a three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine and that id is nine eight zero seven two nine eight eight two four five we will repeat that a few times throughout the evening and it will appear on the screen via channel eight for those folks that are watching so if you want to get in right now you can and then when we get to public input you'll press star nine to all right so i'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to tune in this is really our first opportunity and to take a look at what the budget may be starting to reflect still early but this is our first blush at this for council and for the community and we also i think we'll have our citizen members of the budget audit committee which is chaired by councilor vita and has councilors harrison and  vere on board as well so we will give them an opportunity after public input to engage and then council will again to budget update and with that we will invite our new c okay oh there you are you switched yep good evening and welcome we're thrilled to have you and i know coming on board at quite a challenging time to to come on board as a cfo but we appreciate you and we're excited to dig into things well i'm excited to start on the subject of financial planning and looking at the economy so i'm going to share my screen with all of you and hopefully i'll do this correctly to explore in terms of revenue expenses and fund balance so even though we don't have a lot of information yet from the economic perspective and what we expect our revenue  we do have a lot of areas that we can start to analyze and being able to provide information on so we're going to be doing that in the future and then we're also going to look at questions that we'd like to consider because there are several decisions that you will have to make in the future and we want you to start thinking about what those questions are and then what the next steps are of what we're going to do after today  starting out with the us economy the two things that generally you look at when you want to see what the strengths are and the health of an economy is looking at the response so that we'd have a drastic drop and then we'd have a quick comeback in the economy but now they're forecasting more of a w which means that we already had the drastic drop or of experience in the economy where it comes back down again and then comes back up during two thousand and twenty and then into two thousand and twenty one the other area that we look at is unemployment which is and unemployment to local sales tax or to local economy we're not actually going to use the us economy very much to predict what's going to happen or lakewood so the other areas that we've looked at is the state of colorado because they put out a forecast as well as denver so the state of colorado has indicated that they're going to see a reduction of revenue  and they used what they use to estimate that seven billion dollars was the previous recessions so just keep in mind that all diem for economic information that i'm providing is really just a guess that people have at this point there isn't a lot of information so we're just giving you what we have and we'll be able to get more information as time goes on so let's split out of that seven billion dollars a reference point for that overall the state of colorado has a thirty billion dollar budget for their general fund they have a twelve billion dollar budget so for a reduction of three  be a reduction of twenty six percent for twenty two it'll be a reduction of twenty eight percent off of their new number so they have to reduce by three two and then it's twenty eight percent off of that and then for two thousand and twenty three it is a reduction of twelve point eight percent that's just to give you a grounding point for how much they're looking at that they're going to have to red and then their current financial aid that they have is two point actually i can't see the slide because your pictures are there so the current financial aid is two  billion dollars so that will have them some the seven billion that they're expected in lawson revenue but it's not going to get them there so the as i mentioned we also looked at denver and what denver communicated is what they're expecting their losses to be in revenue for the rest of two thousand and twenty denver is also on a fiscal year of july through june for those four months so they're expecting those losses to be and sales use logic larger lodging tax from retail and restaurants and hotels which is also where lakewood would expect a lot of our reductions because we have similar makeup one thing to keep in mind for denver though which you can see there's a difference between what denver  march of two thousand and nineteen we're seeing that to crime in retail restaurants and hotels so the same thing as denver and that's between thirty and fifty percent depending on which area you're percent and then the car dealerships is down thirty three percent that's three percent and then hotels are down fifty percent which is one percent so that compared to the electronic shopping which is up sixty four percent that's only five percent of our sales tax so although it's a large increase overall it doesn't impact enough for us to break even for  a month which is why we're estimating primarily at fifteen percent to twenty percent right now what this reflects is a fifteen percent hopefully that makes  tell another item to note is telecommunication is that thirty two percent groceries are up twenty nine percent and home improvement is up nine percent so that's the  the overall economic look and the thing to keep in mind is that colorado state of all of colorado is expecting to have a decline of twenty six to twenty eight percent over  evaluating current revenue which we where you looked at the sales tax but there's other elements of the current revenue that we need to review which is charges for services licenses and permits franchise charges property tax and other forms of revenue the second area that we're gonna look at in terms of revenue is funding from the federal and so it is not for recovery it's more of funding for just the emergency activities and expenses that you may have the stimulus package there is another sumos package that's being considered that does have a line item or a local government supplement for revenue i do not know anything more than that  am i unmuted yes okay good thanks holly so i wanted to talk just up for a moment about the cares act and you might have read in the paper today about some funding going from the state or from the feds to the state and then to jefferson county and there was actually action taken by the board of county commissioners this afternoon so you know that the chara's act stan aid relief and economic security act it's a two point two trillion dollar package i want to briefly just talk about that distribution from the fed federal government because i was asked this question last week so one hundred and fifty billion goes to state and local government relief four hundred and fifty four billion for federal lending three hundred and sixty seven billion for small business loans a one hundred billion for hospital grants and then individual stimulus payments one thousand two hundred per adult and five hundred per child and an increase in unemployment benefits six hundred dollars additional per week it's an increased benefit period for thirteen weeks so the piece of that which matters to us here in the city of lakewood is the state and local government relief each state receives a minimum of one twenty five billion dollars colorado's portion is two point twenty three billion local governments over populations of five hundred zero are eligible to apply and jefferson county submitted an application and did receive allocation of their funding so jefferson county's allocation that has already been received is one hundred and one million seven hundred eight thousand two hundred thirty nine dollars so but we've learned from the county is their intention was to take those dollars apply the similar ratio that the state used and transfer those dollars forty five percent of their hundred one million dollars to the cities the cities within their jurisdiction so and it was voted on today and they agree to share these revenues with their jurisdictions so the county is keeping fifty five percent and they're sharing forty five percent but that means for us is lakewood is going to receive in kerr's dollars a total of twelve million two hundred and eighty eight