regular viewers of the council meetings and workshops will recognize immediately our slide show but i think you know in all in all candor i think it's probably one of the best methods of informing the people that it's a it's a good opportunity for us it's obviously as you know one of the biggest things that we do as a city you see the taxes that people pay and as you said this power point i always it and start with kind of a scramble of the letters and because really it's it really is it's moving money into different places the big theme always is you know living within our means trying to do that but this year we're going to talk about today is what the city council did it's called adoption of the maximum levy which is the maximum amount to obviously they haven't set the original budget yet but the really how the process that we went through and really the final decision and then we'll probably end with some discussion about how people can comment because the final decision  been made and and literally is is a few months away yet and what was the end date was that september fifteenth or something like temper twelfth a september fifteenth is the legal requirement to set that maximum and we did it on the twelfth on the twelfth of september is when the council adopted a resolution that set the maximum tax do you recall how many meetings we had on the budget we musta had these twelve different budget meetings throughout the course of the very good job it was actually hits it was right at twelve so you've been dozen times that we've met with the council so it's and i've got actually we'll get into a slide and talk about that really about how the council goes through a very detailed process in this year's council was very very involved in setting the budget and and over about a seven month period really spent twelve different meetings a couple of them going for a couple of hours long so they spent a lot of time in public meetings as well as they had a lot of homework to do to look through all these documents i think this was probably the most in any council in recent time it had in the in the budget process absolutely i agree this council really has been a hands on and really said they wanted to be involved and and in this decision and certainly as staff we've got it we do a lot of the work that's our responsibility in our jobs but this council really was hands on and really wanted to be understanding of the impact because this year we're making a number of changes and those aren't easy easy to implement and so we're going to go through that today ok well let's let's start in the see what we have here ok we'll just kind of talk as we parameters for the budget and so that started well way back february fourth that was the actually the the second part of our two year city council goals and objectives and i think i think it really worked well we're able to do that within one day and really focus in on what the priority should be absolutely it really gets the council to thinking both short term and long term you know what what direction do we goes city were do we establish our priorities and and literally with with the issue of you know there's no known new money coming in and really you know trying to hold the line on all our expenses they then have to make some more of our setting the priorities and that financial side of things and just in in that as you said a two year process or second goal went so our second discussion with the council was after they set the parameters the staff came back and we discussed some of the preliminary ideas and and identified kind of where we're going and the council gave us a further direction on the fourteenth of march in april obviously we talked about were you know how much money and do we have money left over and ten what were the results and then talked about whether they want to you were talking about some major building projects you know or do they want to do a referendum and that that decision still hasn't been made  on the twenty third of may they had opted with our capital plan now that's not a document that authorizes projects but that looks five years out into what are our projects going to be what are our major expenditures going to be and and holding the line on debt was really the council's the direction through the plan is saying ok we simply can't grow our dept any further and and we've got a great bond rating but the council said they want to make sure that we maintain the funds that the city has our reserves are our where are we as the end of two thousand and ten how much money do we have and reserves what do we have been each of the funds and and you know give the council a chance to look in here from the auditor as to saying ok we're we're very well planned and financially well planned said i think i think it should be pointed out that these are independent auditors hired by the council to go over the books absolutely jim either you're absolutely right we as staff are have to work with the auditors and then this auditor makes his report to the state auditor and the state auditor looks through this independent auditors reports and we've done that every year and have to do that is which is a little bit better than the last two years because i noticed you know we got a few what i guess you called technical term danish and so i was very pleased that that this year we did have a completely clean audit right right  biggest changes was you know to to basically take you out of public works and to to focus least the last two years on the administrative part of the city and you know i think we have to congratulate you on doing a really superb job for it particularly for an engineer thanks joe but i really appreciate that but it's got a funny when you think about the biggest projects or the engineer say spend you know some pretty large  amount of