##VIDEO ID:wrVIzqMby-M## So my text is not okay. I like that comes from me. You gotta care. Next you want to get back? To my sidebar real quick. I get excited. So we're already. Good afternoon. I'm going to call this meeting the today's meeting of the Budget Advisory Committee to order. May I have the roll call, chair Bergman here. Vice chair. Hall here, Miss Meijer has resigned, Miss Hale's here. And Miss Howard here. The first thing on the agenda is public comments. Do we have any public comment? Nothing Okay, then we're going to do old business. And that's the discussion of the recommendations that we made to the board of Commissioners that Miss Howard was kind enough to present in my absence. I watched the video after I returned to the country, and my takeaway from you can correct me if I'm wrong, Ron. They didn't they weren't adverse to the idea, but they wanted further discussion. And they also had some talk about modeling different percentages. Is anything taking place in terms of that? No, there's been nothing additional since then. They with the 5.37 millage rate. And then I think I think when I explained to him we have the 1% in the budget this current year, 1% next year. I know the discussion came up. What if we did instead of 1% like 0.25, 0.50? And then I think we got into the discussion of, you know, I said, well, we've got the 1% in there currently. I think that's where it sort of ended. And so there's been no further discussion at all then. Correct. And the 1% is still in the, in the, in the budget so that if they approve the budget that's the good for next year. But that doesn't because we, we had projected a five year window on this. Correct. How do we proceed with that then? Well, if you want to go, I think we've talked about is trying to put that into the fund balance policy and incorporate it in there. Okay But who they ultimately have to approve that policy don't they? Correct. We'd have to bring the fund. Yes. Okay. It's a we would have to we would have to modify the policy and then present that back to them. Correct. Okay. Do you have any comments since you were there doing this, I've watched most of the budget workshops. I'm not sure about all of them, but have they discussed it at all in the workshops so far? The 1%? The one? Have they discussed it at all in the workshop? Not any further, no. So our next move then would be to modify the policy. Okay. Correct. Okay. That's what I need to know. We'll move on to new business. That's yours. Yours, Ron, I guess in terms of the salary classifications, you're presenting, that or someone else? Yeah I'll start. Okay, so, I'll let Ron, do you want to introduce Sherry before we get going? I was going to wait, but. Okay Well, you know, it's been 18 months now. I haven't had an assistant finance director and accounting manager, but now we got an accounting manager. We fill in that position, but we have a new assistant finance director. She's been here five days now. Her name is Sherry Boehm, and this is Sherry. I'm sorry. She's totally up to speed now. Pardon me. She's fully up to speed now, right? Yeah I tell you, she's trying, but I go. I'm trying to. Not too much all at once. You know, I don't want to. What do you say? Your head. Your head blows up or something? She's trying to take it all in. Yeah but we're happy to have her here right? Welcome, welcome, welcome. Okay, so you're all recently sent a copy of the proposed salary classification. Classification plan amendments. This upcoming budget. I assume you all received those. We wanted to get those out as soon as we could. So you all could, review them before this meeting if you had a chance. So what happened is the city manager put a committee together that consisted of the HR director, Jane Kniffen, Paul Smith, and myself. We had department heads go through and submit requests to us on what they wanted to do, to try to help their department moving forward. This next year, we then went through their request. We had one on meet, one on one meetings with them. Sometimes multiple meetings with them, to see what they were trying to do and what we felt they needed changed, this plan has a variety of changes, from regrading positions to reclassifying positions, we found that some of the job descriptions that did not keep up with what the actual individuals were doing anymore based on, you know, they've gotten additional duties over time, and they were doing more work. And than what their job classification said. So they either need to be reclassified or regraded, some of the changes in the plan there that, departments are putting in help the departments, put more supervision in the fields in some ways to help with, with the oversight of jobs, the efficiency of the jobs and the productivity of the jobs. So by having more diverse supervisors out there with their crews, with the departments felt that that would help move things along in a more efficient way, and then sometimes it was just because of technical requirements of the job changing so much, some of the positions are that are being regraded, reclassified to help keep up with some of the industry standards and help retain some of the qualified people. We have today. And we also wanted to be able to look at what was going to help the city hire future candidates by keeping up with industry standards of pay and things like that. So we make sure we get the top candidates just like the other cities are doing, one of the changes in the plan that you went over is, as you're aware, over the last five years, plus the city manager has worked diligently trying to keep up the lower wage levels with the ever changing minimum wage standards. Not, based on state federal recommendations or just sometimes what the county or other cities are doing with the minimum wage. So one of the things that happened with that, one of the consequences, unintended consequences, has been that the salary compression between the mid-level managers, supervisors and department heads has shrunk. So these people are up close to what the department heads are starting to make, or we're making. So he wanted to be