thousand and seventy dollars and it breaks down like this the colorado per capita is three hundred and eighty seven dollars in some sense jeffco per capita is a hundred seventy four dollars and the city per capita is seventy eight dollars so these figures came about from the two thousand and nineteen census that's the sense it's figures that's what jeffco used to determine the distribution so that sounds like great news and that sounds like wonderful let's take that twelve million and  and do some revenue recovery there and we'll be in much better shape the problem is that there are some specific areas that are eligible to be for these funds to be used and they there are three things they're necessary expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency with respect to the coronavirus disease they were not accounted for in the budget most recently approved by the jurisdiction as of march th two thousand and twenty and w how we can utilize these dollars jeffco decided today that they were going to release these dollars as soon as the iga s are signed i haven't seen it yet i was told it'd be out today so i'm guessing i'll see it tomorrow  iga and they're gonna release our twelve million dollars in first half they'll be at least half of it to us and then the other half we will apply for it even though we're entitled to the total twelve million again we have to spend it this year and it has to be covered related expenses it the dollars it's explicit these dollars can't be used just to recover the losses of revenue that holly is referring to we've discussed over the last i want to say well census started that we would be keeping really good records of all of the expenses that we have encumbered because of because of this virus and so we already ha a good start on that let me give you a sense for what those eligible uses are medical expenses for the public response to kovat public health expenses which would be communication of the public health orders p e for health and safety workers which of course we've purchased for law enforcement and some of our other departments disinfection of public facilities which of course we've increased our cleaning efforts and public safety related to co ed nineteen another eligible use is payroll expenses for public safety public health health care human services and similar employees for employees whose services are substantially homeless populations and finally economic support specifically it says expenditures related to grants to small businesses so we do have good record keeping today's which we wrote which will apply against th grant dollars but we're also looking for other opportunities and expenditures that we would make as we work to to really remediates some of the concerns and the wrists that we have as it relates to exposure to this virus so there's a we just found this out today it was just approved today we're very grateful that jeffco looked at these dollars in terms of cooperation as opposed to a competitive kind of thing and they were really quick to say our cities need this help too so as a staff we're working on what are those expenses and what can we do to make the most  to recover the most of these dollars that we have in front of us from the from the cares act i must say that we're lucky holly has recently worked for the county because she's working hand in hand with financial staff in the county as we're looking for some good accounting notes so that we can make sure that if we're audited that were right in line and not in any violation of any of these rules so all of those are areas that we can look at now we don't have to wait for additional information so we're certainly working very hard on finding out information about what what we can use the funds for how it works and how we collect that information so the third area that we're looking at for revenue is evaluating current revenue structure and what i mean by that is what are we currently getting revenue from and where do we not get revenue from is there areas that other cities collect revenue from that we want to consider or is there new revenue sources that you want to look up  the next area is expenditures and we have four areas to look up for expenditures personnel programs capital projects and other expenses for programs we're looking at considering reshaping reducing and cancelling programs for capital we're looking at what is committed and what we can actually delay and then for other expenses as i mentioned last week we're looking at things like travel training professional services printing copying binding postage and delivery meals expenses dues and membership our acquisitions the savings sure that is approximately nine hundred and fifty thousand which certainly helps us with being able to make reductions and costs but the personnel budget or cost is seventy four coming in or uncertain revenue and as well as what our expenses are you do need to be considering what's happening with the fund balances so we need to look at the general funds the capital fund grants and other  tax or something else we have to assess whether we will have the cash flow to even be able to do that so that's that's the area for fund balance and then also we as i mentioned we want to you to consider some questions that you should start thinking about here are four these are not all of the questions but this is just a start of things to start thinking about the first one is reaffirming the city priorities that's something you want to look at do you want to evaluating the reserve levels that we're going to be asking you about that and making recommendations delaying additional spending beyond the budget so having a discussion about whether you want to approve anything that's beyond the budget and then also revenue sources did you want to pursue any additional revenue sources was there anything you wanted to say on the revenue sources when um thank you just that we have more information if there are questions about revenues i know in the budget knotted committee meeting there was a request to start looking at what those revenues might be so we've got some preliminary preliminary information if anyone's interested in hearing that but we can do that during questions and answers so the last item to talk about is that we will be providing regular updates as i mentioned last week we will be providing them every two or three weeks depending on how much analysis we have to do and our plan make recommendations so i know mike threw a lot of information at you and i'm happy to go back and look at other slides answer questions or participate in discussion whatever reiterate the number and that's gonna be three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine and that webinar id is nine eight zero seven t nine eight eight two four five and we'll give that just a quick second so that the channel a team can make sure they flash that number on the screen and then when we are done with that i'll go to our citizen members christopher scott david whitman and john lodwick sen see if they have any thing to add or any types of question so with that madam clerk five six to seven can you hear me yes lynn good evening oh good last time i dialed in three or more times and couldn't be heard but i'm glad that sticks thank you good evening and i'm glad we can have these  values in lakewood which i believe would have a relevance to our budget is that correct the property values would actually impact i can't hear you on the tape sorry but let's see  we do on the wireless will affect our property values in lakewood and thereby it will affect our budget assuming that you know we have revenue from the property taxes in lakewood that go to the city and that will have a huge impact if we protect our property values and have less impact on them from many wireless towers and facilities throughout the city so we think it is budget related thank you for your consideration and hope to have our session with our experts that we have that is a national expert in communications all right lynne thank you thank you i didn't know if i was going to begin now or later but i appreciate the presentation that holly gave and i wanted to reiterate a few things that were brought up in the budget and audit meeting the first one is a request for  staff to look at how kovat nineteen has shifted some work patterns to see if there's potential long term savings in how employees work and where they work and perhaps minimizing city facility use to reduce lease costs and capital costs so that would be my first request