Finance Subcommittee

Subcommittee meeting. In starting this meeting. Do we have any public comment from any or any non agenda items? I'm gonna take that as a no. So. I'm jumping right in. We're gonna dive into the second item. Which is the 2223, mid year budget Review. And I am looking for that where I could share my screen. I had it up. Okay? Oh, there it is. Okay. Screen, 2. Share and. Alright! There we go! So good good afternoon again. Once everyone. Today, as I mentioned earlier, we're gonna start with the Midyear Budget Review. What mid year budget typically does is to look into the how we're doing through the midpoint of the year, and to estimate where we are going to end up. And also to if there's any amendments to the budget that we can take care of during the mid year, which I'll go into detail here in just a bit. But going into the mid year, going into the into the 2223 budget. Back in June we mitigate. There's no more fiscal impact, of Covid COVID-19. I mean, there is an impact. But the last 2 budgets, maybe 3. We had. Reduced proposed revenues because we just weren't sure what was gonna happen with the pandemic. And through the year we provided regular updates to the Finance Subcommittee, and then, as the budget has been amended throughout the year for items that are not on that are not on the original budget, we we update with the city Council with any budgetary impacts of any new items. Again, the goal of the mid year budget is to analyze the status of revenues and expenditures and identify significant variances. And this really is the unofficial kickoff for the 2324 budget. So diving right in revenues. Gosh! We're revenues are looking great we're 3.4 million dollars over what we were estimating at the beginning of the year. Primarily due to sales and use tax for evidence, and feel free at any time to jump in and stop me. If you have any comments or questions. Otherwise, I'm just gonna keep rolling along. Please don't hesitate to jump in. One thing that's kinda counterintuitive with our increase in sales and use taxes. Is that measure? M, actually, is, we're forecasting about any $800,000 decrease. And we aren't just throwing darts at the wall with these estimates we use the A sales tax consultant Avenue, and they do our this forecast for us. But what's going on with the increase in sales tax, but a decrease in the measure M. Sales tax? Is that the barge concern? Is it, Bart, that is going on there? Bombardier. They! The Bumpardier is building additional bar cars for the system, and that's the contract. And that's what I thought, and I'm butchering the name. But anyway, that use taxes, or is actually a point of origin to. So, where? If you purchase a car, for example, your sales tax goes, go back to the city, or to the Zip code that you reside in. This is a point of, and so it like that. This goes to the point of origin and I believe that's Hayward. So we do not get that, however, with measure. M. If you'll recall, we originally a year ago or 2 years ago, budgeted 5.1 million dollars, and so we're still well above that threshold where we're accumulating a surplus that the council at last year's mid year, and then Budget directed Staff to come back with projects or your approval or counsel suggest projects, and on to use those measure emphnds for so those are going into Garrett calls it a bucket. But we've got those we've got. Those additional revenues accountable for the additional revenues. However, are not gonna be as high. So again, we're projecting 2 million dollar increase in sales tax this $700,000 increase in our motor vehicle in lieu incremental taxes were estimating $800,000 increase in the incremental taxes that's primarily, it's redevelopment. Our Pttf. Monies that are increasing, and as you can see, the all the other revenue, about $600,000 more. And then, as I mentioned, a decrease of about $800,000 for measure, M. I have 2 slides for the general Fund expenditures, one by type and one by department. And I wanna get what I wanna highlight is that with regards to the say, salary increases that were agreed upon by the city and the bargaining units. The mid year budget incorporates those increases even in doing that, for the most part because of short staffing, we still have it a decrease in in salaries, as you can see, police especially sworn positions, or even with salary, increases are down by about 8 $113,000. And that's also, if you go, if you go down to the bottom, you can see that we know we need going into the year that our Sal, you know, our salaries weren't gonna be as high, just due to attrition, so we what we do is we have an attrition savings number. And then, as the year goes on, this number gets smaller, as the attrition actually is inorporated into the line items up above. So again going through by department, you can see that for the most part, and there are, there are decreases in in that. If you go down to, you knowdepartmental, there's a big increase there because of the decrease in attrition savings. And then also there are some expenditures in for the. What is the internal service funds? I'm sorry the 22 expenditures, when we were estimating during budget the actual numbers came in a bit higher for the those funds, the internal service funds and so every fund throughout the city had to transfer monies into those funds to get those funds up to the required 30% of operating expenditure number. So, and I'll get into that a little bit here in just a second, as you can see. There's really some minor increases city attorney's budget is up a bit, and that's due to the increase in litigation for the city attorney's office to AD a contract add to a contract this so that increase primarily reflects an increase in existing litigation. Okay, any questions so far, or comments. Okay, seeing none. So again the proposed expenditure, appropriations total of 2 million dollar, about 2 million dollars in that the continued that the attrition adjustment is about a 1 million and a half dollars. There's an increase in the internal service costs of about $700,000, and then there's a transfer out for measure. M. Projects of about 1.8 million