able to look at that. You'll see that in the packet, and that was based on to some of the, couple municipalities recently have done some pay studies that we glanced at, to see what was happening there, so today we have Ron Herring here to answer any questions I think you saw the spreadsheet with the cost of some of what this plan is going to do. And then we also have department heads here that put the requests in. If you have any questions for them on what you see there, they're here to answer any questions that you may have. So with that I can turn it over to Ron if you want to talk about that or wherever you want to go with this. I just have a high level. What I, what I heard in terms of this process is there was a small committee that was put together for this. The committee, in order to come up with this, met with department heads, did an analysis of supervisor, you know, maybe percentages or something like that, or kind of looking at the supervisor and the staff that report to them. And then you mentioned there's some pay studies from other municipalities, kind of like a benchmarking situation. We use them just to kind of glance at. But I think the process to get to those is going to take a little bit of time. Okay. We do have a new city manager coming in, so that may be one of his tasks. We don't know yet, but that's so we wanted to kind of do this in pieces. Yeah. I will say that there were some department heads that put stuff in that we looked at, and we just didn't feel it was the time yet to do those changes for those departments. So not all departments got everything they wanted, some got none. And some of the departments that are here today might have asked for more things that they just wasn't going to go through the process. This time. Okay. And did it also involve like looking at what other competing agencies or are there competing? Yeah. Okay. So we did I can't think of anything else that seems fairly robust to me. Yeah How was the decision made for who did and didn't get like what was kind of your basic criteria? So what we did is we made they came to us, we put it on a large spreadsheet. We looked at it. We then had meetings with the city manager to go through them. And it was his decision on which we're moving forward and which weren't going to move forward. Based on some of the recommendations we had. You know, because not only did we have to look at what they were asking, but if you take employee A and you want to move them up, a certain percentage within that with in their pay grade, what's that going to do to other people in that pay grade already? I mean, are you starting to bump more people and more people? So you had to we had to play that balancing game to make sure my game. But balancing act to make sure we weren't causing bigger holes and more problems, in the pay plans itself with other with other departments. So it's, you know, tough act to try to put together. So we tried to do what we could. Is the committee a formal committee or just something you all put together? It was just the three of us that the city manager put together to do the deep dive. I guess you want to say, to say, look at these things and see how we can fit this into what he wants to do would be beneficial to establish a compensation committee going forward and not do this all at the end of the year, and meet quarterly so that you're ahead of the game. So we could pass that along. Last one from me. Do you think this sets us up kind of like for the coming years or are we kind of just covering competitive? So are we competitive this year or does this help us kind of get competitive. This is a step. This is a step a step in the right direction to get more competitive. Yeah. I think that I'm only speaking for myself. I think the new city manager will have to look into that themselves to see where they think they need to go with this. The next step on to being as competitive as the others. So. Okay, on attachment one, Ron, the various grade levels and they've been pushed up for 2025, but, grade level three still has an hourly minimum that's below 13. Isn't 13 going to be the minimum for 25 statewide? In fact, I don't believe we have we don't have any grade level three. It's just still on there. Okay But then going into 25 well we're going we're budgeting 25. Going into 26. It's eventually going to $15 an hour in 2026 or 2027 for the state. I'm just with these lower grades. I'm just wondering if we're the minimum wage you're talking about. Yeah. Next year we're going to have to have the same push to get really what, the minimum wage we currently have is 16.2541, I believe. Does we as you as you know, over the last few years we've been increasing it. We used to have 80 some people full time below 15 bucks an hour. But over the last five, six years city manager has been increasing that. So now I think the minimum is at to 16.25. And I think we're still trying to get that up a little bit more still. But we don't have anybody below that. Correct. Okay. And I see in the notes that the different percentages it says this will be in addition to we've already got 5% baked in. Right. Correct. And then these are in addition to that okay. Is there any kind of HR policy in existence that says if a position is changed in grade or increases, given that it's up to a maximum of X, like say, just say 10%, like we're going to regrade this position, this person needs to get X percent more, but we're not going to bump anybody more than 10% in one fiscal year. No, there's no set policy or percentage like that. But usually what it is if it increases one. The standard has been of an increase is one grade. It's a 5%, right. But if it's two grades it would say 10%. But sometimes we'll look at the position how it fits in with other ones. We might be doing 7.5%, but there's no maximum that is currently set. And in the grades we've given us the minimum and the maximum is there a midpoint for each grade as well? Correct. It's not on that sheet because I've seen in others and I'm not I'm not advocating to do this. This I'm fine with all these numbers. I'm just thinking in the