is just as you're evaluating expenses and savings and long term budgets  is there a way to kind of shift what the norm has been to something that's more efficient based on the pattern that we've been forced into and then the second thing would be is there a way that we can engage with jefferson county num ber one to encourage them to allow us to open sooner and in doing so advertise what we have in lakewood to try to bring people who are coming out to our city so that we can capture a bigger share of the revenue i can tell you now as soon as i've given permission to go out my wife and i and my kids are gonna go and eat at restaurants and spend money and i think a lot of people may be thinking the same thing maybe not but that's how where i'm at and i'm wondering if there's a way for us to kind of put our best foot forward with the county and with the state so that when that happens sooner rather than later we can try to get a plan in place to draw people in those would be my two requests in comments thank you mister scott thank you so much thanks for your service on the committee and we'll circle back to those when we get through the public input portion so thank you thank you the salazar next color is called name hello user one if you want to turn the sound off your computer there's a little bit of a delay you are up if you'd give us your name that'd be great ok this is second i gotta turn okay hey my name is john coach and i have a couple of things to say about the budget one i am under the impression that we should be getting some federal money from boom because we are a county that is larger than half a million and i'm trying to figure out exactly where that would fit into the budget and do we have an obligation to replace some kinds of emergency supplies that perhaps have been used i can't quite figure out where that is in our budget and how that went and then the next thing is is  businessmen are women they have said they can't wait anymore they're shutting their doors and they're it's over and and i think some of this is too due to the fact that their while today the governor said was asked when the next date was for opening with restaurants and stuff and he just said there is no date and and holding out without hope is not something that some people can do so i am like concern as to how would you maybe um speak with i don't know public health and get some kind of way of this up a little bit more bars and restaurants that are looking at not even being able to open up until at the end of may or maybe even the middle of june i think it's unrealistic and and certainly doesn't give you any revenue to work with so that's the two things that i'm kind of concerned about as far as revenue and business goes i think the only question that i have is on how some of the grants are going to be given and perhaps i don't think there's anybody out there that knows that that kind of thing is happening and and can wait and i don't know who are those the shareholders that are passing that out and how that is getting out there so anyway those are my concerns thank you very much  thank you miss post wait hear me now we can hear you okay don't have questions per se just wanted to make two suggestions first thing that concerns me is there's a lot of awful emphasis on trying to do something for specific businesses and while that of course is perfectly fine appropriate i'm wondering what can we do for everybody obviously we can't give everybody a loan or a grant or anything like that so i'm thinking what can we do to stimulate our economy and provide a little bit of relief for everybody and still be helping our businesses so an idea that would like to throw out there is could we look into doing a holiday or moratorium or whatever on our sales tax maybe bring that rate down i don't know what a number would be but anyway reduce our sales tax or a certain period and therefore but people are not having to pay as much sales tax they've got a little bit more money in their pocket for the businesses and people got more money in their pocket they're more likely to go to businesses and along the same lines is if businesses in lakewood have lower sales taxes then are adjacent studies we can be attracting people from other cities to come here and spend whatever retail money that they have spend it here so that would be my first suggestion my second suggestion is more on the aesthetics though what it looks like you know people are concerned that they're being asked to make all these sacrifices but you know what about the people to top so i think it would be a good morale booster if the city would say that it's the top tier employees people making over a hundred thousand or something like that whatever again you can come up with ever a number should take some sort of pay cut for a certain amount of period and again all these things are not necessarily real high as far as volume and getting it off a lot of marek impact but i think these two things would reach out the people and saying we're trying to help people at their personal level and i think people would really appreciate that sort of thing those are my two suggestions thank you sir and a couple things i wanted to raise first of all i think that some of the information that we received at the beginning about the situation as it relates to revenues for march is worth thinking through as i just quickly jotted down i think i saw that revenues were off fifteen percent for march and that was half of march that the shutdown was really in effect and restaurants were down thirty two percent i think when you look out in time april is going to be perhaps rougher still because it will be a full month of the shutdown and the revenue hole is likely quite a lot bigger and as a percentage looking out in time i get concerned that this may not resolve quickly and could impact businesses in our community and our community members over a period of time they could extend a bit as as the city council members know we have over time built up reserves to provide a shock  absorber for revenues for circumstances like this they were very helpful in the recession of two thousand and eight two thousand and nine and will be helpful here the one thing i think might be useful is to plot out over time what different scenarios of a return toward normal revenue wise starts to look like and what the impact could be for city city revenues and city budgets think through some options for savings as it relates to expenditures for the city because i think as the data starts to come in it will populate these couple of scenarios and maybe one is things snap back to normal i'd like to think but i'm not sure that that's likely there might be a scenario where things go back toward normal in a sort of august window revenue wise they could be some of the scenarios that people are talking about our extended revenue losses over that could extend through this calendar year and into next and it's those scenarios that start to become challenging for the city to maintain the level of services based on its revenue and even taking into account the reserves so that's one thing that i think could be very helpful to help give city council information to monitor over time and see which of the various revenue scenarios is seemed to be taking hold and what options seem to make most sense as it relates to conserving revenues the one thing i would mention i appreciated miss hodge hudson's discussion of the cares act the one thing i would say is while twelve million dollars sounds like a terrific influx for the city the stipulations on how that money can be used pretty much mean that it's not it's not going to help fill the revenue hole that is developing for the city so i think it would be very helpful to take care of some of the additional expenditures we've had but the things that we i think are going to struggle with is how do we manage to keep the city  able to deliver the services the community of have asked for from it and live within a budget that is likely to be the budget that we have i don't know if we lost you or if you were done i'm done i tried to i didn't hear you cut me off so i wanted to stop it or about three minutes here could i we are good and and i was gonna offer a little bit a joint meeting but we are good if that's what you wanted to to talk about we appreciate that and i will now close the public input portion of our meeting and holly kathy i mean if we want to start with mister scott there were two questions request you know kind of looking at our work patterns and then the