You can't keep a good man down, oh no, you can't keep a good man down, sugar, you can't keep a good man down. I'll be out there on the scene Hanging with my friends This world's gonna see me smiling again I'm taking some time to erase you from my memory Don't write many letters Don't call me on the phone Don't knock on my door Cause to you I'm not at all I know there's a woman That's fair for a man like me Thank you. Good afternoon, I'm going to call the September 20th Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee to order. The first item on our agenda today is the approval of the August 30th, 2022 committee summary. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you, I second. Any discussion on the motion? All right, seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, that motion passes. The second item on our agenda today is the monthly financial update. This is for your information only. And the first item to be heard is the jobs fund update. So I am going to welcome Kevin Adkins, our chief development officer, and Craig Benz, who's our administrative officer, to provide the jobs fund update. As you'll recall, I think on the economic investment board, I know myself and Council Member Maloney sit on that board as members of the Council delegates if you will. And Mr. Craig, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Good afternoon. So the jobs fund, this is an annual report, so some of these slides will look pretty familiar to you. Jobs fund is an incentive program to provide funding to businesses who commit to creating and retaining jobs in the city of Lexington and Fayette County. It was established back in 2013 by the council through ordinance. And it's administered by the EDIB, the Economic Development Investment Board, which is a 13 member board which meets monthly to hear these requests. This slide shows the available incentives that the jobs fund does administer. There are three different types. The first is a forgivable loan agreement for up to $100,000. The second is a more typical loan, just a conventional term, loan agreement for $250,000. And then there is a third type, a $50,000 grant type that the EDIB, the board, is actually recommending removal of. And there's two reasons they're recommending removal of that one. The first is that companies are typically interested in more capital when they make these requests. They're typically asking for more than $50,000. So there hasn't been, of the last 10 loan requests we've had, or requests through this program, there's only been one for the grant. And the second reason is that we're trying to move towards more of a program that funds itself through payback. So the loan agreement that's up there would actually require some payment over time that funds the program itself. So we're trying to move more in that direction. And there's been companies have favored that loan agreement because it's a higher dollar amount. All of these loans have term lengths of up to 10 years, and the board establishes those terms. This is a list of the eligibility requirements for incentives through the jobs fund. Of course, companies must be located in or moving to Lexington. They have to be current on their taxes. They have to create jobs with average wages greater than or equal to 125% of the county median. So as of January, that was 2350 and the board adopted just a little bit more than that at $24 an hour. So any jobs that are created by the company that they want to use or have counted towards this program would have to meet that threshold for income. They must establish and meet job creation requirements, again, and those are established by the board. They must produce a tradable good or provide a tradable service. They sell something or provide a service. And they agree to a predetermined compliance reporting period. And that, we found that the maximum for that is ten years, and that's typically the compliance period that we use for this loan. And this is a summary of the metrics to date since program inception. We've had 29 incentive awards. We have 25 of those that are active, which just means four of those have been essentially paid off or closed. The current incentives awarded are right at $3.63 million. And 281 new jobs have been committed through this program as well, so we're pretty proud of that metric. And the payroll committed by the companies that are creating the jobs is $15.3 million. So essentially it's for every dollar spent on this program, $4.21 and incentives are dispersed. The cost per job created is just under 13,000 and the repaid principal by the companies for the loans is about 514,000 plus an additional 91,000 in interest. That principal and interest does go right back into this program. There's currently about a million dollars, just over a million dollars available in the budget for this program, or in the fund for this program. And about 775, or 750,000 of that, rather, are available for incentives. We just had an application come through and get approved for 250,000. That hasn't been to council yet. You'll see that next month. And with that, I'm glad to answer any questions. Thank you very much for that update, and we'll start with Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Pence, I had a question. First of all, it sounds like the program's doing very well and living up to what the intent was, so that's wonderful. But underneath the jobs fund on page 23, it talks about up to $50,000 for grants as being recommended removal. I might have missed that, but what was the rationale on that? Well, there's two reasons for that. We're not receiving as many requests for those grants. When the jobs fund started, I think the amount, the threshold for grants was higher. You could request up to 100,000 and it's 50,000 now. So there haven't been as many requests for that. For the past 10 requests we've received for funding, only one of those has been a grant. So about a 10% ratio. The other reason for that, though, is the board is very interested in making sure this program can fund itself to some extent over the years. So when the grant money goes out, of course, it's not coming back in. But when we're doing loans, there's payments towards those loans, typically over the course of 10 years. And so it helps refund or put money back in the program that can then be loaned again. All right, great. Thanks for the explanation. