so much, Council Member Young. Yeah. I'm just going to revisit Council Member Wharton's question. Council Member Wharton, for me today, was more so about having a conversation before we get our final budget numbers in so that we have a clearer framework with which to operate once those numbers come in on Friday, and we have to take action, or ideally we're taking action next Tuesday.

2:18:23So I don't disagree with the other framings, but I think for me, having these conversations today, I'm hoping allows us to be a little more expeditious in being able to take action if necessary post-Friday numbers. Council Member Carlson. Thank you for the question, Council Member Wharton. I think, um, similar to what Council Member Pietro said, I, and maybe this is my general anxiety kicking up, but I feel like something could come that we are not anticipating, and I'm very worried that we will not have the fund balance to respond to those things.

2:19:06And so that's where some of my general anxiety is coming from. And to that, I also recognize that the property tax increase is still a property tax increase, even if the amount is not there, residents are still feeling the increased cost of public utilities, perhaps even more so. So I feel more comfortable looking my folks on a fixed income in the eye and saying I went through line by line, and maybe it was $4,000 or $2,000, but for me, it's a sense of integrity to say what are the things I love, but I'm asking you to make some difficult decisions and I'm willing to make those two.

2:19:52So that was what was behind mine, and I understand it's surgical, I understand that in a budget of almost $500 million asking about $25,000 or $50,000 is not going to change things. But for me, when I look at my residence and they tell me I'm looking at a reversed mortgage to pay my property taxes, I want to be able to at least say I did everything I could.

2:20:22I think context on the older entities have raised taxes and they're about to raise taxes. It's also important. The county have done it. It's not just this $4 reduction on the tax or I also, you know, the increases that are coming down the line as far as bonds, most likely for a library system that is looming in front of us as well.

2:20:57There's a lot of things coming down the pipe and I feel like making those reductions now when it's tough and most likely it's going to get worse next year. And I think it is all about all of these things to me that you mentioned. It's about saving and increasing our fund balance because for example, we know from the presentations that most likely they are going to come back for gas and adjustment because they are budgeting on the, you know, with not that much cushion on there.

2:21:33They are going, the administration told us that they are going to ask most likely for more gas money. So we know that that's coming. We already have a fund balance that is bay in the edge of things. So I am seeing as also as very much a role as council members and this is a different budget on how we've done it in the past because of how the law is and how the processes is very different and uncomfortable and this is why it's creating some of the societies and I'm fully aware that I might have made a lot of angry people in this meeting today.

2:22:14But it is an opportunity to sincerely talk about those $4,000 and $2,000 and $25,000 and see if we can painfully cut them. I don't find any joy in most of the things even on the cloud of watching. Since early, I know that there is value on those, you know, quality of living. I think they make our city worth more. I'm not saying that those things are worthless.

2:22:45What I'm saying is I do here with the opportunities going up and you know our garbage fees going up, our taxes going up, the county's taxes going up. We're most likely having to do a tax increase next year on top of the library, having to do a bond. We are piling and piling and piling and I want to try my best to squeeze a little more.

2:23:11I sincerely don't find I think that this administration has proven incredible on reducing the budgets. I've never seen anything like this happen. I don't think any entity in the state have been able to reduce the percentage of money that this administration has produced on their budget. It's incredible. And we are probably talking about if we add all of these things maybe a million, a million and a half, I don't know, depending.

2:23:39I mean, I think that's a lot of money, but I think the impact is meaningful symbolically, but also to try to make the impacts of all of these tax increases a little less painful. So. I appreciate everybody answering and I, you know, I asked that question genuinely and my response is when I say I think all of the reasons are valid, I think that I stand by that and I guess my fear sometimes is that, you know, there is like the false economy fallacy of putting so much effort or putting someone who might drive 15 miles to try to get to save five cents on gas, but they end like the wear and tear to the vehicle, the cost of the environment, like all of these things ends up not being, the juice is not

2:24:45worth the squeeze, so to speak. So.