dollars I'm gonna go back up here just for a second. Okay, I wanna I wanna go down to the very bottom and then we're gonna jump to another slide. If if you know what staff and what every city really wants to show is the bottom line it, that there is a surplus, but that surplus is operating revenues versus operating expenditures, these bottom line numbers if that's all that they included, we would be alarmed, and we wouldn't be presenting you on budget with with the 2.6 million dollars shortfall, however. As you can see, we're actually in really really good shape. We have a total operating surplus going forward of about 3.5 million dollars for excuse me, 2.9 million dollars or if you are operating revenues are 60.5 million dollars. Our operating expenditures for this year are only gonna come in at about 57.6 million dollars. However, we're the 4.1 million dollars of non operating expenditures are primarily transferers for if you'll recall, you've approved some measure. M. Projects here recently. So those are one time experience, so we're dipping in to our reserves. For those purposes, and that's the reason we have reserves, and why we want the reserves to build up over time. So then we can go out and do projects and moving right along. So I again, we've got a projected revenue increase of 3.3 million dollars. That is offset by an increase of about 2 million dollars of expenditures. The impact to the reserves. Currently, our amended budget shows and a shortfall of about 2.6 million dollars. But with the net increase of 1.3 million dollars that cuts that shortfall in half to about 1.3 million dollars. That's the decrease that we're suggesting other funds. Just, and these are, I'm not showing every fund here, but just some of the bigger funds I mentioned earlier that citywide. If you look at the revenue adjustments for information systems, fleet maintenance. And insurance. And this is where the other city other city funds have to. Pay into these funds, too. Get the reserve balance over the 30% threshold. And then Yes, sir. Paul, if I could just jump in and go back to the general fund just for a brief clarification. So if you go back, one slide, go back. Yeah, that's fine. Now, are fiscal sustainability, ordinance requires 30% reserves. If this held true. You know the proposed amended budget approximately. What would our preserve the 60 65%? Okay. Alright! And in the high fifties I believe the word we're in great shape, great shape. Okay, just wanted to re-emphasize that, you know. Again, the reserves. The reason staff is making recommendations, and the Council is caring for projects and goals is because we have. A substantial percentage above the fiscal sustainability ordinance. And that's where there is a comfort level to do something. Some of these actions. That said it better than I could have so great moving on to again one of the funds, one of the internal service funds, where, in expenditures, did increase rather dramatically was fleet maintenance, and that is because over the course of the year although they're coming down now. Gasoline prices had skyrocketed in that 419,000 here that is primarily an increase in gasoline prices. And then, and of course it also. That is why the other city funds pay in, and it's shown in the form of revenues here. These are some the major proprietary funds. Water operations, as you can see. We have some changes in there. Nothing, Major. We've built in. If you'll recall what the one bond that didn't get issued, I think, until late May last year. So we're inorporating that into the budget this year. So the increase in expenditures reflects interest, payments. Yeah, and projects that are monies that are transferred for projects as well. Island Energy and Pittsburgh power. Again, there are some. There are projects this is, and not the net operating. This is incorporating projects that they're spending money on. Then some of the special revenue funds that we wanted to highlight. Yeah, I'm gonna? Over to my node a. Okay, economic development. Primarily, the decrease is, it is due to a decrease in salaries and benefits. Solid waste, exactly the same thing, solid waste fund. There's a a decrease in proposed in salaries. So that's reflected really, throughout the city, in all of its funds, housing, authority, we have an increase in proposed in a proposed expenditures and I'm trying to get there's about 75 about $76,000 of late Tenant Re. Certification Fees. There's an increase in interest expense, and then there's actually an increase. Some one in the in this should make sense where there's a department or a fund that's fully staffed. Then they're selling and increase our salaries and benefits. Line is gonna increase because it again, we've incorporated the the negotiated increases in staff salaries. So! Okay. So now, this is the summary. These next 2 slides is a summary of of all of the city funds in their group. There's 2 pages. So again, this is just a recap of some of the funds that I just showed you. Well, all of the funds, including the city, the general fund so overall throughout the whole city we are proposing a decrease of about 2.6 million dollars of basically going in, for these are primarily project related. So again. They're not operating expenditure related again. Really want to hammer home the point that operating revenues and operating expenditures, those are recurring monthly quarterly, yearly, but there are recurring expenditures, and again, if operating revenues didn't cover those we couldn't be doing any of these projects that were doing right now. At the city so proposed. Staffing changes. This is a little bit of cleanup from the last year where we're actually eliminating 3 positions our amended budget right now has 327 positions. We are proposing to remove the community services, manager, position, director of community services, position in the Deputy city clerk, position. We currently have 2 deputy city court positions. So we are going down to one so that would lead the city with 324 full time. Equivalent positions. So with that I am happy. I'm answering any questions that you may have. Nope. Any questions, or