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Mr. Benz, for this presentation. On the page that talks about, it's 25 in our packet, it talks about 281 jobs are committed. Yes. I know when I was on the investment board for a short period of time, but I know that those jobs aren't always created all at one time. Do you know the time span as to when the 281 will be created? Sure. So they vary according to the application. Some of them are very front loaded, where they're just wanting to get the program funded or their incentive funded, and then they're creating a bunch of jobs at once. Others spread it out throughout as much as a five or six year period. So as of last week, 229 of those jobs have been created. So a good amount of them have been created. What we do is we require all of the recipients of this incentive to report on an annual basis, and we keep track of the jobs that they're creating that way. So we have kind of an annual moving target to keep track of how close we're getting to the jobs that have been committed versus what's been created. That's awesome. I appreciate it. And to know that there were 229 out of 281, that's really good. That's exciting. So thank you so much for this presentation. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. All right, seeing no one else signed up, thank you very much for the update. We greatly appreciate it. We'll move on to the next item, which is the Economic Development Grants Update by the Director of Business and Workforce Engagement, Ms. Elodie Dickinson. We appreciate so much what you have covered over the last several years in this program. And if you recall, this was actually a program started by the Council in 2015. And it's pretty amazing that it's done such good work. So welcome, and I'll turn it to you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So I'm back again to talk about the Economic Development Grant. As Councilmember Bledsoe indicated, this is now, we're in our sixth year, if you can believe that. So $200,000 was authorized last year, and five partners received the funding. $400,000 in ARPA funds were authorized for this year, currently, and into 2024, so a total of 800. And as I mentioned, we're now in our sixth year. So from the last grant cycle, which just ended on June 30th of this year, we had 346 job placements out of the five agencies who were awarded funding. We had 10 CDLs. The average wage was $12.88. The average hours was 39.2 hours. and our top three industry sectors that were represented in job placements. 60% of the job placements were in manufacturing, 15% were in skilled trades, and 10% in hospitality. And then we did have other sectors that were represented, including retail, business and professional, health care, and transportation. As Council Member Bledsoe indicated, we started this in 2017. You can see the grant amount budgeted initially was $150,000. And then in 2018, $300. In 2019, $300. 2020, $200. 2021, $200. So out of all of those years, out of the five years, we had allocated a little over a million dollars. The results were 10 licensed in CDL, 1,054 people placed into employment and training opportunities with an average wage of $12.98. And that award of a little over a million went to 14 unique agencies. Currently, in the ARPA grant awards, we have eight agencies who are providing job training and job placement services or certifications and outcomes and licensure. So you can see awesome is up there. We went by alphabetical order. Salesforce administration certification. The BCTC is doing, they're conducting an enhanced operator certificate program. So that's a licensed program. Building Institute of Central Kentucky, so that's your skilled trades. HVAC, plumbing and electric, community action will continue to provide the CDL training for us. Food chain is doing a food sector job training program. Jubilee Jobs, a one week in house and outreach seven step job readiness, job placement and retention support services. Lexington Rescue Mission provides a 14 week, two hour job for life program. And that includes the same things as some of the others, soft skills training, job search, resume writing, and job placement. And last but not least is Opportunity for Work and Learning, OWL. And you can see the list of different options that people have when they come to their facility. So forklift, manufacturing, skilled trades academy, customer service, Kentucky Essential Skills Certification, and then resume writing and other job assistance skills. That's it. Questions? Thank you very much. Just to quickly summarize, I think what's interesting is the job fund targets our higher wage demographic, and the Workforce Development Grants were designed to target really moving people from minimum wage to something else, to moving to a higher wage. And that's about a $1,091 investment per person for the number of people that we've touched in that program. And if they were making $9 before and making $12 now, that individual may be making about $7,600 more per year, assuming they worked that much, which that's a great investment on our investment to the city. So I just want to point those out just for fun little facts. And now I'll turn it over to Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation. Do you all follow up? How often do you follow up? Because, I mean, we need CDL license and folks, are they getting their classes? Do they feel like the numbers are coming back up? Or how do people feel with the people attending these programs? Because I hope it's good because I'm getting some bad vibes when I talk to other companies. They're having a hard time finding people to work. and I'm just wondering if they're having the same problem here, hard time finding people that want to learn to work. I think programs like CDL, because of the wage that you can make and earn, they always constantly have a waiting list. Some of the other sectors obviously have the hourly wages lower, so maybe the demand is not as high to get into the programs. So I think it just depends on what type of service and what type of programming that they're offering. