Common Council Finance Committee

1. 0:03Just because it was the first year was kind of a shot in the dark.
2. 0:05Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we looked we looked at like what Great Barington was doing and they were bringing in like $1.3 million in the last 2000 seemed reasonable.
3. 0:15It's a very established market.
4. 0:17Yeah. Yeah.
5. 0:19So,
6. 0:21um Okay. So, again, as I said at the beginning, 2025 is not closed yet. There's still work that has to be done, but I I like to try and give people a ballpark idea of where we are netting. As we all know, the city lost $1.3 million alone in 2024. Um, and it looks like 2025 we're going to be about half a million dollars in uh in the red as well. It's not great. Obviously, um there will be I think that number will change and hopefully become a little uh
7. 0:53a little better uh because between as we said the lodging tax that's going to get charged back and I think there's some grant expenditures for which we have to book the corresponding revenue that hasn't been done yet. That's sort of a change in accounting procedures as of last year. Um that might be like another 100,000. So that may take the loss more down to like you know 380 somewhere in that range. Um uh but again, you know, we'll have better consent on that at the next finance meeting and then obviously once we file. So just so you know, we
8. 1:22filed with this state. Uh it has to be filed by May 1st. It's called the AFR, which is the annual financial report. As soon as that's filed, I make that public on the website, of course, and I generally provide a highlight summary to you guys. Um, and then auditors come in, the independent auditors come in and audit all of the financials and they will often find something that they think needs to be recorded in a different way. So, you know, um, so we shall speak, but that's that's roughly the timing. So, so we're all free on that.
9. 1:51So, May there will be
10. 1:53May 1 there will be public numbers which the auditors may or may not agree with depending on the year and the auditor. Yes. Um, so just to give you a sense of where we are, the total fund balance at the end of the year for 2024 was 4.6 million, but what everybody thinks of when they talk about fund balance is actually just the unrestricted fund balance and that was 2.27. Um, if I take that 484 and I assume we get another 100 grand in revenue against it, uh, bringing that down to, you know, roughly 384, that would take our potential, uh, unrestricted fund balance
11. 2:26down to about 1.88 million. uh that is a little under 12% of annual uh projected revenues. Uh the office of the state controller will not give guidelines in terms of how much unrestricted fund balance you should have but the uh government financial officers association does and they say at minimum it should be two months which is roughly 17%. Um so ideally we would like to see that number be closer at a minimum to 2.66 million as opposed to 188. So um you know not not not the best
12. 3:00two trends in the world right now but there is some um bright side because um we do have to remember that um 2024 and 2025 in particular and and before that as well but we had other offsetting um things um but had some significant uh expenditures related to the DRRI grant and related to uh the Ferry Street Bridge. And um you know, people think you get a $10 million grant and it's great except if you have to borrow for five years and you have to pay interest on everything that you borrowed for that five years and then after you borrowed for a couple years, you have to start paying the principal down on what you're borrowing. So, you can't borrow as much. It ends up costing
13. 3:45a fair amount of money. Um I think the last time I looked, the the $10 million DRRI grant has cost us roughly $1.6 million. um same thing with the fairy street bridge. Um a better situation in that hopefully we're going to be borrowing for less time. Um and much like the DRRi, in theory, there's enough grant money uh to cover pretty much the entire expenditure. So I don't anticipate for either the DRRI or for the Ferry Street Bridge that we're going to have any significant amount of long-term debt that comes out of it. Um
14. 4:23so assuming um assuming that goes away just to give you perspective just for the interest the interest and the the required uh principal down payment for the short-term borrower for the GRRI was $613,000 in 2025 and it's projected to be $771,000 in 2026. Um so assuming we get the reimbursements in time so that we don't have to borrow again in this year. Um, most of that will go away. We will have at least one new debt service, which is the pumper truck that you guys authorized, I don't
15. 4:58know, three years ago or whatever it was. Um, but that's going to be underund should be under $100,000 a year in debt. So, you know, that's that's some, you know, good news at least. Um, any questions on that? Um, since this is this is my first year here, so excuse me if this is a dumb question.