comments, or. Thank you, Paul, for the presentation. It was really helpful and I'm happy to see that we're and good standing with our budget and the the really high surplus that we have right now. In terms of the positions that we're eliminating. I was just curious with those positions. Are those positions already with someone else in a department or someone's taking on 2 roles and we could go. That's why I can't remember the names of them. Yeah, madam Mary, those are vacancies that we were looking at, filling. Going into this year, and we've reallocated the especially the community services. Director and manager. That was a position that Maria held before she became assistant city manager and what we've done is we've actually, you know, in a lot of ways, push those roles into other new staff members that we have hired that are analysts. Ones. And twos, and are doing a great job. And we actually think we can manage that at this time. At those levels and and get the get actually more done. Thank you. And. Absolutely the one question I had Paul. So, and Garrett so given the surplus. Yeah, projected surplus at this point. Are there any dollars that should and need to be allocated? And our available for discussion at this time in terms of you know, do we send it to infrastructure subcommittee, or any other subcommittees, and present a plan to counsel to appropriate the surplus? Think it would be appropriate for Garrett to take that one on. Yup! I think, and certainly both of you know how we are. You know. Light, switch fast and implementing. Oh, we have $300,000, or $500,000, and it goes straight out. I think this would be a perfect time to recommend, and maybe we, you know, to your comfort level. But you know it may be half of that. You know. We could refer to the infrastructure subcommittee for more discussion. You know. Are there some priorities that maybe can move up sooner, that have been out there on the list? Or certain maintenance, or other projects that have been on that oil would be nice if we had available resources, and starting now probably would mean that there would be available or implemented a couple of months from now. So it's still would take a little bit of time to ramp up. So it's a good time to do this. We certainly have it a chance to pivot. If sales tax does change on a dramatically, but I don't. I don't think it will, but it would be a good time to move those to another subcommittee for implementation. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely be supportive. I think you mentioned half Garrett, half surplus. Yeah, I would be supportive of that. No. How my colleague feels about that. Yes, I'll be support that as well. And then, in terms of the with all the storms, and just thinking about our infrastructure and potholes, and some of the other things that didn't happen throughout the city. I know it takes a while for Fema to to get those funds reimbursed, or sometimes it could take a year or 2, so are we looking at more expense in terms of trying to get things repaired due to what may have occurred during the storm. There are some elements of that, as of right now. There, you know there are not big, and also, you know, 6 figure items. But you are correct. What we have been told by Fema representatives is, expect eligible expenditures to be reimbursed only about 33%, and that would be take about 4 to 6 years. I did wanna speak a little bit to Vice Mayor Ben. Alice is question or comment about projects. The currently I mean, you can't really apply. Appropriate the future dollars. Right now we're. For projects. I mean, right now, we're using money from 2 years ago, and the way that we have it for the measure, M in particular, we're using monies from 2122 and 22 one I believe. But but you're right. We do. This does add to that part. It's just kind of a timing thing as to when this money becomes it's I don't wanna use the word real. But when it's finalized I think it's a better term. But anyway, there's one other item with relation to the the budget, and I mentioned at the goals meeting the other night at city council that Staff, with the assistance of Nha. Has developed and improved upon the 20 year financial forecast. And I just wanna take you and these, I'm gonna go through it just real quickly. These take into account that this is this yellow line is that reflects the reserve requirements. And so right now you can see that. Yep, based upon the items that are that we, our projecting. We went in with our calpers, rates over the next 20 years. We've taken into consideration addition of howing and commercial development. There's a housing yeah, down here. So Staff has worked with Nha Jordan. Did a great job working with them to project these metrics by which there's over here sales tax. But going over to this dashboard that this is how it look. We'll look with these metrics in place again. If you go get rid of that. Okay? Right now, you can see there's there's an increase when in our revenues. When redevelopment goes away for good. Where, when the Successor agency is gone, and there the city is going to see an increase in our property taxes that come into the general fund, and then also there's a dip, and that's when measure, and goes away, unless it is renewed. by the city. So these are just things to look forward to. But you can also go in and override. For example, if what would and this is what would, what would a 4% increase rather than what's currently by booked in this? In these assumptions? What would that do? You know I think that's a wrong number to use? Because I think it's about 4% per year. But we did it by 6%. You can see things change, and or, if you know, property taxes went up, you know, 5%. And you can see that made it go down a little bit. So we're expecting property taxes to increase in greater than 5% right now. And that bears out with the housing market right now. Does anyone have any comments or questions about this dashboard? Seeing none. I am going to and share my screen, and thank you very much. Whoops let me share, and I am going to. Oh, I'm sorry! Actually, Paul, Paul, if I could jump in. And then