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for this presentation. I find it intriguing in the world that we are experiencing that in 2019 the average wage was 15.59 and in 2021 it was $12.88. Do you have anything to offer? I mean, I'm just kind of surprised that it went backwards. Back and forth. I think it depends on what grant agencies were receiving funds at the time. So an example in 2019, because you can see that there's a higher average wage, we had the skilled trades doing the job placement, but the nursing. We had a lot of CNAs who were going into different jobs from the CNA program. Bluegrass Care Navigators had the contract with us at the time. So I think it depended on what type of job that they were getting. because we do have, just as something to know, we did have wages as high as $21.50 in manufacturing. So we did capture some high wages, but when you average it out, for instance, if a dishwasher is making $8, that can change that average wage. Well, that is interesting. I think that, I mean, it's very successful all over, And I think I appreciate all the efforts that you and many others and all these agencies are promoting to try to educate and get people out in the job field. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Elodie, for the presentation. How competitive is this grant process? Are there a lot of agencies applying for these funds, or is it just a niche? I think the number of agencies has gone down by year. We do have payback clauses. So the other thing, too, is that the highest monetary award we've had is $50,000. So we're not looking at a million dollars for funding. So it takes a lot of capacity for the staff and the agencies to track the quarterly reports they have to report to me. It tracks a lot. It tracks where they're working, where their hourly wage was, what the start date was, What's the exit date? Those kinds of things. You have to have somebody to track that. So my point is that I think some of the agencies, they have to have the capacity and the knowledge to be able to apply and be competitive. Because the scoring committee is another thing. I'm looking over at Kelly because the scoring committee looks at all those outcomes and the track record of the agency. So is it, I mean, have you all looked at not adjusting the tracking criteria, but is there an opportunity to increase the maximum amount that we would award an agency to make this more appealable to them? And is there anything else that we can do? Because I know we have the American Rescue Plan funding in place for 23 and 24, But is there not capacity to put more money into this program on an annual basis to get more? That is an administrative question I cannot answer, Council Member Brown. I would like, yeah, I mean, I think there certainly, if there's more money available, I think there could be more capacity for the agencies to have staff time devoted to the program, if that makes sense. Okay, yeah, it does. And then I do remember about the CNA program in nursing, and that was a focus. Is the reason that they didn't get awarded this time is because it's not – is it still an ongoing program? Is that why they're not on this program? They are doing it, but they did not apply for funding. Do you think that's because of lack of people going into that field, or is our program not designed in a way to really help them do what they're trying to do? I think it's a combination of the factors right now with our workforce, but then also there's a lot of different companies right now that are offering training in their own facilities and hospitals included. I know the chamber is working right now with several hospitals. So I think a lot of employers are offering in-house training for that, including Bluegrass Care Navigators. They were doing that in-house, but they were having residents come in for that training. I'm not sure how it would look now if they offered it and how many would show up and actually get through it. Okay. All right. Yeah, I think these are some good agencies that got awarded this time, and I'm interested in seeing the report and information on how this program works for them. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And just a footnote, the Accelerate Lexington, which is the workforce development target on nursing, is going to present in October. and they will address much of what Elodie has just mentioned on how they're working towards that effort. So we did fund it, but we funded it kind of differently than through this particular program. Customer Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the report. A couple questions. When I'm looking at this ARPA grant award schedule, I guess that's it right there. I see eight agencies. Is that all the agencies that have applied? No, we had, I think, 14 different ones that applied this last round and eight of them. Qualified? Yes, they were recommended by our scoring committee. They had the highest scores, I should say. And what's the average that you give to each agency? Actually, this year we ended up recommending 50,000 for each of them. And so each of their numbers are a little bit different according to what programming they're providing. But each of them received $50,000 for a total of the $400,000. Okay, that's the fiscal 23 allocation from