16. 5:23No dumb question.
17. 5:24Um,
18. 5:26what's holding us back from recouping the money for the fair stream? Is it just kind of the way it is? The state just state of the various grants just take a long time to
19. 5:36um, it depends on the grant. Yes. In this case, it's actually a bigger issue than that and it's actually mentioned on uh further in. Okay. Um so it's obviously not a stupid question because I actually have a bullet point about it somewhere.
20. 5:49Um in this particular case, there has been a problem with um the engineering firm who is responsible for submitting for the reimbursements. That's part of their job and being the manager. And they just haven't done it yet. even though the bridge has been open for almost a year.
21. 6:07Do they not have a liability?
22. 6:09Well,
23. 6:09especially since it's costing us
24. 6:10interesting that you should ask that because I actually sent, you know, Rod has been trying um to get them in gear. So, literally last week or this almost been last week. I sent something to Andy Howard, who's our city attorney, and basically said, you know, this is how much it's costing us. If we have to borrow again because we don't get the reimbursement by the time our short-term borrowing expires or it matures at middle of June,
25. 6:35um it could cost us another, you know, $400 to $500,000. And I said, that sounds like breach a contract to me. And so, um we now are scheduling a call with the engineering firm. Um we're in the process of doing that now to have a discussion with them. So, I'm sorry. What's not something not done? Not finished or
26. 6:53paperwork during the
27. 6:55Yeah. Like
28. 6:56just silly. We're driving on the bridge.
29. 6:58Oh,
30. 6:59yeah. And it's it's my understanding is that um this same engineering firm has worked with the same vendor that we have been dealing with on that project and they have started and finished and gotten the reimbursements all faster than anything that's happening. So, I think it might be, you know, the specific team within the firm that was assigned to our project, but um yeah, we're at the point where we're, you know, we're having significant discussions and including the attorney at this point. So,
31. 7:29when we're low on our fund balance, any little bit helps.
32. 7:32Yeah, for sure. Um,
33. 7:34thanks.
34. 7:35Yeah. Um, so we basically talked about the financial reporting timing already, so I'll skip over that. Um, I won't go into the financial systems stuff. Suffice it to say that it's still missing capabilities that we need. That's probably going to have some extra costs associated with it. Hopefully, we can cover it with the amount that we're incumbering from the software development uh from 2025. Um it it's just, you know, it's still relatively new software, but it seems like every day we come up there's another problem like something's not working right. And it's um it's it's
35. 8:08stressful, not going to lie. Uh foreclosure proceedings. Um, we now have uh 10 properties who've entered into installment payment plans. There's two more scheduled on my calendar uh to bring in them. Uh, as you know, we sent out a final boarding letter to the people that did not owe significant balances um that uh due date uh in order to redeem was 320. So, uh the finalist will be going to the attorney uh tomorrow in fact to begin title searches which means the title search costs will be added onto uh the properties.
36. 8:41Um, you know, we started with 152 properties. We're down to 27. So, uh, pretty successful in, uh, being able to recoup a fair amount of money and get people off the list, which is obviously our goal, um, without spending a significant amount of money yet. Um, but now that part begins. Um, so yeah, as I said, we're going to order title searches and then we start the whole official proceedings. Um other items we talked about this might be a paddic place. We're finally in a position to put that on the market.
37. 9:12So uh spoke with Andy and he's targeting um April um we're working with uh the planning board and to uh to streamline um uh esprocesses which have gotten very uh cumbersome. Uh retirement's another hot mess in terms of mandatory reporting that we have to do and our inability to get the data we need out of our payroll system because of the way that it was poorly implemented. Um, so that's going to be something that we continue to pursue and I imagine might also be an expense that
38. 9:48we might have to incur because like it has to get fixed, right? Because otherwise we won't be able to do the reporting right without significant human intervention and it's something that has to be done every single month. Um, uh, SID, we talked about that. So, um, they've actually been made whole in terms of the money that we collected. We originally talked about giving them half and then half and frankly we had enough cash flow in the general fund and it's easier for me to make them whole with the amount. It's what we do with the water sewer relevy.