second part was how do we you know engage with jefferson county and i think we do see an opening hopefully coming soon but with the first phase on friday but how do we you know work on that promotion of lake woods open for business jeff goes open for business so i turned that over to either one of you or both holly i'll i'll take a run in at first i really appreciate the the recommendations for us to look at the work patterns of employees where we actually are doing that and we're meeting on wednesday to talk about you what is the new norm for us we've had so many employees working remotely and in some cases it's actually more efficient and you can really focus and get work done in other cases we we just have a responsibility for a good customer service and need to be in the city at the desk and respond to citizens so we'll be talking about what that reopening looks like and we'll be doing that on wednesday i agree that there may be some efficiencies that we can experience remember that we have forty nine positions that are unfilled and that's created some interesting efficiencies as well and some real sheriffs in terms of that's later this week and then and then they'll be kind of integrated opening we work with the county public health officials on a regular basis have interactions with doctor johnson and at the very end of  last week's meeting i told you about an individual from doctor johnson's office who was working with our community resources staff to talk about a safe way for us to reopen our recreation centers the cultural centers talked about concerts and areas that we promote congregation of people and what does that look like from a health perspective so i i can assure you that we work on a very regular basis with our partners over in jefferson county and health departments i mean they've been quite resourceful and quite helpful there was another question if you'll allow me there and that was how can people know about grants particular grants from the federal government i think this was around  maybe small business grants what i spoke of earlier and the cure's act and the the statement has a really good web website and we'll make sure that we refer to it on lake woods website too and i think it i don't know exactly what it is dot colorado or something like that and let me let me find that we'll post that on the website on our website so people can lead to it that gives an enormous amount of information in terms of all of the funding all the different funded from the federal government so i'll make sure that we do that cuz i think that would be really helpful and there was there was a question about the federal dollars and just to reiterate  the money was sent directly to cities or counties over five hundred zero and so that would be the city and county of denver received a direct amount ours came through jeffco of a hundred looks like a hundred million dollars  folks but to what john said there are a lot of ties to these dollars and so twelve million may seem like a lot to some mate not to others but we really got to be careful on how we utilize them so detailed sometimes and kind of hard to follow but it's very important and i appreciate the approach of looking at what's going on nationally going on county with the city of denver  all of those things will help us to predict what we need to do in the future because in the end that's what we're gonna have to do we're gonna have to do some predicting based on limited information and and that includes our that we can talk about some of those things that have already been brought up and i sent out an email earlier to to council just to think about some  goals that we need to be thinking about ahead and they're very similar to what polly had presented earlier they're in the same vein what kind of what can we do with the expenses what kind of revenues that we need to look at what are we gonna what kind of decisions that we make about our reserve fund and so forth so i know that it's too early tonight to be making those kind of decisions i don't we can't really expect that well we need to start thinking about them and also be thinking about a process that's the other part is some sort of process as to how we start addressing these issues and do we do it you know piecemeal or or in maybe a better word would be stages where we do things a piece at a time as it comes up and as the information improves and we get more information making additional decisions and i think probably we're going to have to but that  would be my hope tonight to get our input from council and the other thing is i read i just wanted to mention the reason i asked for to have sort of a joint session is to get this out in the open so the public had a chance to hear what information we're operating with and so they can weigh in and also our council and our budget committee can work together our typical way of doing things is that we send it to the budget audit committee and they work things over and then they send it on to counsel and counsel then kind of works it over and then we get a final final decision to move forward on a budget but this year i didn't want to i didn't want to do that in terms of address these issues and that's why i asked for a joint session tonight and i suspect we may be doing more of these in the future to eliminate his extra steps so i just wanted to get that out and i'm very pleased with the way it's going and i questions i wanted to mention two things just to help you so you don't have to take notes those slides will be posted the the slides that holly refer to have a lot of information on them so she'll be posting those and we'll make sure that the budget not at committee the citizen members also get a copy of those slides and finally a wholly spoke of the goal is to have updates to you every two or three weeks as information becomes available so that you can continue to be thinking about these big policy decisions just so you know that information will be emailed to you and it'll be posted online won't fall into the weather the regular  council meetings because we want this information to be real time and as current and accurate as possible so you'll be getting those outside of the normal rhythms of your packet information i hope that's alright but i think by doing that the that's going to look like to help our small businesses is that something that we can tap into the twelve million and i answer that please um you know it's explicit  eligible uses it says economic support and in trends that says expenditures related to grants to small businesses so it it seems easy to me if you it's pretty explicit  along that same vein then the second round of the charitable giving that we've improved for kovat only that is also a grain program that goes to the local nonprofits would that also be with those funds that we're gonna talk about next monday would that also be available from the twelve million so that isn't i don't have an easy answer to that we need to do some additional work i was looking at the actual appears act itself it seems as if that would be as remember with that particular grant we were the people who apply for that needed to show a direct connection second rich second reading on may th we'll have a it seems i get with it but i want to do a little more work to make sure both of those programs down that we've been discussing could actually come from that from the jeffco dollars we're getting and wouldn't be coming from the general funds them so that sounds that's helpful okay thank you that's all i had thank you mister abel you are unmuted mayor when i send in my questions i forgot a couple of things one is that last year we budgeted expecting a normal year and in normal december's we have very very few building permits issue especially for multi family homes this year we did a land office business i understand six hundred or so units so did we did that increase and building permits result in any kind of end of the year fund balance okay a couple of questions when we were talking about the electronic shopping portion that was in the graph since a lot of people are doing curbside pickup of groceries and etc et where does that come into play is it considered online like grocery are they still considered groceries or how does that come in the electronic shopping because i know i've spent a lot time opening amazon boxes i'm assuming that part goes into the electronic shopping but i know a lot of people are picking up groceries and etc on curbside where does where do those happen really indicates something