ARPA, right? Yes. So each one of these eight unit agencies got $50,000. That's correct. Now, how do they report back to you for accountability as far as how they spent the money and the benefits? So each quarter, at the end of that quarter, they send a report to me that outlines exactly what programming that they provided to whom and what wage it was if it was job placement or if it was a certification like CDL. They have to actually send proof of that CDL license of that person. And then that's how we come up with the average wage. We want to know where they're working, what the wage is, what the start, how long they're working there. And then if it's certification, we just need proof that they receive that certification. So basically, 23 and 24 fiscal years, you've stepped up the procedures and amounts to everybody. And we're going to expect more job applications or more job applicants out there in the workforce. Yes, that is the hope because this certainly, I think, is a good menu of services that we are providing to our residents of options that they can go into to go back to school if they want to or if they just want to get a job. So, yes, that is. One other thought there. Are these agencies reaching out to the homeless at all? Or are you aware of any of that information? Yes. I want to call out specifically Lexington Rescue Mission and Jubilee Jobs. Lexington Rescue Mission actually has a lot of housing programs that they provide for their residents. So a lot of those residents are duly enrolled in the workforce programming that they have. And also they provide housing for those homeless individuals if that's the situation. And then Jubilee Jobs also works with Hope Center, that kind of thing. And then all of them work also with the recovery centers because that's where they go actually to the recovery center and offer a class for the clients there to prepare them for leaving the recovery house. Okay, fine. Thank you. Welcome. All right, I see no one else signed up, so thank you very much for your update. Appreciate you and the work and the work of our partners to do it. And then last on our agendas, item number five, I'm going to welcome Melissa Lugers, our Director of Budgeting, to discuss the proposed budget amendment revisions. And just as a quick footnote, myself and Council Member Ellinger served on the budget work group, I guess is the best word to say, back when Mary Gorman was first selected to look at some of the ways we do our budgets. This is one of the last things to update and make recommendations on. So, Director? Thank you. So, as Council Member Blitzo said, we're here to discuss updates to the current budget amendment process. process was something that started with the budget process work group, the official name, I had to look it up myself, back in 2019 prior to the pandemic. And we've been working on the recommendations ever since. In doing so, we are going to be going over what the differences are between a budget amendment versus a budget adjustment. We're going to discuss why the updates are needed and then go over recommendations from the work group. We will also look at the results from the grant adjustment pilot program that started last fall. And then we'll review the current BA ordinance and discuss proposed updates and provide examples of what those updates would mean. So before we really get started and into the discussion, I think it's helpful that we remind everyone of what is a budget amendment and what is a budget adjustment. So, budget amendments you see at work session and approve at council meetings. Budget adjustments, which are movements within a division for certain personnel or operating accounts, do not require council approval, but council has provided a report on these changes weekly. Budget adjustments were originally allowed in the charter as the mayor's transfer authority, but the name and qualifying changes have been updated over the years. Budget amendments go through an approval process that involves the division director, the commissioner, division of budgeting staff, division of budgeting director, CAO, and council. Budget adjustments follow the same approval process, except they do not have the council as the final approver. So let's talk about why we need to review and make updates to our current practices. First of all, we will be continuing to implement changes recommended by the Budget Process Work Group, a group consisting of finance professionals with a wide range of government finance experience as well as council and finance staff. Secondly, we have the opportunity to consolidate budget amendment language into one ordinance. Currently, budget guidelines are in two separate ordinances and in resolution by the way of council rules. Consolidating the language into one place would make it easier to follow and implement the guidelines. Making revisions to the guidelines would also help to streamline the process of budget changes to better align with council meeting schedules and the ever evolving vendor expectations. In addition to streamlining the process, it would also create some efficiencies because there are BAs that are associated with other ordinances and now that requires council to approve both an ordinance with the item as well as a budget amendment. So council is essentially approving the same thing twice. And we often get asked by council, haven't we already done this? Why are we seeing it again? We will continue to provide council with transparency when it comes to the budget. Currently, we send council a weekly report on all budget adjustments and grant adjustments, and we will continue to do so. So let's talk about the budget process workgroup recommendations. So where we are on these recommendations, we've revised the budget calendar based on the original language in the charter. We've developed the division summary document that provides the additional narrative information to go along with