39. 10:21We immediately turn around and give the cash back out to the the funds so they have the full operating cash. So we did the same thing with the SID. We're treating it the same way. Uh lodging tax. This is more of an FYI for you guys in case any of your constituents reach out to you. Something funky is going on. Uh Columbia County apparently recently contracted with Airbnb to collect tax for them. Our STR operators started getting communications from Airbnb saying, "Hey, we're going to be collecting Columbia County lodging tax directly from you now
40. 10:56and paying directly on your behalf." Well, that's a problem because number one,
41. 11:00we have our own.
42. 11:00We have our own.
43. 11:02We don't pay Columbia County. Uh, so I reached out to the county and said, "What's going on?" The business manager there is saying that they only contracted for sales tax, but they're literally sending notices saying that they're collecting lodging tax. So, I asked for the Airbnb, whoever he was dealing with at Airbnb to sign the contract. So, you know, it's a sales guy. So, you know, he's eager to meet because he's going to try and pitch us and I'm just trying to get the information. So,
44. 11:29had a back and forth with them. sent them a list of questions which is basically what are you actually doing for Columbia County? Is it just sales tax? If it's sales tax, why are you sending out notices that say it's lodging tax? It might be because they're both 4% and they got,
45. 11:43you know, between sales and implementation is always a mess. I used to work in software, so it's always a mess.
46. 11:50Um, so it might be that. And I said, but conversely, if you are in fact collecting lodging tax, is there a carb up for the city? And I tried to explain the whole thing. So, you know, we're working on trying to get it figured out, but just in case any of your constituents say like, you know, like I've had people reach out to me saying like, but I got the same saying that they're paying my tax for me. So, why is local gov, which is who we use, why is local gov telling me I still owe taxes.
47. 12:15And it's like it's a it's a mess. And apparently it's a mess of the county as well because they're also getting the county STR people are also getting mixed messages. So, yeah. Um so some things uh I mentioned in the last meeting but now that we're actually in the finance committee meeting per se some things I would like to request that actually be considered by the finance committee. Um one would be the procurement policy. Uh it would be simply just adopting the state policy. Um so however the state evolves theirs
48. 12:48ours would evolve naturally as well. We have our own now and it's quite outdated. The limits are much lower than the state. So that's an easy fix. um department and BEA budget transfer authorizations. Currently, a department can authorize up to $500 between their line items. The BEA, usually a BEA resolution, which is just two out of the three DBA signatures for up to a thousand. And anything, thousand higher has to go to the whole council for approval. Those have been the same limits for probably 30 years. So you
49. 13:19know in the interest interest of efficiency both in terms of departmental management and in terms of the council and what you should be spending your time on I would propose that we look at increasing those levels and that's something that we can all discuss in terms of what those levels might be but it might be you know a department that could do up to a thousand BBA could be 5,000 and anything over 5,000 would go to the council or maybe even 5 to 10k something like that but do
50. 13:46you have any recommendation Um, let me think about it.
51. 13:51These are just uh line item transfers rather than department transfers.
52. 13:54They'd be they'd be budgetary transfers within any of the lines in a given department.
53. 14:01Okay, that makes sense.
54. 14:02Yeah,
55. 14:03because it's not like you're taking money from a different department. It's from Correct. You budgeted for this, right?
56. 14:08We anticipate this is not going to need that. So, you need it for Yeah.
