P. Okay. Okay. You're good, huh? Patrick, you ready, Eric? Oh, yeah. Ready to go. Yeah, everybody's good. Okay. Good evening. I call this meeting to order of the Bethleam City Council Finance Committee. I'm Grace Cry Smith, chair of the finance committee. The other committee members are Hillary
Quiet. I'm Rachel Leon. The clerk will please call the role. Miss Cry Smith, present. Miss Quitech, present. Miss Leon, present. Um, Councilwoman Callah Callahan is also present. Councilman, Councilman, I didn't transfer yet. Councilman Callahan
is also present and council solicitor uh Stewart is not present tonight. There are nine agenda items for tonight's meeting. The first seven items involve proposed budget adjustments. Item eight and nine are policy procedure matters for discussion.
YouTube reminder. If you started streaming this meeting after 6 PM, please make sure to scroll ahead so that the YouTube stream is current rather than a recording of an earlier portion of the meeting. We'll folks go to public comment. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on any of the
agenda items tonight with a fivem minute time limit? I don't think so. Okay. The first agenda item is to review proposed amendments to the liquid fuels fund budget. I will call on a representative from administration to discuss his request.
Thank you. Good evening, council. Um as you as you know u when we prepare the uh 220 2025 budget back in starting in August or September um we don't have our exact allocation for liquid fuel at
that time. So we just use the previous year's allocation as an estimate at the also at the same time we have to estimate what we're actually going to use exactly for each line item in the budget and carry that amount over um
into the 2025 uh budget. So, we just received our liquid fuel budget for 2025 um on April 21st and the um allocation that we
received is 2 million and change uh which is about $33,000 and change more than what we had uh utilized in preparing the 2025 budget. the carryover amount uh that we estimated back in
September time frame was um almost 700,000. Um the actual carryover that occurred was more than 900,000. So the total difference between what we thought
we had to prepare our budget of two 2,679,787 actually is uh 2.9 million and change for a difference of $268,550. Uh the reason for some of the carryover differences
um are we we saved nearly $100,000 plus from the 2024 U budget as a result of mild winter. Um obviously the 2025 budget covers January and February which wasn't mild
but the previous January and February were. um which resulted in essentially a net savings that we were able to realize. Uh and the other 100,000 from various items that um we thought we would spend the money but ended up saving some uh some money. So that
difference um we're keeping the uh line items at the same level as we budgeted. There's no need to make any adjustments at this point in the year. Uh so all of the difference of 268 and change uh is being reprogrammed and added into our
overlay program. Thank you. Is there anyone else from administration that would like to comment? Do the committee members have any comments or questions? Any other council member comments, questions? I do. Mike, is it is it uh so it's going in uh paving
roads? Mhm. Good. Is is it possible for any of that money to be uh directed if the administration um wanted to uh to so I had a meeting uh I I had some businesses down on Main Street uh after the um designation of number one uh main
street in the United States. So, some of the businesses I I I don't know all the particulars about it, but some of the sidewalks are brick, some of them are concrete and broad, and then some of
them are uh are are slate. And I guess the slate becomes very slippery when it's wet and it chips and cracks and breaks very easily. So, I was down there. I mean, I'm up on Main Street all almost every day, but I went up there. I
took a lot of pictures and I can forward them to you, but there's a lot of the slate um sidewalks that are on broad up to uh and past Apollo and then down broad down to Maine. And almost every
one of them, the slate sidewalks are chipped or broken or severely broken. And I I know it it's uh I don't know if the city could provide some help to those uh businesses that are on Main Street in in in getting those done. And
I don't know if it's a historic harb issue that um some are brick and some are um slate, but you know, it's an enormous cost to those businesses down here and I think we should probably try to help them out a little bit if
possible. Yeah, we we mean we already assist the property owners with maintaining those sidewalks to some degree. Small um you know, we we periodically fix small areas. We either reset some of the slate or some of the brick there. Uh but
we obviously can't take on um you know, significant expenditures with respect to those sidewalks and we certainly can't use it from the liquid fuel budget. The liquid fuel budget is dedicated to street maintenance, curb to curb. but can't be utilized for any other purposes
like sidewalks which are obviously the property owners uh bunding property owner responsibility but we do assist them uh with some of that. Could I would you mind if I sent you some pictures just to show you the the the the number
of slate sidewalks that are like completely broken and missing. I mean, we we inspect those sidewalks on a regular basis, but sure, you can send them and take a look at them. I appreciate that. I don't think I mean, on Broad Street, uh I think most of that is patterned
slate uh concrete. It's not actual slate on on broad. No, no, there's Well, there's so maybe there may be some spots that are that way, but most of it when we redid it back almost 20 years ago, some some are brick. Uh there's some concrete there, you know. So, I don't
know why why it's a hot bunch of stuff and that's partly what people I I'll send you the pictures in a in an email. If you could just have some people go around and check it out. I just think with the summer months coming on uh that uh and especially with the new designation of number one Main Street, I
think it's uh imperative that, you know, we try to spend some money on the main street. I know we've been spending a ton of money on the southside, which is a a good thing. Uh but I uh I think right now with uh u uh the um new designation from the uh
UNESCO and and the new designation as number one main street United States. I think we really spent some money in trying to spruce up uh the main street not only the sidewalks but some of the planters and things of you know of that sort down there. Okay. Thank you. I just have a quick
question. And I know this is not related to the at the end item, but do you know is um do the merchants or owners have to redo the sidewalks with slate where there already are slate. Do you know that? Yeah, we on on on many streets um we do require replacement in kind. We
may allow or permit some minor modifications. Uh it's been the the popular opinion to try to maintain that same uh ambiance uh same
streetscape. So we do encourage in kind replacement. So if it's like brick, they have to do brick. If it's okay, gotcha. Okay. And then for the for this 268,000, so that's additional money that can go to street overlays this year then. Okay. I know this, you know, you may not know,