future when we're doing these grades, is to have a double check to make sure that when we do these, I've seen it customary that if you're going to move somebody up a grade or within their grade, you're not going to move them past the midpoint because you don't want to go ahead and cap them out. In the first year, you're giving them an increase. So that might be a check. We want to put in as well. Is there any mechanism in place for any type of merit in addition to the standard, or is it just everybody is evaluated the same and it's the standard increase. And that's that. It's this increase at the at October first here years and years ago there used to be one. But that was when I was here 30 some years ago. But so is it kind of a case of that's why there's the range the minimum the maximum. And so there is leeway there or it's correct. Okay It's that you can if you're not in the maximum end of the range, you could get bumped up there, but you're still within the range. And it's the range we're giving the percentage correct. Okay And how is that annual increase decided to percentage wise. Like how did we come up with 5% this year? Is there a policy we follow or just a gut feeling or for the main 5%? Well, we're trying to, you know, keep up with the other cities and what they're given as you know, the need. Had a pay study done a couple years ago, they went up Clearwater had a pay study. It went up and quite a bit. And then Largo just had a pay study. So all of these are going up. So I think we're just trying to keep up with the other municipalities in the area. So as you know, we had 3% funded at first. But then when the property tax value came in a little bit higher, we were able to fund the 5%. Okay I think there's a little bit of just keeping up with the could everybody afford to live in Pinellas County, correct inflation and a pay study, high level summary. That's just they look at what folks are making benchmark against other what. Well some you hire these firms and they go out and they'll compare to other cities of similar size. You know if it's 1015 of them then they come back. And that's quite an involved study. Yeah, I imagine it's nice that you were able to see theirs. To the extent it was helpful. So do you poll the other cities during your budget process and say, how much are you giving? Yes. Okay Yeah, a lot of them. There's a range. There's a couple that were below 5%, but the majority were 5% or above. The city manager gets a lot of that information from his city manager meetings. And they all talk about what they're all doing. And then he can come back. And you know, tell the finance director this is what they're doing. Maybe we need to look at this or that. So nice, nice. Is there somewhere in this all of the different documents that outlines the difference in the dollar amount to the bottom line, like where we were and then with all of this, where we're going to be with this approval in terms of just raw dollars, you want like the total cost of like, what's that total cost difference on the salary? And do you have that 1.2 million for this increase, for the increase in total or in total. Correct or not just this this additional amount, like there's just the raw. It was 3% when we first budgeted. Right. Like when we first started this, there was a certain dollar. I can't remember what it was. I'd have to go way, way back. But I was just curious to know what the just looks like. A dollar impact is to the bottom line. Okay, here we go. For the 5% funding, 1,179,000 for the 5% we funded and for the additional cost of the increases at 172,000. Okay, that's bringing it up to about 1.3 million. Okay I do better with the big numbers. With numbers. Me too. I have one specific question on one of the changes is, item J, reclassify one technician to parks position to fleet technician. So is that a move from one department to another? Not adding a position, but just moving a parks position into correct. They're moving one from the under public works to fleet. And from what I understand, he's a certified mechanic and okay. I don't have any more. I think you indicated not all departments got what they asked, and not the departments who didn't necessarily get everything they asked for. You rough idea how what percentage of the overall request addressed here? Well dollar amount wise it was it totaled like 650,000 bucks I think if I you know, but that's probably whittled it down pretty good. Wow. Well the first number came out and we were like I'm not taking that to Mark. It seems like more this year, though, that we were making adjustments to them prior years or more based on that, it seems it is this. I think this is a bigger step than we've taken in quite some years, I think the city manager just knew that with all the changes and the other pay plans and stuff, we had to try to start making those small steps to do a big jump, to step to do it all. That's going to be quite an undertaking. Yeah. So the increased money we're getting from the millage, I mean, the dollars coming in is covering all of this. Correct? Okay And then some left over or this how much your increase from 8.25 to 9.18. How much did that give you to play with? I play with it 120 120, 120,000 okay. And as you can see at the bottom of this, the net effect is we need we need almost 74,000. Right. So 120,074. So we got 40 some thousand remaining. And one of the reasons you see on that sheet there there's the 66,000 and there's 70,000. The two on the bottom are charter. So those have to be voted on by the board. That's not part of Mark's. Gotcha. Staff It says that the, This is based the current budget is still based on 8.25%, and we're at 9.18. Correct. The current budget that the board is the final one. You all saw and the board's been working at the workshop was based on 8.25%, but the actual taxable value came in at 9.18%. So bottom line, 75,000 is going to help us adjust 50 some odd positions. Correct as a step for now, but might need to look at. Yeah. And that also is bringing up the department heads another 3% to help with the compression issues going on. Yep. Any additional questions. No thank you. Any questions for specific departments? Not for me. No. So what do you need from this committee. Just are you don't need a motion from us. Do you? Need a motion to approve this? I would probably say a motion. I would say a motion just to approve it. That way it can go to the board that you guys approve the plan. