Common Council Finance Committee

1. 1:02All right. >> Um, okay. Come to order. >> All in favor? >> Great. Here we go. >> All right. Sorry. >> Yes. Hi. >> All right. Okay. Would you like to give us the report? There's so much. >> So, all the usual suspects in terms of looking at some of our bigger revenue lines. Um you can see that uh for building and plumbing permits we're only at about 20% of
2. 2:07you know obviously January, February, March not generally the busiest building season. So we'll uh be reporting on it every month and we'll keep an eye on how it's going. Um on high street parking, parking and other permits and parking tickets in general, we're at uh 42% of budget and 49% of uh versus year ago. So that's tracking very nicely. Um you know, and since we didn't have we didn't have uh some of the new meters in until part of the way in the year, we should continue to hopefully see a trend, but then don't we'll see what happens in December and whether the Mhm. >> And this is for end of uh May. >> This is through the end of May. Yep. So 41% of the year basically 42% of the year we're at 42% of budget. So we're trending pretty pretty nicely on that one. Uh sales cannabis mortgaging and mortgage and lodging tax. Um these are the ones that we get intermittently. So um we got sales tax our first quarterly
3. 3:10payment of 432,000 which is pretty decent for the first quarter of the year. That's always that has historically always been the lowest quarter. Um, and you can see that we did net out at 2.54 million in 2025 when we budgeted 2.5 million in 2026. So unless something truly strange happens, I don't anticipate not making that number. Uh, lodging tax. Uh, we came in higher than budget in 2025 of 688. We budgeted 575, but I just want to caution people that that 680 Michelle Tulo and Payton Msina uh have been working very hard the last year in terms of trying to get people in compliance and following up with the registry. And we've got a new um the company that we use to uh register operators and for them to remit their payments and to get their certificate of authority um is now also providing compliance information. So Katie's going through that on a regular
4. 4:12basis. We've been sending out they send out something and if that doesn't work then they send out something with my name on it. If that doesn't work then we send something out with the code enforcement officer and if that doesn't work we send something out with the attorney. Haven't got to the attorney stage yet. >> Um so they've been I think they've been quite successful in in getting people reregistered and getting their back taxes. So certainly some of that um some of that 688 is sort of a onetime catch up. So uh again the lodging tax you know January, February and March um is probably the lowest quarter as well. So you know again as we continue to go abort we'll we'll see how that pans out. >> On separate question separate issue um there was the there's an issue with the county. Yep. That's further down. >> Okay. Fair enough. Okay. >> But I can address it now if you want. >> Um Okay. >> Okay. So, basically, if you go to the third page under other operational one,
5. 5:17two, three, four, three bullets down. So, basically, as we all know, Columbia County signed a deal with Airbnb for Airbnb to collect and remit back to them their lodging tax. Uh apparently nowhere in that discussion or agreement was it made clear that the county did not have the authority to charge its tax within the city of Hudson. So they started charging um all the STR operators within the city limits the 5% tax and collecting it. Uh as soon as we were notified upon that I reached out to the county both the treasurer and the county business manager or controller I guess. Um we discussed that agree was an issue. Uh they put us in touch with their contact at Airbnb. Uh we went back and forth for quite some time. They finally were like, "Okay, can you give us a file or something?" The county provided them what's called a shape file that they were supposed to review which will allow them to extract the short-term rentals within the city of Hudson from what
6. 6:20they're doing as of literally two weeks ago. This was a month ago, six weeks ago, maybe maybe more, maybe six to eight weeks ago. Um, as of last week, it still had not been corrected. So, I reached out back to the people from Airbnb and got a sort of, oh gosh, we're still working on it and um, but we're going to come up with a new agreement with the county. So, basically, the plan is that they're going to redo their agreement with the county to make sure that we're excluded. Um PJ Keeler who is the county treasurer reached out to me a couple of days ago just a quick email saying hey give me a call uh and I'll catch you up on what's happening and I haven't had a chance to talk to him before this meeting so I don't know what that status update is. My big question is going to be I mean obviously the first thing is to stop them t incorrectly illegally tax adding that tax. My second question is if they've been doing it and people have been paying it, how what happens now? How does that money get returned to the STR
7. 7:24operators and how do the STR operators return it to the people that paid it? And I mean you you know >> well there was a notice from local gov that said local gov send all the operators noticed and we're working with them but um yeah I don't know how it would it's like for instance like the federal tariffs how do you how do you go back and pay all those people I have no idea how that's going to happen >> and then the question is who gets if the if the money is not returnable to the people >> who keeps it >> who gets to keep it I I would argue if it's taxes on city property, even if they're legal taxes, it should come to the city. County shouldn't get to keep it because they don't have the authority to. But we'll we'll see what happens. I also have no concept whatsoever what amount of dollars we're talking about because I don't have access to that data. >> Well, it would be the extra 5%. >> I know. But for how many units were rented for how many days during the period of time after they started it, before they ended it? I mean that's a that's a lot of