that my co counselor counselor levere has been talking about on budget committee for a long time and that is diversified diversify diversified one of the things that we've got to do is look at different forms of income rather than just sales tax i don't know what that's going to be yet i don't have the answer but i believe that that's something that we're going to have to explore and the other thing just a quick story of  using technology offended the family getting a building permit in fort collins they didn't want to come to his home so what he did was he made a zoom appointment just like we've got right here and he took his phone around in the area that he needed to get the permit and the permit was actually issued based on that i'm assuming we're looking at those kind of technologies and good that's perfect because that saves fuel for a vehicle it saves time the employee can be more efficient i mean there was multiple win wins i think in that scenario so i'm thrilled we're doing that that's all the i had thank you mister harrison just to reiterate on the grocery piece just keep in mind we do just that lakewood is pretty uh pretty frugal we don't collect that sales tax on groceries and also just when doing it sort of tertiary review of what other cities in jefferson county are taxing people at just want to give you guys some with our neighbors some of those numbers just so they get a sense that you know we are we are pretty conservative with halle tax here in lakewood and and i think that's a point of pride for most  the residents here as well so just want to bring that out but you know i also want to mention that we have talked a lot on budget on it for the last year about really every every side of  financial picture whether it's debt or expenses or revenue and i think from the slides i get the sense that everything is kind of on the table and there's we're sort of looking at a holistic approach and i think that's that's the right thing as far as process i don't i don't know what that looks like that's something we kind of have a challenge with and it's hard to get everybody in the same room and this format i don't know if it makes it easier i think it probably doesn't  but you know i think that's something we need to dig into and one question i had on that was around performance increases i assume we've already approved all those based on last year budget is that correct so those have probably all gone through for this fiscal year that is correct counselor our performance compensation was already approved the average was two percent so that's that's we're kind of you know everything we look at is gonna be a little bit of chewing around the edges i think obviously our reserve fund is one of the best for protections we have i think there might be some say i don't know if we figured out the number ceo pease that you know that's probably not gonna have it that doesn't happen i don't think till the very end of the year but that might be a million dollars i don't know if that's the right number or not if we looked into that i know we talked about it a couple of times  do think you know i'd love to hear good ideas about you know more ways that we might be able to save money obviously obviously vacancy savings it looks like it's one of our best options  far and then the other side of it is the the revenue piece we've talked a lot about diversification as councillor harrison suggested but i'd love to hear more ideas about you know revenue whether that's taxes fees that sort of thing obviously these are this is a challenging time i think for any of those conversations so i think we'd have to be really nimble or careful in a way we discussed them but i think you know i'd love to hear those ideas thanks mayor is that something you want me to review the yeah if there's anything you can address via that also and i don't know if you were you're holly were prepared for the c p i mean we can get that information i think you're probably right jacob it is like a million plus coming off this year or next year but we could certainly if we don't have that tonight get that information for council i appreciate that  many different things for instance i was thinking in terms of planning for the future and so if we have waves this virus comes through time we for instance stockpile a personal protective gear to a certain extent because i know a lot of places were cut up start not having enough of that  so that's a question and then a question would be for could we start a list of places where we might be able to cut back if we need to or create more efficiencies and and when and how do those kind of decisions come to council in particular because i know overall picture of you know what is our budget and what are our revenues versus expenses that was mentioned that a good part of the budget goes to two salar but wait what are some of those other expenses so maybe we can you know fill that out a little bit over time and just i guess i'm wondering what what do we as people who are representing the eligible uses are so thank yes you want to address that or yeah so okay so let me kind of dismantle that a little bit so as it relates to what the eligible charges are against the cares act that's really up to the definition of the coronavirus relief fund and i have it in my hand and it tell it tells you for sure which can't what you can't get reimbursed on and that's the work we're doing now in terms of really digging into this into this information to this act to see what will be eligible i'll tell you right now it says funds may not be used to fill shortfalls in government revenue to cover expenditures that would not otherwise qualify under the statute although a broad range of uses is allowed revenue replacement is not a permissible use of fund payments so that's that's pretty clear a lot of it isn't clear it talks about  expenditures incurred because of this particular outbreak and that's really where we need to look into that we're lucky because we're doing this with our partners and at the state and at the county level so that we can make sure that we're in compliance and that we don't do something and that's going to get us in trouble and end up violating the intent and having to return the dollar so we will be creative but also very judicious about following the rules  then councilor springs and i think staff is working individually as relates to their departments and what recommendations that they're going to bring forward some departments have more latitude than others  example if you think about like the community resources department and all of those offerings that we have that's a very large department and if we needed to make some significant cuts what those would be so compare t and some of the breadth of opportunity if you want to look at it that way with the community resources and then compare that to like municipal courts who has it's very defined what they do who they need to run the courts and how that goes i would i would suggest that they have much less as it relates to margins in terms of some of those reductions and of course because public safety is the number one priority of our of our city council we would be really careful when it came to looking at the police department that would we sure don't want to compromise our ability to enforce a law and and to sacrifice people's public safe so you can't look at this across the board evenly you have to look department by department and we have had a number of conversations we will be prepared to bring it to you for your approval and i think it is i think it's smart to do it by way of option so there's there's what mister ludwig sensei he called it kind of plotted over time and different tiers if you will in terms of those reductions those are the decisions that will come to you once we get better information from our cfo in terms of what's the problem we're trying to solve how much is that but in the meantime we're doing kind of wholesale stuff  that when we have some more definitive numbers in terms of what that gap is and what you know and if this additional stimulus if there isn't anything to them and there is an additional dollars that will help recover our revenues what does that mean so that would be something we bring to you with these two every two to three week update so you're very informed so it's kind of like we're working in tandem staff is putting their packages together and as time goes on that'll be more refined so that we can put tiers or buckets together and then you decide what you believe is the