57. 14:11Yeah. Exactly. And it doesn't also would not impact budget amendments at all. Budget amendments always have to come before the council regardless of how much they are. Uh council member health insurance. This is something this is not necessarily an immediate thing either but um as you know council members are um able to take the health insurance. Um in some cases it becomes um operationally problematic because the actual contribution from the council member um exceeds the amount of the council member's paycheck which means now council members have to like remember to come in and write a check and then we have to deposit so we have enough money to pay the actual health insurance bill. Um it's a pain in the
58. 14:55ass. Pardon my language sorry. Um, so one idea I had, and again this is just, you know, for discussion, but one idea I had was potentially indexing the council member pay to whatever the health insurance co-pay, not co-ay, sorry. Um, what do you call it?
59. 15:14The premium. Yeah.
60. 15:17Well, the the contribution toward the premium. um indexing that so at least there would always be enough money and the paychecks are done so that yeah as L's nodding in the back or she does payroll and and it's dealing with this issue. So, um,
61. 15:34uh, I'm not getting what what do you mean by indexing like just keeping him back instead of
62. 15:40I'm saying like let's say the the highest contri let's say the highest contribution so the family contribution for the MVP plan let's say it's $400.
63. 15:52Yeah.
64. 15:54Make the council
65. 15:56salary $400.
66. 15:58I see. So there in the payroll to cover the expenditure and then index it so that if it goes up
67. 16:06if MVP goes up next year by 2%
68. 16:09I see what you're saying
69. 16:10the pay go by 2%.
70. 16:12The council start
71. 16:15it increased like once a couple years ago I think but not by much. They were trying to reduce the number of council just to pay for something else.
72. 16:22Well, that doesn't work.
73. 16:25That's not a bad idea either, but I didn't put that one on my list. Um, and the other thing I I would like to discuss at some point is talking about having some potentially either a city credit card or a city debit card. Um, we used to have one or more as you most of you probably know. there was, you know, embezzlement issue with it and uh it was decreed that there would be no uh credit cards allowed. Um but as you know with everything getting more and more online electronic there are there are certain things that um it would be a lot of things we can do you know we have Amazon accounts and so you can have a business Amazon account so you don't need a credit card for things like that. Um, one example I would give specifically
74. 17:12for my department is um, we have to have envelopes with postage on it and you can literally get them for significantly less money if you can order them with a credit card than if you have to order them and then pay with a check. So, there's money saving involved. Um, I wouldn't want to do anything about it without, you know, significantly more investigation. And obviously what I would say there would have to be some sort of pretty significant control system in place um like like a like a twoperson sign off or
75. 17:45something like that and would have to be used for only like limited things that it's really required for not like oh I don't want to have to deal with writing a check I'm just going to use a credit card now. Um, so you know, it's just like I said for consideration.
76. 17:59No city credit cards in payment.
77. 18:01There shouldn't be.
78. 18:06There shouldn't be. I can't swear that there are, but there should be. It's against if it's against there's a resolution that it
79. 18:19um Okay. So, we talked about borrowing. We talked about the pumper truck already. Um, I'm meeting actually with our fiscal adviserss tomorrow to start talking about what we're actually going to have to borrow. Um, point in terms of the Ferris Street Bridge, so we're having a pretty serious discussion on that. Um, and that's pretty much it. Um, you've seen the resolutions already last week. Um, that's my actually the procurement policy. This does the state have like a policy.
80. 18:56Yeah, I mean I can I can try and find it for you. I can reach out to It's a PDF procurement guidelines. It looks like they pull out.
81. 19:27Thank you very much. Thank you. Anything else? Anyone else? Any other questions? to the foreclosures. Is that list going to be made available? And what's the how many under a thousand now?
82. 19:41Uh the list is available. Um at least it was available as of maybe five or six days ago. So it might be there might be a couple properties that have come off of it and I think there are maybe two under a thousand at this point. One of them is a corporation and
83. 19:58wonder how many under 500. Do you know the number?
84. 20:03I don't. That's fine.
85. 20:05Is is there like a a threshold where
86. 20:08Nope.