8. 8:28deep deep dive. >> Wouldn't it just be doubled over now? >> Should be >> because it would be all the same. >> Should be Yeah, that's a good point. >> No, it would it' be 80% because I believe it was only 4%. So 80%. >> So that's that's been fun. Um, so let's go back to any more questions on the lodging cast from in any way, shape or form. >> Thank you very much. >> Um, and that's why we had lodging that's how we had lodging lodging local. That's why we had them send out that as well because you know um and obviously we made them aware of it right away so they could field calls from the different STR operators but they're a great partner local government. Sorry. Um, where were we? Okay. Adult use cannabis, uh, 40,000. That was slightly higher than our first quarter last year. Um, so if all the
9. 9:32quarters come in roughly evenly, it looks like our we're right on target to meet the 206 budget number. Uh, I know it's not as high as we have all hoped when the law first went into effect, but it's at least some new revenue. Um, and then mortgage tax. We only get two payments a year. We won't get the next one till probably about August. So, uh, the first payment this year was 103,000, which is pretty good. It's almost half of of our budget number. And, uh, I believe the first quarter turn 25 was only 71,000. So, it's an up from that, but, you know, it's completely variable depending on who's selling, what house, where, and why. I mean, so it's it's not particularly uh projectable. Uh, I know we talked about this before the last formal meeting, but I'm just going to leave this on here uh probably until we're dealing with the 2027 budget, just as a reminder to everybody, unless of course it has to be modified after we get our independent auditors uh reviewed. Uh, but uh, you know, we we
10. 10:38after a $ 1.3 million loss in 2024, we're down about 160,000 in 2025. So uh that all obviously has an impact on our unrestricted fund balance which is currently at 1.4 million and using the the GFOA minimum estimate or minimum recommendation um we should be at more like 2.56. So uh we need to be looking at increasing that or at least stop decreasing it. um sale of 98 place. This is April 26. That obviously didn't happen. I actually was talking to him today about this. So, he's going to start on that. It will probably be a 30 to 45day window to get um offers in and then hopefully that will be off of our collective plate and back paying property taxes and paying all the backings of property taxes that are owed on our property. Um,
11. 11:40this is just sort of more back office stuff, but I like to put some things on because they're things that you never see, but they take up sometimes an inordinate amount of time for my office. And this is one of them. New York State New York State local retirement system. Uh, everybody participates in that. Uh, almost everybody anyway. Um, they keep, you know, they're trying to to modernize. The problem is when they modernize that means that we don't have to modernize and we have been working on this thing called the gold standard it's different levels of reporting and they're making their reporting more and more and more complicated and you have to report on more things that you've never had to report on before and it's it's highly complicated and as you can imagine they've got what they need and and they keep expanding their requirements and then we've got to work somehow between their system and our payroll system and get everything to talk together and it's been it's been bad um largely because our implementation of our payroll system uh
12. 12:45was just not handled well. The good news is for the first time basically last week we finally think that the giant hurdles are over and that we are on our way to actually becoming gold certified which means that the retirement system will stop calling me andounding me about getting certified which I will be happy about. Um Danielle in particular has been working extremely hard on this and uh it's it's been a bear but but I think we're going to get there before we're definitely going to get there before the end of the year. Um talk about lodging tax. Um so another thing we're doing is you know we upgraded basically all of our general ledger or tax collection and water and sewer collection software in 2025. uh which was a huge you know a huge jump. Um they have a uh online payment uh system that is more integrated with the software system. Um we have been
13. 13:49meeting with them on and off but obviously the focus had to be getting the actual software to work first. Um but we just had a follow-up meeting with them and um the nice thing about it from our end obviously the nice thing about it is hopefully the integration will mean less manual labor in terms of identifying online payments through the way we collect them. The other thing is that uh we will be able to actually accept water and sewer payments online for the first time this year. >> This should be this year. >> Yeah. Will it be able to pay them once? As far as >> No, we tried. We We >> tried that one time. >> Yeah, we tried and and for reasons they don't entirely understand they can't do it. I I think part of the problem is I mean most of us when we think about our water sewer bill, it's like that same thing you get four times a year. It's 150 bucks. So, they just send a bill for six. But we wanted to do it the same way we do the tax bill. Here you have four payments, right? January, April, July, September. Pay them. don't pay a
14. 14:52penalty. Pay them all at once. You don't have to think about it. They can't do it. I think some of it has to do with the fact that a big underpinning of the utility software is all also has to accommodate meters sales. >> Oh, Dr. >> Yeah. So, unfortunately I, you know, I'm still on the list. So, next time they want to talk to us, it's going to be like, hey, could you just do this for the unmetered people? because they're the only ones that really want it. Um, so three of the next four bullets are I'm working on with um the procurement policy. Uh the changing thresh um well As we all know, no one is allowed to have a
15. 15:54in city operations uh dating back to some fraud issues that we had back in the day. Um there are certain things that would be significantly easier or or cost savings to do. An example and and we're not talking about like having everybody having credit cards and putting all this stuff on it. It would be very limited. And the main driver for my office is that literally if we can if we can buy envelopes with postage prepostage envelopes via a credit card, it will literally cost us half as much money. >> So, and right now we can't. So, the idea is to potentially this would have to be a resolution because there's a resolution that disallows it. Um, and it and I can work on that. runs anymore >> 20026 something like that. >> Yeah, >> if I remember the date of Ben it was around that time.