right response in representing your constituents so it's it's gonna be pretty fluid this isn't anything well we certainly couldn't do it tonight because we don't know what what that what that nut is that we're trying to solve but over time we will become we'll have more information and and i'm really impressed with the department head they they're really thinking they're thinking outside of the box in terms of do we really need to do these services and what will we recommend to city council because we understand this isn't this isn't a little haircut this is this is going to be significant  so they're being very creative and i have to hand it to them and i think people are all getting sleepless nights haven't sleepless nights over it but i'm proud of that that they're really doing the hard work so i know see there was to that as time goes on  that conversation but first i also just really want to thank our staff and then you know for this update and then also the additional updates that'll be coming at this point you know we really just don't know quite yet what the problem is that we're trying to solve and i think that makes all this very difficult for everybody because we just have no idea what the extent of the problem is gonna be yet but i appreciate that we're gonna continue to stay in the loop i also will say that me personally i'm the kind of person that likes to plan for the worst and so when i hear these conversations about you know th state planning for twenty five percent budget cuts that's kind of where mine my mind is starting to go that that could could and maybe likely even be a reality for us in lakewood as well so i'm i'm glad we're having these conversations early and i think that the questions that you laid out for us including reaffirming our city priorities i think that makes a lot of sense as a place to start  i also think that i will be interested in knowing more about what you just mentioned miss hobson which is how is each department impacted by these changes differently so our police department costs will probably go up i would imagine our parks and rec department their cost could potentially go down where their programming will probably be significantly impacted just by social distancing requirements and and all of that so i i think that would be really helpful for us understand what changez kind of are out of our control and are dictated by this public health crisis for each department because that will probably have a big impact on those budgets um i also wanted to just kind of i know we're under a hiring freeze right now and i wanted to understand are we under a kind of spending freeze as well if you will of just kind of anything that's not necessary to keep the lights on i would say everything is extra scrutinized any we're looking right now at all of the capital planned programs and looking at differing those if it  and safety issue what can we do to just get us through this year without additional expenditures so yeah everything is is really scrutinized thank you i i just wanted to make sure the community knows that and understand know those steps are already being taken so i appreciate that i think that's all i have to right now thank you can i add to that conversation one more piece i'm sorry as a relates to community resources and all of the myriad programs that are offered for our kids it we just heard last week that jeffco public schools have closed their facilities until july st so that has a big impact on us we've in we've used we've utilized the school facilities to run summer programs and so if there's if the facilities are closed you know that that puts us in a role in a real dilemma because those are facilities that we would otherwise fill with summer camp kids so and then think about the parents who are at home and the parents who need to go back to work and all of that so with every action is is a reaction that we're having to deal with so that's enough it's another concern for us not to mention social distancing little kids i mean that's another big challenge hopefully we won't again i absolutely agree with you that expenses need to be looked department specific that's absolutely correct public safety has to come first for me and i appreciate that she said that your that the spending is being scrutinized on all levels in all ways this is a moving target and that's what makes it so hard  a couple things came to thought for me when sean mud woodson was speaking he said that we need to live within our budget and i got to thinking that we really can't expect to be made whole by any of this additional money that we are getting the feds are giving cities money in different ways it was mentioned hospitals of course they're small businesses you've got the cares act you've got all different pots of money but that money is coming from someplace and it's being pulled from some other department i would hate to think that the printing presses are up and running just to do that in a lot of ways this is a great opportunity for us and i think if we kind of turn the paradigm around that we can really  learn from this that might be a good thing and the idea of looking employees maybe working from home yes that's actually a really thoughtful way to start with some of this if it saves money and we get the work done and it's working okay then that  maybe should be considered a long term solution  in keeping with that too i would imagine that was in the community there's going to be less need for office space i'm not sure how that's going to translate as far as leases and rinse and how that will  affect us how that will look for us i don't know but more people are probably going to start working at home there was one thing that came to my attention a couple of months ago when i was re municipal charge on there for four dollars and fifteen cents maybe at some point we could find out a little bit more about that i mentioned that to a few people and i still like to know a little bit more where that money is being used and just exactly how that how we're using that and i believe it was john somehow to take a look at the relief for all of the businesses somehow you know if that means to relieve fees or late tax something regarding travel and meals the public perception of that right now i i think that's absolutely appropriate that that kind of thing needs to be curtailed and if that means it looks like there's a lot of other areas that we can tap into grant money all kinds of things and we just really don't everybody's recognizing that we do not have a good handle on our piggy bank right now and until we actually know how much is in there how much is going to be continued to be put in there and what our needs are then i think we just have everything needs to be worked in thank you okay so i have a couple questions or maybe some comments and just to summarize so mister b kicked us off kind of talking you know about what the process looks like in it sounds like it's gonna be an ongoing process with updates where we'll probably be having to we will be revisiting this you know could be two weeks from how it could be three weeks it could be four weeks in that timeframe though with what we know from the state and the city and county of denver is it worth setting are there scenarios where we say well we're gonna start to out fifteen percent twenty five percent thirty percent and this is what that would look like as far as an organization you know or god forbid fifty percent so i don't know as you're evaluating that what you think the best way to do that but i think that does make sense because we are starting to see some indicators and we certainly know let's say minimum fifteen percent hey council this is what fifteen percent would look like these are the types of things that we these are the types of things that we'd be looking at is that mean is that something that is in line with how you were looking at producing the information going forward i don't think we've gotten that spec can sure look at it i mean that's i think it's premature then certainly you know we don't know what we don't know but if we can start to you know roadmap out so council can start thinking to say this is what that might look like here or there you know that that might be helpful for the group okay the other thing your clan is we're looking at that going from a v to a dummy unfortunately and when we look at budgeting out the rest of this year are we looking at you know trying to peek in two thousand and twenty one tw twenty three and i know we're on a fiscal we're different