obviously, I see the Vice Mayor actually was about to say. Oh, okay, yeah. I was just gonna say, you know, you, you mentioned the reserve amount. I think, towards the beginning it would be good, maybe, for the next Finance subcommittee meeting if we could have a more in depth conversation about our reserves and our strategy moving forward. I think I had mentioned it a couple of meetings ago. I'm not sure exactly which one, but you know, assuming that our reserves are at that high level, we do wanna understand. Do they need to be at that level, and how best to expend those dollars if we're gonna reduce the mountain reserves right? So I think that is will healthy conversation. Great, awesome, the staff in finance. We track the reserve balances monthly, and so, when the mid year is actually adopted, this, this will give us an updated reserve an estimated reserve balance going through the end of the year so we will bring that forward at the next at the next meeting. That will be a great conversation. Thank you for that. So moving over to Item Number 3, I am going to hand it over to the City Manager. Alright! Well, in a lot of ways. This is an item that was requested. To come back to the Finance Subcommittee for further discussion. This is looking at, adding a position to the assistance of the assistance attorney to the city attorney's office. Not really sure, if the city attorney would like to add anything into this equation. But this is certainly, I think, if I recall, the staff report was approximately $288,000 a year for the position. And, Donna, if you wanna pick it up from there. Sure as the manager covered it, some city Council members had initiated the exploration of adding an assistant city attorney to the office. My understanding is the main reason for that is for backup or the position of city attorney, and we brought it to city council at the last meeting, with a cost, calculation, with the help of the Hr. Staff. Looking around at our neighbors, that the total rolled up cost should be about $280,000, and then at the city council meeting there was a desire to bring it back to finance subcommittee for further discussion. As you know, I to go either way on this one. The City Council wants us to add an attorney. That's great. It's we find it. Money is better spent in a different way. That's great, too. I'm also prepared with some more detailed information. I know. One of the questions was, what kind of cost savings might we expect in our expenditures for outside counsel, if we were to add an in-house attorney I'll give you the headline for that, and I do have a chart that I can show you more detail we might expect up to $45,000 in savings and outside council expenditures, but I think more realistically, it will be up to $25,000. And I do have an alternative proposal after we talk about that. At this point, I think, since Vice Mayor and I think the mayor as well wanted to bring it back to finance suburbs, I think it's good opportunity for you to. Yeah, I think thanks, Don. And I. At the last council meeting, or when it was brought up. Yeah, I moved it to come to the subcommittee. So in looking at the dollar amount, I mean, I just think you know, approaching $300,000 on an annual basis is quite a bit of money, and I understand, you know it was from the Council's perspective to bring this forward just in reflecting on it, though I think looking at alternatives and having it. Conversation about you know. How do we meet the intent of what our goal is while trying to do it in the most cost-effective manner? In it? And I think, Donna, we briefly discussed, you know. How quickly can we onboard a kind of third party firm, if we needed to, for backup reasons? Or you know, for example, something happens to Donna, our city dirty, and we need, you know, support, emergency basis. I think you would ease a lot of the concerns that we might have just on the backup strategy if we just had an understanding of how easy it is to get such resources on board, and and that there aren't huge barriers to do that. Sure. I think there are a couple of different contingencies that are available. When the city finds itself in need of somebody to take places, the city attorney. There is kind of an informal, unspoken list of recent retirees who they've retired out, but sort of pung their own shingle and step in in different cities, either when it comes time for, say, the city attorney has retired or left a city somebody else comes in, you know, retiring. He's not practicing so under contract will come in during that interim period when the city goes out to solicit for a new city attorney. There is, as you also mentioned, the possibility of having a firm that was a format, that the city of Pittsburgh used before it established in House City Attorney. So I am on your behalf, not especially concerned for you, is somewhat flattering that you might think that I hold all the knowledge and all the secrets. I don't think you know a transition would be that difficult, for you know there's very capable attorneys out there who can step in and sort of understand the nature of the business. Okay, yeah, and I think that's the piece that at least was missing for me to understand. And and I'm pretty clear on that and appreciate your professional judgment and feedback. And that Donna and I am comfortable, you know, moving forward on, you know, not with the backup position, but this, but with the understanding that there are a number of options out there that we can pull on, call on, should we find ourselves in that situation oh, and hopefully we don't, but you know, if we do, there are. I don't know how the mayor feels about it. Yeah, Donna, you hold all the secrets. You hold it off. But no, I agree with the Vice Mayor. I don't think that was the issue. I think counsel at the time wanted to be supportive as well, because we know that the role is a lot. But you have been doing an awesome job, and we appreciate you. And you know, seeing that we are, we will still end up using outside counsel, as you just mentioned. I am, you know, fine with not seeking. You know that position at that time, and if it comes up