16. 16:57>> Okay. Um but I mean I can pull something together and when as long I just don't want to waste my time if I don't know openness to the council to consider it or >> yeah I think um certainly for treasures office I think it would be something that could be used by certain officers. >> Yes. Right. And the idea would be I I haven't thought it entirely through, but the idea would be that it would probably be under the control of the treasurer's office and there would have to be like the somebody from the treasurer's office and whoever wants to use it would have to somehow sign off on it. So there's a check in the balance. Um both we do similar stuff with our own we have a similar process where we have to get everything approved and there is a debit card. There was but well there was but it was something where the treasurer um looked through everything every month and all the charges and everything. So it was it was not difficult.
17. 17:59>> Yeah. And and obviously HCPA is a much smaller entity. So we don't want to get into the position where everybody wants to use a credit card all the time and then all of a sudden we have to go through like 30 pages a month credit card charges. >> So we just have one. >> There would have to be a r like a a financial rationality. So that would be my recommendation. So um what I will do for next month is I will pull together a recommendation of the proposed uh process and for us all to discuss and modify and edit if you guys are open to that. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> What what other departments might you invite into the pool? I mean, I would I would think any as long as there's enough constraints in place. >> I would think any department head basically and leave it at that, >> right? >> Um >> but obviously for your own department, it would require a second party, >> right? So that could be like the clerk's office or the mayor's, you know, >> probably since you're referring to that.
18. 19:03>> It's a good point. But even police don't have they shouldn't. >> No, >> they're not supposed to. >> Got you. >> People do have like store cards where you can and and we have Amazon accounts now too where it's it's like a business Amazon account. Um and it can be because the other thing is Yeah. So >> healthare. >> Yeah. process. All right. Did we skip over page two? >> We skipped over page two. >> Sorry. >> We justified the other three. I'm
19. 20:08working on >> what? That's page three, right? >> I'm on page three. >> Yeah. So, we skipped >> page three. other questions. Do you want to go over page two? >> Sorry. Sorry. >> So, do you want to go back to page two? >> Uh, whatever the finance committee would like, >> okay, >> there's a lot of numbers there that are pretty good. >> Okay, I will go as fast as I can, >> which is pretty fast. >> Um, okay. Do the currently underway. We just started the portal was open. um the field work, which isn't field work anymore because they don't come anymore, but it's a targeted time. It's scheduled for the week of July 13, but since we have both a regular audit and a federal audit and a DOT audit, um we're going to be slammed and you know, we're just going to be slammed. uh 2026 borrowing. As you know, we had to borrow uh not only for ongoing uh cash flow coverage for the DRRi and the F Street Bridge, but also the pumper truck, which is the
20. 21:11new pumper truck, which is scheduled to be delivered, I believe, sometime in July. Um, so, uh, we did a series of analyses to determine whether we should roll everything into short-term financing and then rolled it in the following year to long-term financing, but finally made the decision that for the pumper truck, we're just going to go straight into a long-term bond. So, it's a 20-year bond. Uh, it sold at uh 3.55% interest. That was the best deal we got, which is not so bad. So, that's going to be about $60,000 a year in debt service in the general fund to cover the new pumper truck for the next 20 years. Um, we also had to borrow about a little over $2.3 million in bond anticipation notes again to provide cash flow for the DRRi and the Ferry Street Bridge, which is ironic because both those projects are done and the Fairy Street Bridge has been out for a year. Very frustrating. And that's largely because of the delay in getting reimbursements of the grant monies. Um, so one good thing at least that we talk about timing was literally the sale was
21. 22:15on June 2nd, uh, I believe on May 31st, we got a $3 million, uh, reimbursement in the bank. So, we were about to borrow another $3 million more than this that we didn't have to borrow. And it was literally within 24 hours that we got it. So, that was that was great. um uh because of the fact that this this ban borrowing has to do with you know basically waiting for grant reimbursements uh we did go ahead and make it callable which means that we can call it back and pay off the principal and the interest earlier than the one year should we have the money in hand and we can also do that in increments. So basically pretty much anytime we get enough of a reimbursement built up we'll call some of it back and that's going to save us a little bit on interest. So, we're doing what we can to try and keep it down. Uh, and as we've said before, you know, this should be the last year. So, 20 taking this out in 26 and having to pay it off in 27 should be the last harrah for these two projects and that