ours is calendar then the others that are doing that but is that something that we should be looking at as well  giving some scenarios within that range or providing you know at fifteen percent this is what the impact would be etc and then also with what was your second through at least twenty three twenty three if not further out than that the other thing that i think and and i need to check this and if anybody on on the in the meeting knows i think the unemployment benefits may be run out on the st of july i don't know if that's accurate or not but right now there has been some tremendous support to have unemployment benefits provided for a lot of people if that drops off i think we're gonna see even more so we still have some folks that still have a bility to spend and consume but if we see that drop off flat come august st you know that could really take us down a lot further and my last question is just to verify and i don't know if you know this miss hudson is the local government is this still the bills that congressman agusan perlmutter are trying to put through that would bring some direct infusion into the local city yes that is that's the one i was referring to and evidently nancy pelosi has also talked about introducing something so i haven't heard the latest but i believe there is some about revenue mister bina can you hear me yep just one side on your suggestion mayor about possibly some different scenarios you know let's say  percent what does that look like and what i'd like to see is part of that is some likely scenarios or likely candidates you know so fifteen percent translates good those are going to be policy decisions you know as to what where we cut and where we don't the other thing that occurs to me is that this is going to be a time driven kind of situation ongoing where you know might be fifteen percent today but if that continues over a period of six months that fifteen percent is going to grow to much larger  you know deficit so that necessarily means we have to do it in stages i think say well right now we're at a fifteen percent next months we come back well it looks like we're still in that same mode and now we're down to twenty so we're not gonna have to do some additional cuts and then next month maybe looks like you know it's gonna be worse than that and so i'm thinking this this is gonna have to be  terms of as we start planning for scenarios thank you sir so miss hudson and this has been brought up in previous conversations and as part of the budget and audit committee and it really was a part of one of councils main goals and that was municipal funding kind of from a to z and our book comes from sales tax and there's a whole variety of different things that exist and it's important to note to the community that you know this is just a conversation and an education for everything but i would say that it's important that we do plan for the worst because we're facing something we've just never seen before quite yet and what's that what that would be so with that i know that your team has done some work just to inform and so i'll turn it over to you yeah thank you so this is i just want to qualify first this is just a laundry list that the financial staff and some of the department heads came up with some of these you're gonna find very distasteful some are less tasteful than others and again it's just a wholesale list so i just want to throw this out and get you thinking about this these this list are represents new revenue opportunities for the city some other cities deploy these kind revenues others we've just learned about so these again we don't currently have these revenue sources right this gives you a sense for some opportunities it should you be interested the first one and these are in no particular order so the first one is restating the tax on food on groceries we believe that would yield us somewhere between seven and ten million would there's a potential of eliminating certain sales tax exemptions to better align with the state as an example electric vehicles that would yield about nine hundred thousand dollars cigarettes eight hundred thousand dollars other non essentials that's a real small line something we don't do as taxation of storage facilities and we believe that would yield about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year additional residential areas so if you think about online online shopping and where those are delivered to that's an interesting one especially i didn't say these are all good ideas  especially when you think of the cost service costs hmm drawing some kind of designation retailer somebody like topgolf i don't know how reasonable that is but that would be one that would be a real revenue draw different kinds of fees of public safety fee a property tax will increase we can do an increase on our accommodations tax right now a lot as we call it our lodgers tax which is our economic development tax not that hotel uses up right now but when it is right now we collect three percent and some other communities collect as high as five percent so that would be an option is recreational marijuana that's something that we don't have here in the city currently that went to the vote of the people in two thousand and fourteen that would be a new revenue if you decided to bring in or if there was a vote of the people to bring in recreational marijuana that would be a new revenue source and there's more and more and more and i'm sure you have a lot of questions about that that these are just really high levels so we're not in  could be good ideas some could be bad ideas they all could be great they could all be bad but to keep this council kind of thinking about this as we move forward i think that was an important part of that he's so  anything else from council any other questions related to kind of where we're at it sounds like we'll be continuing to have updates and then see those different scenarios and different modeling things as we move forward i don't see anything else i think it's important if we have the opportunity to observe this talk to your neighbors your residence and and see if they have any more questions and we can continue to bring those in and as soon as i try to close something out after i say anybody else have questions all the lights go on mister the beer yeah sorry about that man concrete that we could look at that might give us a better idea of like how much a storage facility wherever new my you know increase might impact the city i think that's the kind of thing that you know some of those things might facility owners but you know those are the type of things that i think would be good for us to take a look at you know same thing on the expense or debt side obviously i don't know if that's helpful but just my thought hanson as worth thinking about that i you you have a short list and i know you've spent some time and we want to keep our focus on the immediacy of this is what you just read us is that available in firm or would that take a would that be something that you could share absolutely i mean i'd be happy to share it as long as you just realize it's just real conceptual and those are just those are just options for you to be thinking about i didn't really understand the expense side counselor the bureau i'm not sure what you're looking for we have a budget book which describes all of our expenses which sorry what i meant was if we are proposing certain things just having some sort of something specific visually then we might be able to read or you know on the it see you just read off  i'm gonna go to miss johnson then i'll close it out with mister betta where we started thank you cathy i appreciate you giving us that list you mentioned to reinstate the food tax and you threw out the number seven to ten million i was on the committee that helped to form that policy to eliminate that i was wondering since you've got an amount there as there was if you were even looking at a particular amount of tax for food would be the first question and the second one would be anything that we do we also need to be looking at the other side of it as far as a sunset you know that maybe some of these revenue enhancers would would only be in place for say a year or say six months  particular land that you that the city is looking at as a potential for that no no no that's just this is a conceptual thing and while i have the floor i would say the amount was just applying our sales tax of three percent on grocery that that's that's where that number came from and that when