87. 20:10Can't because it looks like, you know, you're being arbitrary who you're choosing to inflate a repayment to go after, you know, $20.
88. 20:21Yeah.
89. 20:21But you have to you need to have you can't just say, "No, we're going to let you go because it's not that much. No worries."
90. 20:30Anything else? questions. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you.
91. 20:37All right, we have to go over the um entertainment at this time.
92. 20:51Thanks for coming. Thank you for It's great. All right. So, um I sent the um the center. So, there is $30,000 same as last year. I have the form which I sent to you. Same as last year. Um do you have any comments, changes to the form? Uh what should we take? No, I was I did um was questioning I think I've emailed you about is there another any other way to apply? Is it just that format online?
93. 21:35Oh, did you email?
94. 21:37Yeah, my my phone broke so
95. 21:43I mean I think that that's it. What you mean like a like a physical form? Yeah, like just if I'm ask you know, I guess is um
96. 21:59we can print it out if someone wants to come into your office and kind of you know um fill it out. I was trying to share it on my social media account, but for some reason I don't know maybe it was for so
97. 22:19it's just the Yeah, you would just be the link.
98. 22:23I'll try.
99. 22:24Try try it. I'm sorry. Um I hope I got your but um All right. So and if not then what we could do is maybe have a lyric maybe you could help us out if I sent you a Google form. Would you be able to maybe it's like three or four pages long a couple sheets out in case someone wants to come to your office and actually manually fill it out.
100. 22:48Thank you very much.
101. 22:54Okay. So the application so a physical copy.
102. 23:01Okay. Other than that um any Okay. So, we need to set a due date. What should the due date be?
103. 23:11What was it last year?
104. 23:13It was April 15th. Okay. So, we have to kind of work backwards. So, here we are. We are at March 24th. So, we're a little bit late.
105. 23:21Um people usually want these sooner wants sooner than later. So our next um and we have to approve everything, put together the resolutions and put it in front of the council uh so they can okay it. So the next council meeting is then
106. 23:44excuse me
107. 23:44when the next council meeting is is like the uh is the the infall on the 20th. So, if we could do it like if we could have a meeting on maybe the 16th and then they give us a day and then decide what that would be like 3 weeks or so for people to do it, people fill out the forms and it would give like a day to put together the resol just one resolution that listed and that would go in front before the informal on we put that together for the 17th of April and that
108. 24:29would go in front of the informal on the 28th.
109. 24:33And then what I what we would do is should we just move the finance meeting from the 28th to the 16th that
110. 24:44the finance meeting will be April 16th?
111. 24:46Would be April 16th.
112. 24:47Yes. to discuss the line.
113. 24:50Yes.
114. 24:52That would be kind of like a special one if you guys move.
115. 24:54It's a special Well, it's a special one. Yeah. I I have to tell L
116. 24:58and um
117. 24:59I'm going we're going to move it because there's no reason to have
118. 25:02I don't unless we have Heather coming on each um talk to Heather, but we would need a special it be like a half hour, 45 minutes. Um, so they can review. We can review it all just to get everything in before the informal on the twilight.
119. 25:20You would want all applications in how many days before that meeting?
120. 25:24It we going right up to the deadline. So I
121. 25:27think ideally it would be like you had a couple of days to review like offline and then the meeting would just be like yes, no, yes, no. You know what I What I did is
122. 25:38How did you do it?
123. 25:39Is I uh like the day before I took whatever we had, I sent it to everyone.
124. 25:44Yeah.
125. 25:44And then we gave like one last day maybe like one got one or two dribbles at the end.
126. 25:50Yeah.
127. 25:50And then Yeah. Yeah. I guess decision.
128. 25:54Yeah.
129. 25:54So is that is that
130. 25:57about 16?
131. 25:58You know, it doesn't I don't know. I don't have any um whatever whatever we could do if you want. We could even do it with 5:30. get a motion later.
132. 26:08All right.
133. 26:10All right. 5:30.
134. 26:14I have to let me see if there's um something else.