that we need to circle back on it, then I'm happy to revisit it at that time. That's very good feedback for me, and 2 there's 2 avenues I wanted to share right now. The second one being since I did come up with various dollar details, since they are available, they might be informative for you. So I wanted to share those today. Well, we're on the topic. First is this idea of an alternative path which is, we crunch some numbers. Yesterday about an additional $60,000, instead of $288,000. City council couple of years ago, went ahead and approved and budgeted for my half time. Administrative assistant, and then has worked at great. She has helped me with the number of extra things. Now that I can do, since she's here, including helping me track things like outside council expenditures. She's ambitious. She has been over the course of the last almost year, I think year more than a year been going through a paralegal certification process. There is a desire on her part to add more hours, and also explore the idea of changing that position to a paralegal. She has been learning the ropes of the, you know, public agency framework, and how we approach things. And then, the parent legal certification. You learn how to do legal research. And I'm thinking that you know, 30 h a week of a paralegal, and I'm not saying it would be guaranteed that that particular individual still have to talk about it. How we would do a solicitation for that, but I could see some benefit, especially in the area of contracting to. We do a lot of contracting, and I think that she could be helpful in a system staff with the right selection of the contracting process, and also helpful if they does need to be some legal research typically paralegals learn how to support litigation what's different here is that she's been working for the city this whole time, and has gotten a pretty good foundation and understanding of what it means to support a public agency in the legal services that are provided by the city attorney's office. So I think that's something to explore further, and perhaps budget, for certainly. Not even close to the 288,000 that was talking about, or an assistant city attorney. And then the other item that I talked about. I'm going to do a share screen for a shark that I made. So this, what we are should be seeing on your screen is. Make sure. And you can see this charge for calendar year 2022 correct. Yes. So this is something that we put together in just this week for this meeting, and what you see, there are various slot firms that I have retained under contract through the city attorney's office, and I've split them up city advisory city litigation in Pittsburgh power, and then housing is sorry. Underneath. City advisory. You got a handful of firms there. There is some overlap and subject matter, and that's because we have been moving away from one firm and going toward another. For example, you can see that Jackson Lewis. We've been using them for employment law advice over the past half dozen years or more since our new Hr. Director, Jennifer Brazil started. We've cut over more options to Boucher Law, who he's your experience and has a very good hourly rate for the city. We also have Claire Gibson. You'll see Jarvis. Fan Gibson is a law firm listed there and then separately. Law Office, Claire Gibson, and that recognizes that just in this past year Claire gives him his left, that walk room and gone out on her own. So, we've essentially closed out our contract with Charleston. And now contract directly with law office of Claire Gibson. She is a very well known, very practiced attorney and area of public contracting in the past 2 years. She's assisted with us. Cutting over to new formal, competitively big public works. Bid package, updated with all the current laws, and has helped us make that transition over to a revised and current. Bid, packet. We also have. On the list. There, we've got best best, and Krieger a lot of these are one off. We have one individual there, Jeff Cheng, who helps us with employment and benefits. Issues, which is very narrow. Niche. So it's things like 4 57 plans, or when we moved over from the Newport plan and Mass mutual became empower. He was advising on those particular plans. Berke, Williams, Sorensen. We use for complex land transactions that amount. There is really mostly for the tech part transaction, which is very complex, and took a number of months of negotiating and going back and forth, and number of different documents. Colin, you know he, Smith and Ratley, around $4,500. That's for advice for the finance department, and in particular, that was for our rate making process, which we don't do every year. They? Wanna we wanted to make sure we've been getting it right. Complying with the substantive portions of prop to 18. Down in litigation. You see some fairly big numbers, but I wanted to qualify Richard Watson, your Shawn. You might recall that name. That is a law firm that represents the city in defense of the lawsuit, save not the outlaw versus the city of Pittsburgh. That's over the Fourier project. The notation next to that is that we're we are reimbursed by the developer so well, it looks like there's an expenditure of $55,000. We also have receipts that come in, and to date the developers paid all the bills. So you can essentially 0 out that $55,000 in expenses. Leonie and Albert is the law firm that we have defending us in the lawsuit by polar sports, or over the ice ring. Typically, we are riskful as the one that takes over after our Sr. So this is another one off where Mpa, while initially they picked this up, they thought there was really no merit to the lawsuit, and that it wouldn't trigger further coverage. But we could revisit that later with them. Should there be an adverse ruling, for example, negligence? So that's another one off separately, as you might imagine. Pittsburgh Power Company. They need very specialized counsel. When it comes to electric utility types of legal issues, regulatory environments. We've retained blazing and wind for a number of years, which is a law firm that advises small publicly owned utilities. And, in