you talk about over a period of time that's that's the prerogative of the city council some talk as far as a sunset at some point and recreational marijuana was mentioned i'd like to see that one actually taken off the table the people spoke on that about four or five years ago they worked hard to fight that i do not see the people putting that up for discussion i think that the marijuana industry is maybe kind of driving  that that message but it hasn't been coming to from the people certainly nobody has lobbied me for having recreational pot i think in the last eight and a half years maybe once somebody thousand and fourteen but for the record no staff is not putting anything on the table they're merely giving council a list of things that are taxed or not taxed allowed not allowed in our other communities and what that means so please like we got to make sure it's not anybody putting things on the table all it is is giving us a list of different things that are out there and when when it's phrased in certain ways it grows legs so i people are suffering financially in our community and so ideas like putting a tax on groceries could could really affect some folks inordinate lis and so we need to be careful about that so just just a a comment yeah hey certainly and i appreciate that and councils gonna see things all over the ice again this is just to throw it out  ether for council to have an understanding but yeah there's always going to be that was one of the arguments of why we got rid of it right it's a regressive tax in some ways so certainly all that would be just trying to ain't trying to arm council with as much information and paths forward as we can to face the uncertain future so mister be that bring us home i will do that mayor just one question when can we do you know time when we're gonna be addressing this and getting more information from our staff i don't want to just leave it in the air can i offer looks like poly i think i'm accurate  saying we're hoping to get our april receipts by end of may so at least we'll have some more information in terms of what exactly what exactly that goal is on the revenue side is that right holly i think it little a little less than a month and it'll be final but at least it'll be it'll give us more information what does i'm looking at you holly is that something that you think will have some additional information to share and we kind of a further conversation close to final on the april numbers so okay that'll be good michelle can i ask you to book it please thank you done mister betta smiling which means we all right so with that that is all that we had so counsel thank you so much bjorklund thank you very much for your your first real meeting here digging right into the depths we really appreciate and want to welcome you again t city of lakewood can i say one more teeny thing holly this is her second week she's had two weeks with us and i think she's done an amazing job already so that's just my i'm biased but i'm really grateful for all right i think last time i started with ward one this time i'll start with ward five and work my way down so i'm gonna unmute both ward five councilmembers for reports thank paul we had our board meeting on saturday morning and thank you for joining us we did a zoom meeting  had the community call in and zoom in and we had around forty people i think on our meeting it was really good to get to see people's faces that we haven't been able to see in a long time so overall it went well it's certainly not the same but we all got through it so that's good and you know we had a good discussion about all of these these types of topics and we're able to get a little bit of feedback and we're hoping to get some more about just the way that we're responding to kovat and that is all i have right thank you miss harrison anything  i was out of town with my family over the weekend so dana did a great job and i appreciate all all that you and dana did thank you it was easy thank you glad you're back  saturday of course it's a virtual meeting it'll be our second one nine thirty to eleven per normal we've sent that out to our newsletter and then it'll be posted obviously on the city website and going out through social media  we will have a guest speaker from the lakewood police department's emergency management division and what we are asking for is if you have questions related to that if you can get those to us ahead of schedule ahead of that meeting we can get them over make sure that we're well prepared to get answers to those so again this coming saturday nine thirty a m it will be a zoom meeting and please get us any questions you might have for  we're gonna try to do a award meeting on zoom again this this month that's all i got but we're still working on details so thanks and i'm just hoping by the time we are done with these zoo meetings i can figure out the lighting in my house i'm having a heck of a time with that so thank you all and good night unfair advantage instead of adam we had doctor mark johnson it was rhaenys idea to invite doctor johnson and it was very very informative doctor johnson stayed with us for two and a half hours the that man is dedicated so great idea write me and i'll turn it over to you thank you charlie i wish just like to follow up on our ward meeting that we had saturday charlie and i both appreciated and welcomed everybody into our home that time and i want to thank folks for spending their saturday with  i cannot speak high enough for doctor johnson he actually is my hero he stayed with us for two and a half hours and every question that someone had he answered extremely thoroughly i never expected that kind of a commitment and but he was there for us thank you doctor johnson and i'd also like to thank the community you know all of us our nerves are getting frayed each one of us as i look at your pictures on a personal level we're all struggling with this with our own families and homes and each one of us has our own  personal way of trying to deal with this but i have received calls and emails of kindness and endearing words and we do come together there are some positive things that are going to come from this i believe in our community i believe in lakewood and frankly council i believe in all of you we will make it through this and we will be stronger we will have more insight and will be better for it at some point thank you god bless you all thank you thank you okay so i have a couple quick things as you can imagine and because we encourage folks to get out and enjoy our wonderful parks also would encourage you to respect the rules and stay on the trails especially in our open space areas which are seeing a lot of love but some little bit of trailblazing which we don't try to make new trails on our own so please if you are out there enjoying try to stay on the trails it's muddy you know it's not a good time to be biking up there so especially in the green mountains and bear creek areas i want to give a shout out to our police we've gotten some emails about how they've really helped make little ones birthdays who weren't able to celebrate something special and so i want to thank the chief and the patrol folks who are trying to get out there and do that i would also like to give them a shout out because i have seen a few speed traps throughout the community and a lot of unhappy speeders pulled over on the side of the road but that is exactly what we've wanted to see because we know that that is a an issue amongst many in our community a lot of special kids getting ready to graduate class of tw twenty a special year but the festivities that probably won't be as special for this group so if you have a chance to interact with any of the high schools in your wards or throughout the city please take the time to maybe drop a note to th seniors and wish them the best as they move forward into this new world and then last but not least something that we hear a lot about and we've seen a lot of emails about masks and mandatory masks and we certainly want to emphasize please if you can and you're able wear a mask when you're in public especially as we begin to open up and i know the health department is continuing to weigh if that would be something that would be a mandatory thing throughout our communities and i've heard for many council members who want to just continue to monitor that but i think the more compliance that we can get amongst ourselves self compliance the better off we will certainly be so again want to thank everybody exactly so good night