135. 26:18So, what I'll do is I will say that I gave them a date. I gave them like 4:00 on Thursday 16th is the deadline for the arts and entertainment forums. I'll run a report at 4 o'clock. I'll see if there's anything, but I'll run the J report. or see any submissions from that day doesn't coincide with any other city meeting. So let me check 16. Yeah, there's nothing else from the calendar.
136. 26:56Oh, yeah. That's beautiful.
137. 27:08Are you available 16th?
138. 27:10Sorry.
139. 27:11April 16th. We're going to do the um
140. 27:16There's nothing on the city calendar.
141. 27:18Probably. I don't have a live look at the city calendar. There's nothing there's no other city meeting for that day. So then what we'll do we'll cancel finance meeting the normal finance meeting we'll just have meeting on the 16th instead and then our so we'll have we're going to do the entertainment finance meeting on 16 at 5:30 review the applications the 17th put together resolutions will be available for the informal on the 20th
142. 27:53yes
143. 27:54yes
144. 27:55so on I'm sorry the forms are already out in front Next year I can put it tomorrow.
145. 28:03We'll put them tomorrow.
146. 28:04Yeah. Because now we just set the deadline. The deadline will be 400 p.m. on the 16th.
147. 28:09Okay.
148. 28:146 p.m. at 5:30.
149. 28:155:30.
150. 28:18Um Rich, is there a reason why we don't just set same dates for every year going forward?
151. 28:25So why like the same dates? just to make it easier so we're not having to have this discussion every year like standard like end of February it gets posted you have all of March
152. 28:40to be honest with you this so
153. 28:43well I mean usually that money is allocated in December last year was April 15th so we're only like one day off
154. 28:50and it usually like two weeks always to
155. 28:56yeah that's why we did last year we you know, like one month.
156. 28:58Yeah, usually it's a month. I used to I used to
157. 29:02Yeah.
158. 29:02apply for
159. 29:04two weeks. All right. So, usually 30 days they get
160. 29:06Yeah. It's a little bit less. It's It's three weeks this this time.
161. 29:13Unless you want to push it back to May, which we consider.
162. 29:16No, I I'm not saying anything regarding this year. This year, whatever. I'm just meaning like 2027. Can
163. 29:26Yeah. Can we just have it so that it's like because we would know by December allocating this?
164. 29:31We didn't have a meeting in January this year,
165. 29:33right?
166. 29:34And the form doesn't really change.
167. 29:37Well, yes.
168. 29:38So, there's really other than if we have enough money or not. There's
169. 29:42not actually we took this out in January.
170. 29:45Maybe we'll just have
171. 29:47I don't I remember one year we had some people like applying. What's that on that? Well, what I'll do too is I have we had everyone who applied last year. We have all their email addresses to them. So, I could send it to I say like, "Hey, by the way, that's my
172. 30:05we'll send it to everyone who applied already." So, they'll receive an email.
173. 30:08We'll send it out via Hudson Hub and I'll, you know, we'll send it out to um I know the mayor's a has like a press release listing so we can send it out that way, too. So yeah, but I'll send it to everybody who's applied in the past. We have all that. Okay. Anything else? Heather's given us a to-do list as well.
174. 30:39I was on HPC. Huh?
175. 30:42I was on H.
176. 30:42Oh, fine. Fine. Next time. Um, any other questions? comments.
177. 30:51Yes.
178. 30:53Uh I appreciate hearing from you, Mr. knowing that the uh if the arts and if the arts community knows that there is going to be a deadline earlier in the year um because we roll any deadline for a lot of other grant writing and having more than couple of weeks is helpful and especially when trying to encourage new new organizations and newer community writers to apply. I appreciate you.
179. 31:25Thank you. Motion was journ. Thank you very much everyone. Thanks for playing.

Timestamps link to the corresponding moment on YouTube. Auto-transcribed, contains speech-recognition errors. Not an official record.