fact, the works that they do is a portion among a variety of public utilities. So it's only about $16,000 a year. Cameron, Daniel, PC. Is a new law firm. We rely changed just in this past year. That's the law firm. That's help us helping us explore what are the possibilities for our electric utility within this city? And I won't speak in any more detail about that. And then the housing is fine, that was a one off $400 expenditure in that to do with that complex transaction we did with you, involving the Intrada building and changing that deal in eliminating one of the partners. I think that involved domus and alliance. You might recall that one. So when I looked at these numbers, you know of the advisory is about 130,000, and maybe close to 90,000 is could possibly be characterized as kind of a one-off which only leaves an estimated $45,000, and I think if you if you look in even further detail. The work by best best, and Krieger is very specialized. So is telecom law firm. And for that matter, police the law firm we use to assist with some police matters is for pitches, motions which can be time consuming and sitting in court and going through police personnel records and then also motions to quash if there's a complicated subpoena for criminal records, and it involves the person who's issuing the subpoena is asking for things they shouldn't be or shouldn't be, getting, at least without a judge review or narrow down so for those 2 components. We have Jones and Mayors outside council. So when you eliminate that, really, that's why I say more realistically, it's up to about a $24,000 savings potential to add another attorney in house. So it's understandable. Yeah, there, if you're looking strictly at the dollars, it's not necessarily. The most financially efficient way to go to add an assistance in your time. Hmm! Those are all the details on them to share. Thank you, Diana. That was really helpful just to see that laid out in that way. Yeah. And Donna. I would be supportive if you're looking to put a proposal together on the paralegal option. I think that dollar figure makes sense, and if if it helps your office, then definitely supportive. Okay. Very good. Yes, we support it as well. Hi did not see Garrett City. Man, your head! He just popped down into my office for just a moment, so I will. Move onto, item number 4. Cfd, 2,009. Dash 1 1.5 million dollar payment to the diver is, I'm not sure if that is. Did. It was requested to be put on the agenda by council. What did? I'm gonna I'm gonna take that one off until Garrett, if he comes back. Here he is! Cool. Okay. Number 4, the Cfd item, did you put that on there? Gary? Yeah, that's an agenda item that we typically have every couple of years. This is Wesleyland Road, the Cfd. To pay. Go back around 2,000 or so Wesleyland Road didn't punch through to San Marco Boulevard, and so it was really kind of fun and exciting. If you wanted to get around town, you went a little bit through. Okay, and then stopped, and then you'd have to go back onto the freeway and go all the way back around to go to the San Marca Boulevard. There was an agreement reached between both developers. Out of Alice Ranch and San Marco that they would work together and complete West Wesleyland Road all the way to San Marco Boulevard as part of that was a Cfd. Created in this case for San Marco in 2,009, and for that cost every couple of years. Enough, money is is generated by the houses that are that are built to pay back the developers for building that road. In this case the Cfd. I believe there's approximately 6 million dollars worth of reimbursements that need to be made. That are outstanding, and the Cfd. Has approximately 1.5 million that can be made to the developer for those costs. And so this item is in an agenda item that will come. It comes before council, but we're listing it, because often we have a subcommittee listing on the staff. Report was it presented to a subcommittee so that's what we're doing here is just giving you some background on an item that generally is on consent. But wanted to see if there are any questions with it. With you, too. So is this Cfd covering just San Marco community. Or is it also including visa del mar? This this is Del Mar was a different cfd, yeah. Okay, I just making sure I'm not weighing in on something. I shouldn't be okay. Yeah, no, you yeah, Dave, are actually already completed. There. They're all their reimbursing. This Del Mar, I believe, is completed. Okay, so this one Cft, 2,009. Dash one is San Marco. Okay. What was the Cfd. It's pretty. We've been doing this every 2 or 3 years, reimbursing one to a 1 million and a half roughly every couple of years. Yes. What was the cft for? Oh, you said the road infrastructure! Yeah. No questions for me. Alright, we'll move. I'm sorry. No questions for me. Moving right along to Item Number 5, review a few reduction pilot program, and I believe we have joined here. Yep, thank you, Paul. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Good afternoon, Mayor. Vice Mayor, as you probably recall in early 2020 right before the pandemic, the city implemented a fee reduction pilot program, and the long and short of this is as part of this program the city reduced fees to a flat fee of $100 for development of certain uses in certain corridors, and generally those uses were selected because of their revenue generating potential. So we're talking about hotels that generate a lot of Tt auto dealerships that generate a lot of sales tax. And then, of course, uses that the city desperately was trying to attract such as grocery stores and those 3 locations were Leverage Road from State Route 4 to . West, Leland, from San Marco to Bailey Road, and the entire stretch of railroad Avenue from Third Street. All the way down to wherever it becomes, we for the first couple of years, did not have a lot of data on this, and we've continued it for the past 2 fiscal years, and halfway through this fiscal year. We've actually seen quite a few businesses or developments, I should say, taking advantage of the fee reduction pilot. So we wanted to share those numbers with you and get some feedback, and also talk about what minor changes could potentially be made. If this program is intended to continue for any extended period of time, so, as you'll see, and I won't go through every project, though I will, you know, to answer questions about any of these projects. But you'll notice we only had 5 applications that took advantage of this in fiscal years. 