the 533 plus budget book. We're working on a new public facing budget and brief. We've revised the budget process to provide council information up front. And we've made some of the revisions to the BA policy, but not all, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So the budget process work group, as Councilmember Bledsoe and Ellinger will remember, the revisions to the BA process were something that felt very strongly by some of the members of the task force. So much so that a subgroup was created just to dig into the budget amendments little bit further. This subgroup was led by Kina Ko and she has a wide variety of government experience at the state level school board office as well as being a former finance commissioner for the city. So for the recommendations for revisions to the BAs we've completed two out of the three. We've already started having divisions include the revenue for event reimbursements in their budgets. So prior to this every time a division worked in event and received a revenue reimbursement we would have to follow up with a ba to recognize that revenue the reimbursement for the events that we know that we always work every year and we have an idea of what the reimbursement is going to be divisions have now included those reimbursements in their adopted budget eliminating the need for us to bring forward additional bas and then last fall council amended the 1979 grant ordinance to have it mirror the regular budget adjustment process and i'll give a report out on that next. So the last recommendation, the one up here without a check mark, is to amend the 2005 ordinance that expands the qualifications for a budget adjustment. So let's look at the grant adjustment changes now. So ordinance 97-2021 approved last fall now allows for adjustments to be made within the grant as long as the changes do not involve revenue accounts. This change approved last fall has resulted in 25 fewer grant BAs coming forward to council. That's a 53% reduction. And remember, this is just for a partial fiscal year because the changes didn't take place until mid-October. And I will also note that ARPA certainly enhanced the number of grant budget amendments we've had over the past year. I'm not complaining about that. But let's look at the work group's recommendations on regular budget amendments. So this brings us back to what is a budget amendment versus a budget adjustment. In efforts to streamline the process, the last remaining work group recommendation seeks to enhance what can be processed as an adjustment opposed to an amendment. The current ordinance says that changes within the adoption control levels, which are better known as revenue, personnel, operating, transfers, and capital, will be processed as amendments except for the criteria that you see here on the left side of the chart. Currently, revenue, transfers, and capital are not allowed as adjustments. And currently, personnel can only be adjusted for temporary, seasonal, part-time, and overtime accounts within a division. the proposed change would allow for the associated taxes and benefits to be adjusted as well council approved personnel actions related to position changes and the transfer of funds from the contingency personnel accounts to division budgets which is just moving the budget to where the actuals occurred and done as an accounting cleanup measure currently divisions do not have the ability to make adjustments for utilities, vehicle fuel and maintenance, insurance, grant costs, debt service, and recovery, which are accounts managed across the government by a specific division. For example, the Division of Facilities and Fleet manages utility budgets for the entire government. The new policy clarifies that these managing divisions would have the authority to reallocate these accounts from one division to another if necessary based on usage. the new proposal would give the ability for operating accounts to be moved around within a department expanding from only being allowable within a division it would also allow movement for capital accounts within the same series account series and finally it would allow for NDFs to any department or division to be processed as a budget budget adjustment so let's look at some examples of what this would mean so what is on the screen right now this is the first page of the ba list for the work session this afternoon for the three at three o'clock of these three of the seven on this page under the proposed guidelines would be considered an adjustment all three of these highlighted in yellow are related to items under review for new business so here are a couple more examples of bas that would meet the proposed guidelines as adjustments the first one is just reallocating capital within the same same series this is common in the fleet budget because we budget a lump sum in one general vehicle account and as vehicles are purchased we move the budget to the appropriate account where the expenses occurred. This particular BA took 23 days from the date of entry to final council approval. The second one is moving grant match from one division to another based on where it is being managed. And the last one is a cleanup BA that we did moving money out of the contingency deputy into divisions where the expenses occurred. So far the changes we've been discussing have had an impact on the day-to-day operations of the government. This last recommendation focuses on budget amendments during the fiscal year transition. So currently in the council rules, Part 6, Budget, Section 4.601, prior to the annual audit completion, we are not authorized to process BAs that have a hit-to-fund balance. unless it's an emergency with certification from the cao the ba involves personnel actions that do not affect the fund balance or the ba request involves a reappropriation of funds there is additional language that outlines a process of going through the council administrator 