2:24:51For me, it's better if we say this is the goal that we're trying to achieve and we know that, like, that the, that this amount of cut will translate to a measurable difference in a residence pocketbook, whereas one that's like a, you know, that five digits past the decimal point, but it ends up resulting in us having a broken boiler or it ends up in us, you know, cutting somebody, cutting a job or laying somebody off, that's, you know, one more person that's unemployed.

2:25:35And so. I'm all for the cuts, but for me to support any proposal to make a cut, like, I need to know that it's going to mean something to the residents. And this is not suggesting that any proposal doesn't mean anything. That's just what keeps going through my mind as we go through one budget item as a time, is I'm like, okay, listening to the arguments on both sides, and I come to a conclusion about how I feel about a particular budget item, but then when we get to the end of the discussion, I'm like, okay, so where did we, where did we land on these things?

2:26:17Which were the things that we decided were worthwhile and weren't. So I guess that's where I'm, I appreciate the discussion. I learned a lot, but I also want to know what it's, what the culmination of it would be. I mean, you lost, but I appreciate your thoughts. And just like, first what the goal is, and if it's like a meaningful impact, I think to me, that's debatable, right?

2:26:44Like, maybe $4 to you is not, or to me is not, but for someone else. And that's, I don't know if we're going to find agreement on that, right? But I'm seeing $4 in the context of all those increases and the cost of living increases. And maybe how I frame this is, even if I have the money to pay for all the things that I was proposing in this budget, will I do it?

2:27:16And I will say that I still think that some of those changes are worth to make in that budget. And I, it is in my role, but it's also like, I felt like there is some squeezing to do anyways, even if I have the money to pay for every single thing in there. So maybe there are less changes, but I think that there is some adjustments from my point of view.

2:27:40Yeah, I don't disagree that like, for me it's not about like, is $4 worth it or not? For me it's about like, can we tie this to like a measurable impact? Because $4 whether you make this much money overall or whether you're already strapped because your expenses are higher and your pay is higher. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it, right?

2:28:12If you're already strapped. So I don't want to get into a debate of like, well, a dollar to you has worth more than a dollar to me. I want to say this is why this particular cut like helps us get to a greater gold that is, that has a measurable impact on people's lives. The other side of that coin is, so you'll notice I haven't suggested that we cut the property tax increase.

2:28:42The questions and the conversations in district one have turned to how do we make this increase worth your time? What do you need to see? And so as we're looking at a bunch of these cuts, like, you know, I keep going back to the NLC one, but like, I'm going to consider that because I think that could be a $13,000 buffer plus whatever.

2:29:03The travel expenses are for whenever we have the pipe burst and we need to do some mitigation at a local restaurant, so we don't lose the revenue, right? Like, I don't know what's coming for us, but I know it always comes for us. And so maintaining that responsiveness has to be a priority because we do need to. I, we have to make sure that the people who trust us to keep them employed can afford to live where they live.

2:29:28And they're not displaced. We need to make sure that the neighbors who trust us with their dollars can still count on us to show up in the most basic ways. And so I think for me, the other side of that coin is just saying, how do we make sure that whatever dollar gets allocated is getting allocated in a way that has the greatest likelihood for a direct impact in the communities that are trusting us right now?

2:29:52And so I'm with you. I actually didn't suggest any of the moving of the money because I think this was a really masterfully done budget. But if we're going to pinch pennies, I think these are really necessary conversations. And I also think it's time for us to start disagreeing more on the public record and to let people see how the sausage is made.

2:30:12I think part of restoring trust in these institutions is allowing people to see that we don't agree that, you know, and I trust all of you to honor my dignity as I honor yours. But I think we need to have hard conversations and we need to let people at least have an artifact if they're not tuned in right now as, you know, only three of them are.

2:30:33But like, have an artifact to go back to to say, no, we did actually consider this top to bottom, front to back, inside out, in private and in front of you. I think this reliance over reliance on never disagreeing and being unanimous could end up hurting us. So I think it's actually a really healthy exercise for us to have these kinds of conversations and to make sure people know all things were considered.