21 and 22, but this year we've received quite a few and a lot of these projects were projects that were approved several years ago, or I should say, over the past several years. But just by happenstance, were submitted and came to the building department and the engineering department as applications this year, and, for example, those include courtyard. By Marriott home to suites and the San Marco sprouts, as well as the development pads along those or in that shopping center. I should say, and then there are some smaller ones we have utilized this to get at least 2 new businesses into vacant tenant spaces downtown, which is really wonderful to see you'll notice that some of these numbers are very round and the reason for that is because in reducing them. We don't have, and we weren't set up to calculate the actual fee. We went straight to the reduced T, and then we retroactively had to provide estimates. We're very confident in these estimates. However, that's the reason they're round numbers, but the headline here is that over this span we would have expected these applications to generate just under 2 million dollars in total, we've received less than half a 1 million and so about 1.5 1 million has been foregone, if you will, in a fee revenue. As part of these projects. Now we expect the courtyard. Marriott, and home to suites. In the first full year that they're operational. Just those 2 projects. To make up the difference of that 1.5 million, or at least come extremely close, definitely. Within 2 years. So the See pilot is working that's also helping us get sci-fi when they're able to get started and get their contracting team out of Rancho Cordova and in the Pittsburgh that's a material factor in getting them to develop here in the city of Pittsburgh. So another significant cost that will be eaten by the city. If you will in having to do those plan checks and inspections without charging the fees that we normally would. However, that's a major boom to businesses here. So again happy to go through these happy to highlight any particular projects, but based on what we've seen and what we think has been successful. And what is really benefited our community. We are proposing a couple of changes that we think will continue to drive those benefits in development, but also make it easier to both manage track and differentiate for the applicants that come in because it has been a little bit of an administrative nightmare trying to discern, which projects qualify, and which don't especially, we have staff that turns over over the past few years. So potential amendments. If this is carried forward, would be to provide more clarification for the fees that are reduced along those same lines. We're proposing that we reduce all up. Clickable fees. So in the fee schedule we've got a list of fees that are reduced to the flat fee of $100, and those include your use permits. Your design, reviews your building, permit your plumbing. Permit your mechanical permit your single parcel, plan, check and inspection on the engineering side. And it's currently $100 to cover all of those. I would recommend that we reduce all of those fees to a $100, and that means that an applicant might end up paying, say, $500. But it becomes significantly easier to track on our software that we're using. The issue permits. If they're paying that $100 fee for all of those, and we can just punch in 100. Then, having to differentiate between the planning application we're planning to get a $100. But now building and engineering have to know, not to charge those fees, but another project might go straight to building, and so building does have to charge that hu $100 fee, and in the long run somebody might end up paying $500 rather than $100. But they're still in some of these instances, seen reductions of tens of thousands, of not hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I still think that it would be a significant help for a lot of these large developments. So, Jordan, do you think that just going back to the previous slide alright? So you take a couple of these smaller ones which I'm gonna call small businesses. In our city, rate versus like home, 2 suites. So what would be the hit right for the proposed change that you're talking about? I mean, is it gonna go from paying a $100 to paying $500 even for them? Given the type of applications they're pulling. That's a great question. No, and the reason being is these smaller ones? So if you start at shee palace color change and go down, they're only still playing the the paying, the planning fee. Got it? So they're still gonna pay a 100 here, have the gold building fees or engineering fees. Those would increase, but the estimated or expected building fees I should have put should have been expected, not estimated, but the expected building fees would go up and their fees would go up, but still it it would be incremental. But thank you for that. That's a very good question. Clarify that fees based on a percentage of permit costs are not reduced, and those are calculated using that non reduced fee. So what's actually not showing in here? Because if I mean perfectly transparent at honest, we were not set up to track this, and it's been extremely difficult to track. Is there certain fees that we charge that are 5% of the building permit fee? And when you reduce that building permit fee to $100 or $0, that becomes, you know, $5 or nothing right? And so we don't really have a way to track that. And some of those fees our also reducing the revenue that we're seeing for our general plan. Update, and and subsequently our development code update. I don't expect at this point that they've been significant, but on some of these larger projects well significant to the