10 days prior to bringing the ba forward but in my tenure i cannot ever recall that occurring the current language is confusing and hinders the ability to do things prior to the audit completion even if there are allocated funds available. The proposed new language would still allow for emergency situations in reappropriation of funds, but it would also allow for BAs to be processed that are a hit to fund balance if there is an unallocated budgeted fund balance. For example, in the adopted budget for FY23, there is an unallocated fund balance in the MAP fund of $914,308. And with the current language, using these funds without an emergency certification is difficult and lengthens the BA timeline due to the 10-day notification requirement. The proposed guidelines would grant access to these funds prior to the audit with council approval. So we've discussed a lot of changes, a lot of updates, and I'll be happy to take any questions. Thank you very much, Director, and it is very technical. so if you're trying to follow along with all that i know that it's um it's technical so i'll just add one thing that i suggested to the director the weekly reports i know many of us don't follow those very carefully to be honest and it's not as transparent to the public so one thing we could do is in the in the in the budget meeting packet under information only we could provide those in the list that way you would see in the budget meeting information only items where those adjustments were made and anybody else who wanted to follow along the public could see them as well and that may be one way to make sure it's being you know it's public facing and you can see on a regular basis without it being a really discussed item so that's just food for thought and i'll start with questions the council member lamb thank you for this um and i really was trying to really pay close attention because i thought i should i should be able to follow this um the on page dear, there's not a page number. The current versus proposed, where we're talking about operating accounts within a division, and the proposed is it could be within a division or a department. What does the approval process look like if you're going to change it within a department? So it would follow the same approval process. Let me get back to that so I don't misspeak on the process here. It would still have to go through the Division Director, Commissioner, Division of Budgeting Staff, Division of Budgeting Director, the CAO to be processed. Okay, so there's not any, there's not, I mean, because that really does exhaust all of the hierarchy, but there's not any additional review that would take place for it to go between two different divisions within one department. I don't know. I'm just thinking I'm processing out loud, which is really dangerous. But, okay, all right, this is interesting. I assume that because of everybody that's been involved here that you all really do expect this to be a time-saving of significance because of what you all have already, your experience and what you think this was going to provide. Is that, I mean? Yes, time-saving and, as you all know, the current demands with the supply chain and all of those issues. divisions will get a bid and it has 30 days and if we don't have money moved around within the 30 days we may not be able to get the product for one you know one or we may have a higher price so this would help to streamline some of those time frames and help us with you know the evolving market that we're dealing with as far as products and services go okay and and then uh council member bledsoe So you were talking about the transparency for the weekly budget amendments that we get now. Just for the public's knowledge, that whoever's listening to this, that comes in our work session packet, right? It does. The adjustments come weekly. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that the public knew when we were talking about this where that they could find them if they so choose. So, but, all right. Well, I'm looking. Ms. Maynard. Melissa, you can correct me if I'm wrong. the budget amendment list in the work session packet is the budget amendments. The budget adjustment is a separate list that budgeting sends to me and our budget person in the council office, and we keep those. So that's the distinction between the amendments and the adjustments. But we would start putting that budget adjustment list in the packets. Okay. Well, I'm glad to know that because I really didn't recall ever seeing a budget adjustment, but I didn't. Thank you for that clarification. I do appreciate the work that has gone in on this of everybody involved. So thank you all so much. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. So let me see if I can sort this out a little bit, at least for me. In the budget context there, if you go through these changes here, then it wouldn't go to council for that extra two readings, or is that what you're referring to? So certain items would not go to council for the two readings. Anything that has revenue or transfer, or if you're moving capital outside of the series, that would automatically come to council for two readings. Anything that hits fund balance comes to council for two readings. This just provides a little bit more flexibility within a division and a department, and then within the account series or type of account. Does this violate any charter language? The charter allows for, it used to be called the Mayor's Transfer Authority, and now it's known as budget adjustments. It outlines that. I don't have a real concern with budget adjustments, but I do have some thoughts on budget amendments. because to amend a budget, the council has already passed that budget, and then you're amending a budget, and it's done throughout. We do it every month, I guess. So I'm a little bit reluctant to give up that privilege of being able to see budget amendments