money and i went from that side of things to all of a sudden being on the side is saying no on a lot of occasions and so and you know i i don't i'm not sure the citizen just know how much double duty staff is doing all that's it's doing extra duty but i beg sickly all the staff and i think we should be commended absolutely and i agree with you one hundred percent we got a we got a great staff that really works hard and like i said things have changed and continuing to change is you know as far as really the beginning of the two thousand and twelve process the first number of meetings set a set this up but we really began june thirteenth where the council first heard really the impacts of the budget and started to identify those issues on the eleventh of july we talked to the council about really how they were going to make their decisions and that was an important meeting because the council said ok they literally got a scoresheet right they had they had a they had to keep score and say ok if you want to fund something where do you cut somewhere else and so there are some disagreements in the council worked through that process but it was on july eleventh they finally agreed that this is how they're going to do it and move through that and accepted the scoresheet and i think that was a rather first there was there was there really was a first for them to try to put that together in august they heard from every department head about what the impacts of the revisions were and then really came to that's a paper twelfth date they set the maximum levy and again it's you know people need to understand this is what shows up on the tax statements that come out in the next few weeks you know sustainability and i think it's important for people to understand this and this is this is the goal the number one goal that the council set for us to staff and for them is to really have financial sustainability with the city and it's kind of long but it really encompasses what we're doing as a city and what this budget of the bot and it says to continue to provide quality efficient services to our citizens w equalizing expenditures and revenues every year and making budgeting decisions that comport with the principles of sustainability literally it could have been said living within our means well and that you know and that gets even more difficult as you know  maplewood doesn't receive any local government aides and they finally the legislature face the fact and and did away of the market value homestead credit which we didn't get anyway and so basically  as far as cities go maplewood and a few other cities in the metropolitan area are basically have to make it on our own we really receive minimal assistance from the state and federal government absolutely we don't owe any money as we get go to projects or something that we don't get any operating support from any other agencies we could we work for grants but for we simply don't and there are a lot of cities right on our borders that still get even with the new legislation local government aid and you know we'll talk a little bit about the market value homestead credit how that's going to make some big changes to people's taxes from the from the standpoint are second within that goal one of the one of the biggest impacts for the for the city if the council talked about was to evaluate and implement facility improvements and and one of the biggest issues are police and fire departments how do we housed them what do we put them up it's been a number of years since we've invested in both of them and so we're going to have to look at that  and and we're going to talk about that in a in a few minutes as part of this presentation one of the goals a council said and certainly there was some disagreement on the council but they said they wanted a levy increase no more than three percent and there was a couple that said they might go to five percent but that was set in february and without a lot of background information they said that as staff we simply couldn't go beyond that and so we had to put a budget together with that  new new levy now that doesn't translate into new taxes but from the city standpoint the new levy was a three to five percent that becomes a range of new money for the city about five hundred twenty five thousand eight hundred seventy five thousand dollars of quote new money to do different things and so taking those infrastructure facility improvements new fire station new police stations how we deliver the staff proposed originally a four point eight percent increase within the three to five and then after discussions with the councils through that process we ended up as staff we recommended a three point zero seven percent increase and so the council received that staff recommendation and through all that process they said no that's that's too high and so what is showing on the statements that people have is a two percent increase so two perce what's in there but that does and as i said we're going to talk about that and i know there's there's been quite a change in the consequences there exactly exactly so in order to implement facility improvements  we're going to have to reduce and the budget proposes to reduce our operating costs to support capital projects and the adjustment is seven hundred fourteen thousand dollars almost seven hundred fifty and so that means that we're going to have less people in order to get back to the sustainability and so that means don't borrow from reserves and don't delay improvements that the various places to your infrastructure and your buildings and and all of the other items that the public owns in the city is responsible to take care of we have to stop that and so we're going to our day to day operating costs are going to be less and that adjustment is seven hundred fourteen thousand dollars what