2:31:00Do you think you and I should disagree more? I mean, is that something that as long as your adoration and love personally increases with proportion that we disagree on the public record? Yes. I want to meet the constituent that's watching and is like, Chris and Victoria are just too aligned on everything.

2:31:22So I want to kind of circle back to what I talked about at the beginning in terms of values. One thing that has been, this is my first budget rodeo. And one thing that has been going through my head is that I got a demographics report and almost 20% of my seniors live in poverty. That keeps me up at night.

2:31:44When there's proposals like the budget we received where there are reductions in staff, I don't take that lightly. I, both of my parents were civil servants. I had health insurance because they worked for the state or the county. I don't take those cuts lightly at all. But I am, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the people of Salt Lake City and to be a responsible steward for every dollar.

2:32:14And I'm also very concerned about how we will be able to give our non-represented staff next year a raise. Because we haven't talked about that yet because they're not getting one this year. And so that's also on my mind as well. That's what we're doing. I love this conversation. This is where we should be having this conversation and looking at it.

2:32:39The mayor did a great job. The department did a great job on cutting things as much as we could. We also took a knife to this also. And yes, one-thirteenth possibly, maybe even less of the property tax increase. Maybe 50 cents per month for an average property owner, residential property owner. But we also know that we could see a couple million dollars in the future for budget amendments, for unexpected things.

2:33:15And we don't know where our sales tax are. So this exercise was good so that we are actually a little bit more in tune on what we're spending our money on, but also gives the departments the realization that we may be coming back here in four months or six months when we get another sales tax numbers and say we may have to do this again.

2:33:40And they should start looking, they should need to, excuse me, they should, they need to look at their budgets now with the same vision on how we make sure that our fund balance stays at a level that our bond rating stages are going to be available. So bond ratings stays high so we don't have other expenses and that so maybe we can also look for the future to have a property, a pay raise.

2:34:04So yes, these are these are surgical in nature, but without this surgery, we'd have a bigger problem in a year. So thanks. I love the discussion and I'm so glad we were here today. I love having a Thursday afternoon with you guys. I will like one of the things that add stress to me is the closure of the South Palace and the impacts on our sales taxes.

2:34:31Additionally, the Delta Center under construction through the summer and now having all of those people and all of those concerts on the sales tax impact. Excuse me. Yes, yes, I sell palace. So all of those two things I felt like the impact in this next year budget is going to be problematic. And so we are, I felt like making these little, small little cuts now because I think I'm going to have to make a harder decision later.

2:35:08And I don't doubt that Denver and Las Vegas, they had to let off hundreds of people. They didn't make those easily. And I worry that we're headed that direction. And cutting some programs and the majority of the cuts suggested here are programs, not people. It's our attempt to minimize that because that's not what we want.

2:35:35So as I was, I feel I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate you Chris from bringing that up. I think I got all the feelings out. There's no, I don't think anybody really is making this happily. So I think that we probably talked too much. Item number two is an entity budget item that is standard in our agenda per the law, which is the fiscal year 2026, 2027, the tax impact schedule, which is posted on the agenda.

2:36:07I'm available to anybody. There is no reports on the reports from the senior director, I believe. Jack? Okay. Yes. With the new city council member, we were just hoping to schedule a time that works for the council to take a new group photo. And we can wait and check back with you on Tuesday unless you all want to do it on Tuesday.

2:36:43Let's get it over with. One 30, it would be or just 30 minutes prior to whatever time your work session begins. If that works for you. Two o'clock. So one 30. Sure. One right now we're planning on starting at two o'clock. So it would be one 30 if that works for you. You're key part of the photo. So if you can now make it.

2:37:11I can reschedule my job. No, no, no, no, no. Well, it's a choose. So I'm going to have to. So, okay, then it works. Sure. Okay. So get all glammed up. Chris, we'll start three hours. We'll take the color conversation to a text thread. Yeah, we'll coordinate colors. We might do the color coordination thing. Although, yeah, I have thoughts.

2:37:46I think that concludes our work session for today. I appreciate everybody coming here. All the department directors, the participator and the ones that helped with text and the information, the administration being here as well. So see you on Tuesday. Everyone. Everyone.