and especially maybe a dollar amount. I know there's a lot of smaller ones, but I'm kind of used to looking at budget amendments. I review them, but that's the nature of my background and experience. But so I'm there. The budget adjustments, I don't have too big a problem. I think that's more of a management administrative type of thing. Amendments, you're amending the budget. Now, that's it. And I think, I don't know, I think I appreciate a little bit more control from our end on any amendments to the budget. Now, you see where I'm coming from? Yeah, and I may have misunderstood your question. We will still have budget amendments that come to council on a regular basis. This will by no means get rid of that. This just expands some of the qualifications and clarifies some of the guidelines and the policy on budget adjustments. Okay, what you're saying is some originally budget amendments will now be classified as budget adjustments under the new regs? No, we will still have budget amendments. Right. What the new regulations would do, it clarifies some of the information for what is a budget adjustment and it expands the qualifications for a budget adjustment to allow more things to be processed as an adjustment as opposed to an amendment. I wanted you to phrase that because right now it's a budget amendment, but now under this new rule or regulation, it could be construed as a budget adjustment. Is that? That is correct. Okay, so is there a dollar limit on any of that? I mean, did you all talk about any dollar amounts? We discussed that, but then if we're cleaning up lump sum, let's say lump sum termination pay, January's a high month. We have how many things processed in payroll in January. We have people retiring and we have payouts. So we may have payouts of a division, $500,000, but all we're doing is going back and moving the budget to where the actuals occurred. So using a dollar amount got a little bit less teeth to it based on some of the things are just merely clean up items. And so we discussed it, but it wasn't something that we felt was important at the time. It's not something that we couldn't discuss further if you'd like, but that was one of our rationale for not setting a dollar amount on it. Final question, Commissioner, could you answer this? It may be two part. You've gone through this obviously, or you should be aware of it. Yes, sir. So you have no problems with what the recommendation is? And the second part is, do we have any problem with our auditors, outside auditors coming in on this new change that you could see? Yeah, no, I don't think that there's any question that it's within the purview of the council to say what they want to see as a budget amendment versus a budget adjustment. so long as it is within the guidelines of the charter, which we worked very closely with law throughout this entire process. They were fantastic helping us get to that point, so we made sure that we were well within the guidelines. I actually think these are very, very good recommendations. I personally wouldn't mind to see them go further, but I know that there's a level of expectation that comes with having folks that are watching and wanting to have all that transparency and we want to be able to continue that and make it understandable for both the council and for the public so that they can see everything that we are doing. I think a number of these are specific to clean up items. The first example being let's put in all taxes and other benefits. That makes perfect sense. So some of them are very specific. The movement within the division or department, obviously there is a push and pull. So if you are wanting to move money from one division or department to another, or well, divisions within the same department, someone has to be willing to give and someone has to be needing to take, and both of those things have to occur. So there is still balance within the budgetary needs and constraints that I think are supportive. Obviously, if there's any scope change or anything major, that will be something that will come to council and you all will see it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I think that was the important part of what she just said. If there was a scope change of the budget, that's different than moving fuel fund from one fleet item to the other. And the other thing that I did suggest to the administration is maybe every six months, so maybe in July and then in January, they provide kind of a trend report from that last six months on anything that would be, to your point, of what our intent with the budget was and what they used. And so you would have a regular check on that, especially as you prepare for budgeting of the next calendar year. If there was more money moved to expenses or capital, or operating, we wouldn't know that. And that might give us a little bit more of a trend report as opposed to the monthly, which you come sometimes missing that. Okay, Councilman Maloney. Melissa, I appreciate what's your presentation here. And, Chair, I appreciate you all doing this. Because I used to be a commissioner, and we went through the last 17 years, we used this old one. And there were times that I put it on the first reading, and it took too long, and the price went up. This would solve this problem, and I commend you for that. As a commissioner, if I would be in their seat, we need to pass this. So I just want to let everybody know this is a good thing, and it's going to probably save some money, because I have seen it where we had to raise the price drastically, and then we had to come back and do budget amendments. This, in my opinion, would probably do less budget amendments. So I kind of like this idea, so thank you all for your hard work. Thank you. Councilman Plumman. Thank you, Chair. And I also would like to applaud the efforts of the committee and the subgroup. One of the things that we've been doing over the past