22. 23:20debt service should go down, you know, accordingly for 2028 because there's nothing. You'll have the new debt service for the pumper truck, but and we may have some new debt service if we have to borrow for either the Prominade Park uh not prominade park uh Oakill Park or uh the Charles Williams Park projects. Uh it's unclear to me where the cash flow is coming through either of those projects and I haven't conversations with people about us who are trying to figure that out. Um reason why 2026 borrowing is before 2025 borrowing. It could be the other way around, but you have to borrow in 26 to have enough money to pay off the thing that you borrowed in 25. Um, which was $7.9 million that we just paid off in bond anticipation notes. Um, and in that included 300 over $320,000 just in interest. And that's money that's directly out of the city. Um, so if you look at just the Ferry Street Bridge and the DRRi, these are supposed to be, you know, full grants that aren't going to cost us any money. Um, we've come uh $2.1 million out of pocket so far, of
23. 24:24which a million dollars interest, which is directly out of the city's pockers. Again, uh hopefully the majority of that principle will be redeemed through the grant reimbursements, but probably not all of it. Um, and if you include the upcoming 27 projection, uh, that gets us up to almost 2.4 million. So yeah, I think it's important when you look at grants to realize that, you know, it the bigger it is, the more it costs us, even if it's not supposed to cost us anything because we don't have, you know, for smaller things, we can do an inter fun loan and so we'll loan a half a million dollars to the project and then we don't have to pay ourselves interest. So it really doesn't cost us anything. Um but for things like this >> I don't know if anything to complete the project because we normally get reimbursement would be correct was the DRR correct and DRI was not helped by uh co either so that probably two years of of project time you know and then the other thing which we're not addressing here but the other thing to think about also when you're getting grants is okay
24. 25:27project's done how much is it going to cost to maintain this thing that we just spent millions of dollars on >> and is it a new expense or Right. So like for something like the Ferry Street Bridge, we we were maintaining it anyway. So there shouldn't be any, you know, any new additional cost, but to put a whole brand new park that didn't exist before and new furniture and equipment, >> right? >> That's going to be a new cost, right? >> Um we have like two minutes. >> Okay. Uh last thing is just foreclosures. Uh the pegle searches are going more slowly than we had anticipated. Uh but we're still on target. Nobody else has come off the list. Go ahead. >> I was just circle back on those uh the grants and the the costs. Um were most of those costs like anticipated like this is the time frame we're going to end up paying these interest or is this just because of Christine? The project didn't complete on time. They didn't like didn't reimburse us for one year. >> Yeah. It's it's 90% bad. >> 90% that didn't reimburse them. 90% that
25. 26:29the project got delayed which means you know we we had borrowed the money and then all of a sudden things blew up and then the work couldn't get done. So that was part of the issue particularly under um and then >> very how much of a delay was like states not kicking in in time or is it all mostly kind of a follow on because of our delays? >> Um it it really depends like I'll give you an example. one of the the first big reimbursements from the DRRI. Um it took us 23 months to get it reimbured a million dollars >> even after it was completed >> when after it was submitted. Yeah. Or during the period time it was submitted. But at the same time, you know, if you look at Fair Street Bridge, >> frankly, part of the problem with the Fair Street Bridge is that the people responsible for doing the grant submissions did not do them on a timely basis. >> Is there any way for us with these grants to like factor in or pan in the interest that we're going to have to pay? Yeah. No, there's no way. >> One minute.
26. 27:35>> All right. >> Sorry. Okay. So, anything else? >> Yes. One minute. >> One minute. >> So, uh I sent you all a document schedule. Um this is basically I've just cleaned up a version that we had looked at before and looking at our situation. It is imperative that we do not have these schedules that do not get updated for 20 years. So we we can go through this next meeting or do a special meeting um and there's a session that we have a review with that I want to review with Nick relating to plumbing and so on. So, I will do that. Um, and then we can just review that. Okay. And in the meantime, if you have any questions, you just need to send an email, ask a question. 5:45. Yes. Enjoy.

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