point where it's gonna cause 8 substantial issue. But going forward. If we're gonna continue to see these large reductions still ensuring that they're paying the percentage fees based on what would have been expected to be paid, will help some of the other departments or divisions collect those fees that we need to run extended to manage our gis to upgrade Our General Plan. And then go. I. We're not recommending changing what is on the qualified list. It's unlikely that we're gonna continue to see 2 hotels developed every year. We're hopeful, and we might get one or 2 more over the next 5 to 10 years. But at the same time those hotels again are repaying the fee reduction, and then some every year that they're operational. I should say, within the first year. They're operational, and if we we still need grocery stores, so I think we would still welcome grocery stores to pay these reduced fees if they were to relocate, cause as excited we are to have sprouts, we could afford one or 2 more grocery stores specify that new construction along railroad. Not not be ees that are qualified, or I'm sorry, specify that new construction on railroad. That is not a use on that qualified list. The hotels, the grocery stores, the auto dealerships not qualify for the program. An illustrated example of that is, the Starbucks. So the Starbucks did. We did make the determination that they qualified. We took, I guess, a little more of a conservative approach in the sense of we did not want to. Eliminate somebody's from being part of this program and charging them higher fees when there was some gray area. So we wanna be very specific that if you are building a new building that is not on that qualified list that is not considered renovation of a building on railroad, and therefore would not qualify for the program. So we're just being much more specific there, I think, with the true intent of the fee pilot when it was adopted in 2020, and then also require an application to be approved by the city manager or they're designated to qualify again this is just to help staff manage through some of the gray area, because no 2 projects are alike and it's hard to set standards that our specific to every single project to make it clear. So in this instance, what we would require a potential applicant do if they believe that they qualify for this is to sell a very simple application. I mean, literally just what they're uses and where they're locating, and have that authorized by the city manager or his desert me prior to qualification. This would not require that they pay the fees upfront the way excel works where we taking all of our applications and fees, is, we have to manually invoice folks. So these just click on button. But until we do that they are not required to pay the fee. So what this would do if they think they qualify, they would fill out a simple application. It would be authorized by the city manager or myself to say yes. This qualifies for the project, and then it would go forward. And again, this is more of a procedural thing, but something that this is going to help us stay within the bounds of what we think. The program is becoming, and to ensure that it's both successful, but also fair to everybody. That includes presentation. Happy to answer any questions you have, take feedback or discuss other potential amendments that could make a program, continue to flourish. So Jordan. One great job, I think, in the management and execution sound like there's it wasn't the easiest, probably, but I think when you look at the results they speak for themselves, and while there are some big projects on there. I'm more happy with the small business. Ones right? I mean, I think someone trying to start a small business. $1,400 can be a lot of money right? And so they can be used for different purposes. So I think you know. You see, that repeated over and over and over again, and I think that's really where some of the biggest impact has been through this program definitely supportive of your you know. Improvements to the program. The one thing I would say and you'll have to remind me so I know we had grocery stores as like a target. But the one in the shopping center, right, the empty, empty space. There. Would that be eligible for the program as it's written? You know. It would not. It is not along one of the 3 designated corridors we could extend the corridor along the entirety of leverage all the way to Buchanan, and then I would anticipate even if it's addressed off of buchanan because that shopping centers adjacent to leverage. I believe the interpretation that to be consistent with what we've done would be to make a part of the. Yeah, and I guess from from a saving standpoint, right? I mean, they're not gonna be building a brand new building there. It's already existing. So in reality, would would they see any savings through this program? Small. You know the planning fees would be a drop in the bucket for a project like that. They would likely I would anticipate the amount of renovation that would need to take place within the interior of that building would be significant enough on the building side that they would experience. In the tens of thousands of dollars in reduction just on their building permit alone. Yeah. And again, that's gonna depend on what type of store goes in there, what their expectations are, how much renovation needs to be done. Are they repairing the entire floor? Are they adding bathrooms I would anticipate. Ada. Changes would be required in that building just based on its age for a new tenant. That's where things start to add up on the building side. Okay, yeah, I mean something to consider. You know, that's fine location for another grocery store. So, you know, if we're gonna start chip away at starting to chip away at the possible opportunities right for more grocery stores, I think that's one to definitely keep in mind. Absolutely. We will do that. All right. Well, thank you, Jordan, moving on. Item number 6. Are there any non-agenda items that Vice Mayor Mayor would like to bring up? Seeing none, we are adjourned. Have a great weekend, everyone. You too!