we're talking about these different capital projects for their space needs for the the police department or the new fire station in conjunction with three m in the remodeling of some of the fire stations you know just because we're in a recession right now you don't stop the planning because it's a process that takes a while and this is the seed money to start the process and so if i think if the community is going to move forward just because there are some economic setback doesn't mean that we should just sit back on our heels and not do anything and so i think the staff in the council has has a vision that we need to work towards betterment of the city so that perhaps when times are a little bit better that we can afford to to expand and improve our different facilities including the infrastructure our streets and and the water and sewer etc absolutely jim and i think that's well stated we would literally or that with a two percent increase in new money we're going to continue on some of those improvements but that means that we're going to take money money and shift it around and that's why we started that scramble of all the numbers in the letters that's really what we're doing we're not increasing people's taxes in order to expand the police department or the the fire stations one thing i want to do is people understand how there are twenty eleven taxes were used by the city we had a general fund which takes care about two thirds of the city some of the other these are the operating expenses money went to the recreation program fun to support to make sure that that  and i think these two programs are recreation in the m c c are important because they are their quality of life issues for our residents and so it's really easy to sit back and say we're only going to fund any increases or or maintain public safety but the quality of life issues are also very important and while we're not able to answer all the needs least we're making progress in that area right but and i  think it's important as you look at this slide in the overall percentage it's only a couple of percent of the tax dollars ninety five percent of the tax dollars goes either to debt service which is shown on the screen or the general fund and which is police and fire in the snowplow guys and you know that's ninety eight percent of your budget ninety seven percent of your budget this very small percentage that goes to the remaining we're going to talk a little bit quickly about the ambulance fund in a in a few minutes but maple is one of the few cities that doesn't support its ambulance operations and hasn't this year we are proposing that again this is were we didn't put any money into replacing our trails and parks in in in two thousand and eleven and we certainly didn't put any money into replacing fire trucks we've got a large fleet and don't have any money into that and again development of our parks  and that being the market value homestead credit program and the legislature eliminated that as part of the budget settlement between governor dayton and the republican leadership that was signed in in july to end the shutdown and they were removed this program what that program did by doing that was literally shift money from the state back to the city senate it certainly you know how you look at it it changed how people's taxes and so maplewood residents are going to see about a two million dollar tax shift and so higher valued homes and businesses and apartments are going to see higher taxes while lower value homes are going to see lower taxes and so it's simply a shift of money and it's that scramble of money robbing peter to pay paul handle and certainly how that happens is that there's a five hundred twenty five thousand of shifted new levee money that comes out of that program so what we did was what's going to what are residents going to see with a two percent levy increase if the city council of anciently approves a two percent l someone with a home valued of one hundred thousand dollars are actually going to see a six and a half percent decrease in their taxes in two thousand and twelve if someone had a home valued one hundred fifty thousand even with the city raising two percent they're going to see a one point one percent decrease and the average home in maplewood is about one hundred ninety five thousand dollars worth of value they're going to see a one point one percent increase and that works out to about eight dollars a year less than a dollar a month where we start seeing the shift is into the values where you have a higher value home where the city is going to raise two percent their taxes are going to go up by three percent which is thirty three dollars a year and then a four percent increase for those over three fifty so you can see how the shift of money went to the higher value of homes and again fifty seven dollars per year this is just city taxes so county and school district  going to impact that as well now we went through what we what we did before here's where we're really talking about what is being proposed with a two percent levy increase we're going to be decreasing our operating expenses by five and a half percent and so we're going to have less employees we're going to have less operating costs we're going to literally keep a lot of positions vacant but we're not going to be laying people off we're going to we're going to manage with  the vacancies we have in and shifting some personnel around in this type of thing so that that people are not going to be losing their jobs that's exactly correct in order we've tried to do that over the years and been able to sustain that but we're not replacing people in our our number of staff are down significantly again in proposed in two thousand and twelve as we talked about the ambulance fund simply we're going to this city council is going