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve what was presented? I moved to approve the proposed salary classification changes as presented. Do I have a second? Second? Can we have a roll call, please, miss Howard? Yes, miss Hale? Yes. Vice chair. Hall. Yes, chair. Burch. Yes Thank yo, thank you. There's a lot of money spent I don't agree with, but salary isn't one of them. You see how quick all those flowers dive? Nobody's out there to water them. I'm not a fun job. Good job. Thank you all. Take care. Great one. She shows up five whole days. I haven't met her. I did it. He's a. He works down below us. Here He doesn't. He doesn't even answer. He works below finance. He doesn't even answer phone calls. I know he emails either. I don't know what he does. They won't wake him up. I'm sorry. They're like, we're done here. No All right. The next item on the agenda is any board and staff comments. Okay, then a future agenda items. Well, obviously go back to the old business here to modify the fund policy would be a future agenda item. Yeah Any other future agenda items. Now what is the remaining schedule in terms of the commission in terms of going over the budget and final approval and all that stuff? Well, we're doing we're getting the we're going to make all the a little bit of final changes. You know, there's a couple other things besides I know Shane and Sherry are working on the payroll, just trying to tweak it and just check everybody that we got all the current employees in there, because sometimes you can save some money if now some are vacant or some are filled at a lower salary. So they're going through and checking those, we're going to adjust the property tax rate to the 9.18%. So I'm going to go back through the revenues and just check them all to see how they're going for probably the end of July, to see if my projections are still good, like half-cent sales tax, I might increase it a little bit, maybe about 20,000 revenue sharing. I might have a little bit too high and I might come down on that one, we got the health insurance that came in a, 8.7% increase instead of the 10% we budgeted. So there's about a $60,000 savings there. Workers property liability came in right at 9.9%. So we're right on budget at 10% there, I feel like they're watching us, I know. Oh yeah. Well, they'll pay 10%. Yeah Well, for worker's comp, they they didn't. The worker's comp came in at 15.62%. So that's a it brings it to about 520,000 total. The cost for worker's comp. So I got a probably of the health insurance I save in the 60,000 I'll take 30,000 of that. Isn't that based on experience rating experience. And from what Jane said, our experience rating really went down some. It's because we have more salaries and more employees, going out. That's why it increased. Right. I'm trying to think of any look at anything else here, but not much changes this those, so now we've gotten all the insurance increases, we're going to get the book together, get it out probably by September or whatever. The last Friday. I think it's September, August 30th. Sorry The first public hearings on September, the Wednesday, September fourth. That's the first public hearing on the tentative millage and tentative budget. I think it's Sunday the 15th. We will have the advertisement, the required advertising in the newspaper, and then the second public hearing will be on Wednesday, September 18th for the final millage rate and final budget. And then the budget process is done. The next budget workshop is there's no more budget workshop. That's it. I heard at the last one they said something about on the eighth, something on the eighth. What were they talking? Well, we had a meeting on on August 8th. They were talking about the next one. They were talking about another meeting that was budget related. I thought, there's a meeting, on the 20th, 20th. Yeah. No, this was I thought this was budget. Maybe on August 8th, we had the budget workshop. No, they were talking. I know, and in that meeting they were talking about forward. Right. But maybe they were misspeaking and just they said the eighth and that was the day. I don't know, I just I just remembered thinking, oh, there's another one. They were something they were going to talk about. They were saving it for the next time. Well, like the chief said, there is this pay plan that you looked at today that'll be before the board on August 20th at the regular board meeting. Okay But not a workshop. Got it correct. Okay. Thank you. Anything? You know other things as far as your agenda? You know, maybe if you need a financial update, we can do that at the whenever, whenever the next meeting is. And you have the date for the September meeting. Probably the third Thursday. September 19th. That would be the day after the second public hearing, right? Yeah. We could do an update at that point. Oka. Now back to the announcement that Michelle made at the beginning of the meeting with, a resignation. This committee technically has seven people by regulars and two alternates. That means to have a quorum, we have to have four people presen, so we may have future meetings. We're not going to be able to vote on anything. We may be able to discuss items, but we until we get some more people we're not, may not be able to vote on certain things just to be aware of that. So there's anybody watching this today. We do. We will accept applications. Did you have a citizens Academy starting up, yes. Sometime in September. I'm not. I think it's the 11th. Is that a Wednesday? They usually yield some folks, right? Yeah. So yeah. So we have vacancies on other boards as well too. So My pool of applicants is dwindling. Anything else? No. Seeing none. We'll adjourn at 227. Thank you all. Thank you. Nice. Easy peas. Yeah.