year and a half is we've made some changes for better efficiencies, such as the change orders. Now, if it's less than 10%, not over a million, there's some flexibility there, so it doesn't have to be read twice. And it gives our staff the opportunity to move faster in terms of purchasing. And also, then we just did the price contracts that are all going to be lumped together and be underneath the mayor's report. that also is going to save us time so we're not redundant and repetitive. And I think that speaks to our community, that we are trying to be as effective with disclosure. We are offering transparency, but we're using our time more effectively to discuss other issues in the community. So, again, I thought, one thing I was going to add is I do have a consent agenda in committee that was going to be heard in late October. And what we decided, there were some other areas we were going to look at that also, you know, small things like donations, whatever. And we decided to wait to see how these three things work, the change orders, the price contracts, and also the budget related. So we'll see how that goes, and then we'll figure out the best time to look at the other ones. Thank you, Chair. Great. Great. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Melissa, for your presentation and everybody's work on this. I do see the benefit. I just had a few questions. So grant match, how would that and when would that potentially come into play? And is there a time frame? Are you thinking that the grant match could be, it needs to be paid out through another division? Or is it thought about in the ways of a project not going forward and that money could be used for something else? So currently, any division that's applying for a grant, we have grant match within that division's budget. Let's say a division applies for a grant and doesn't receive the grant. We've got the grant match sitting there. This would give the ability for the division of grants to be able to move that grant match to where it's needed. A grant opportunity may come up mid-year that we weren't, you know, a new grant that we weren't aware about. And so this would give the ability for grants to move that match around where it's needed. Currently, that would come back to council. A lot of grants have timelines on whenever you have to have the grant match in place and recognized. And so this would help with that and then it would also allow the flexibility because some are based on percentages and this and that. And so it would just make things a little bit easier and run a little smoother for the division of grants as well. Okay, and we did adjust that in the COA policy a while back that all grant applications didn't have to get approved by council. Is that correct? Yes, I know there were changes to that, but unfortunately the budget wasn't incorporated into that. Okay, is it more to that answer? I had another part. So, and then, thanks for that answer. In regards to NDFs that are already approved by council, how would that potentially come into play with moving those across divisions and doing a budget adjustment? So currently you all are approving the NDF funds to the organizations. The ones that are internal to the government, we then process a budget amendment, which is a separate ordinance, to then move those funds. So you all are essentially approving those twice by approving the NDF allocation and then also approving the ordinance with the budget amendment, moving it from your NDF funds to whatever division internal to government. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Thanks, Chair. Thank you. Ms. Maynard, did you have a comment? I did. I was just going to suggest that since budgeting is sending us this list weekly and we do work session packets weekly, that we could perhaps add budget adjustments for information only under our budget adjustment code in our work session packet, because that then becomes a permanent record. The committee records are two years, but the work session is a permanent record. So it would always be there, and then you all are sure to see those. If you have any questions, you could certainly ask about it at that time. Just a thought. I think that's an excellent suggestion and maintains it. Move forward. Let's do that. And then we also have a proposed ordinance on pages. Forgive me. It's the last part of our packet of a draft ordinance. I would be interested in entertaining a motion to approve said draft ordinance. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? So. Councilman Brown. Chair, so the recommendation that was made about adding it to the work session packet, does that need to be reflected in the ordinance as well? I'll defer to law about including that in the ordinance. I don't think it has to be, but if you all would like it in there, we can certainly add it in there. Let's do that. That may be more appropriate for your council rules, actually, but, yeah, we can figure that out if you all need to see that. Councilman William. I believe that our rules and procedures provides the outline for work session packet and that that would have to be included in our rules and procedures, which means that there would have to be a resolution amending. I don't have the section in front of me. Can we have that drafted? Sure. If you all would like that to be done as well, we will do a separate resolution to amend the rules to add that. Let's do those. If this passes concordantly, that way we can, at work session, do both at one time, if that suits the committee. Any more discussion on the motion? Okay. I'll call the question. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? All right, thank you. We'll look forward to both of those being reported out together at the next budget meeting. And with that, I'll take a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? The meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much. Thank you. you