to have to come to the term of providing service to our residents through this is going to start costing and this is about two percent of the levy is going to have to go to the ambulance fund and make that sustainable i will take credit or bear responsibility whatever for that because as you know the damage fund is been running at a deficit for a number of years and we just can no longer support that but i think it's important that we have excellent emergency medical services and maplewood and so i advocated and recommended that we start by increasing the tax levy to  support the ambulance service now this this is not a one shot deal it's going to take maybe seven years in order to one pay off the debt and to make the service itself not self supporting use the hospitals and in my experience anyway i think that this probably is one of the most important public safety services that we can provide and i think  because we get from people that have had the opportunity to avail themselves of that service kind of bear that out and so it's a still a work in progress but i know a city manager i strongly support having the abilene service and using public tax dollars to support it you're right jim meant to certainly you took the lead on this and certainly push that through but clearly it's a great service  that we provide our residents and i think that the debate is still there but from our standpoint it's very very important and you're right seven years is what it's going to take to work this out but it gets back to that goal of sustainability  making sure that we're we're operating correctly i see we're narrowing it down we've got about three minutes left we're going to move through and talk about there are the we're going to increase funding to the m c c but at the expense of direct program so we're shift with north st paul we've been able to work together and so i think this is freed up some money that we can use to basically secure a major public investment that been made many many years ago in the m c c and i think that people be very pleased with the results of the re remodelling of the reground opening of the pool area i agree i agree hits just a good improvement for the city we're proposing to put body into replacement of some of our park equipment or proposing to put money back into the fire truck replacement still our day bill to find any money for new park development and going to start talking about our p expansion of our police and fire and so we're going to put two hundred thousand dollars into that fund and debt service continues to increase but it's it's part of a plan that is a part of that and it's going to increase for the next two years as and then level off and then start decreasing as i recall exactly in two thousand and fifteen is when it starts decreasing and so that's because of the investments that the city made over the past ten years and a lot of projects and streets have been done and so simply paying her bills and all the all the dead agencies say maplewood is one of the top in the top twelve percent of all agencies in minnesota and so we maintain a good debt rating and so that that's certainly a benefit to the overall community so how did we go with the three items that from three to two percent we reduced our fund balance so our reserves are going down we're  to be at the thirty eight point five percent back right exactly and the fire truck replacement fund didn't get as much money as they wanted and the school district in the police were able to put together a program where they support one officer at the at the school as i was the resource officer yeah exactly that originally was proposed to be cut but we were able to find the money for that so total revisions one hundred eighty seven thousand and i did want to make a note we are reducing staff levels from  hundred sixty to one hundred fifty eight next year so there will be four positions that will remain vacant during the year under this budget so to summarize we set the levy on the twelfth of september through october we're going to talk about the capital costs and hear about where we ended twenty eleven what it looks like and what the year looks like to see if there's any money to help  keep that final decision on the budget will be made by the cars it's on the fourteenth of november to print the document attended to be available to libraries and on our web page and again on december fifth is when the council will make their final decision on the budget and they will hear a recommendation from the staff about that two percent increase which will be seventeen point eight five million dollars the budget hearing is again december fifth at city hall at seven o'clock and anybody that wants to send in comments for that can write city hall or my e mail is up on the screen they can send them to me and i'll forward all those comments to the this used to be called the truth and taxation hearing and while the legislature i think did away with their change or some you know were maintaining that to where people can have a comment and have a voice increase but they can't raise it so and so that's that's where we are that's what we're going to talk about on december fifth very good well you know and i support the two percent increase i think it's fiscally prudent i don't think we should  slide backwards during these tough times that we have to look forward but we also have to be careful and so i really appreciate the great work that you've done chuck and your staff and god knows where what you'll be doing next year but as i  said you're my my bench player my utility player and you do a great job so i hope the audience has a chance to kind of review what we've talked about it have any questions don't hesitate to contact either chuck or myself and w try to try to keep you informed and that's it and we'll see you next month