but about how much how many streets can we pave with that amount or how many miles? I mean, it's not obviously it depends on the width of the street. Uh, but um you can you can do a fairly reasonable size or section of street
with 268,000. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'll accept a motion in a second to recommend approval of the administration's request to place appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Miss
Qu. I. Miss. Leon. I. Miss Grampy Smith. I. The appropriate legislation will be placed on on May 6 council agenda. I agenda item two is to review a proposed adjustment to the capital budget for non-utilities insurance payment for damaged police vehicle. I'll
call on a representative from the administration to discuss this request. I'll take that. Um, a city-owned 2021 Ford Explorer was involved in a accident and we received an insurance check from
the um to put towards the cost of replacing this um police vehicle. So, we're just putting this money into um non-utility and then um we'll replace that vehicle with that those funds. Okay. Thank you. Is anyone any anyone else from
administration have anything to say? Okay. Um is there anyone else from the committee members that have any comments or questions? No. Councilman Callahan? No. Thank you. Okay. I'll accept a motion and a second to recommend approval of the administration's request and the place
appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. Clerk will please call the role. Miss Quet. Hi. Miss Leon. I. Miss Grampy Smith. I the appropriate legislation will be placed on the May 6 council agenda. The third agenda item is to review proposed
year-end adjustments to the community development block grant budget. I will call on a representative from the administration to discuss this request. Hi, good evening. Um so as is often the case, we are doing some CDBG and home account adjustments. um in part
those are the very routine reconciliations um from the end of the year that match our internal CDBG accounts with our HUD accounts in the IDIS system. Um, also you'll see that there are a few um additional adjustments that are moving
funds from some closed projects um and putting those into um other accounts including our housing rehab grants loans program um and the um affordable housing um lines as well. So if there's any questions about specific accounts, I'm
happy to try to answer those. Um but but again mostly you know routine adjustments for um year- end reconciliations. Okay. Thank you. Is anyone else from administration have any comments? Okay. Do any committee members have comments or questions?
Just u if you could explain the Habitat for Humanity one in particular. Yeah. So um Mr. Vidon has been working with Habitat on a number of their projects. We've funded a few of them through home. Um but in conversations with the folks at Habitats they decided that they were going to go for um se a different
funding source to match I think their timeline for the particular projects that they were looking at. Um as we often talk about the CDBG and the home dollars are rather restrictive um and cumbersome from an administrative
standpoint. Um, and in this case, uh, the timing and the the restrictions from the CDBG home dollars weren't matching with the with the projects. So, they went for and were awarded additional funding. I don't know exactly what other sources they got funding from, but they
are completing the projects. Good to know. Thank you, Council Bill. I just had a question about the YMCA project. Uh, do you know specifically what that one was? Yeah, that reduction, I think that one's about $19,000. Um that's just money they've completed
their project and their overall um draws on their um CDBG award just came in lower than what their overall cost was. So the project is completed. They've submitted all their draws and they had remaining that $18,000. So we were able
to reallocate that to to other projects. And just for funsies, uh the future future grants, is that just a line item for what we're thinking later on or what are you thinking there? Correct. Yeah. So future grants we have in in every year's um allocation and those are it's
it's kind of like an open account so as new projects come up um you know we we can kind of house money there from and like for like we're doing here where we're reallocating from other projects. Thank you. Councilman Callahan, do you have any comments? No, I don't. Thank you. I just
had a question about the uh affordable housing that's listed twice um for the increase. What will those projects what will that money be used for? I believe they're listed twice. I think they might just be different program years. I Yeah, that's it. Thank you.
2019, 2020. Thank you. Um and so uh the affordable housing home lines are always um buckets of funds that are available in response to rolling applications from um projects in the community that that are looking to do um homef funded
affordable units. Um so in the past we've for example funded home units at YMCA. Uh we also have an active application for the gateway on fourth project. So you know that will be reviewed and you know we'll do the underwriting associated with that to
determine what the uh overall dollar amount is. Um but you could pull from you know any of those accounts for any projects that come in on a rolling basis. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'll I'll accept a motion in a second to recommend approval of the administration's request to place
appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Quack. I. Miss Leon. I. M. Ramsey Smith. I. The appropriate legislation will be placed on the May 6 council agenda. The fourth
agenda item is an adjustment to the general fund budget for a parallegal position in the law bureau. I will call on a representative from the administration to discuss this request. first. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. Back in
1989, even before my time, the city solicitor's office got a parallegal position added. Um, and happily that person is still here, still working in the office. But as you can imagine, in the intervening
36 years, the volume and complexity of city legal matters has increased. Parallegal staffing has not recall U controllers's office right next door to me up there. Uh works very closely and very successfully with us
and controllers in my office all the time. uh last year had uh 25,000 or few years ago perhaps um which he sort of turfed over to us and we had a part-time clerical position there. Um and now we
feel like it's time 36 years later we had a second full-time parallegal position there. And uh in addition to the money that came over some some time ago from the controller, Mr. Evans in the budget was able to uh find some sustainable
revenue. Perhaps you can explain. Sure. Uh the opportunity to add this position uh we felt holds a great deal of value based on as solicitor Burke mentioned that the increased level of just sheer volume everything that comes through with regard to agreements,
permits and contracts. Uh we took a look at our revenue and felt that the best line item to access was a merkant business privilege tax. It was originally budgeted for 3.2. We we're looking to um
use $50,000 of this line item. So the proposal is to increase from 32 to 3.25. Uh we can point to the fact that after the first quarter, that particular line item is $371,000 over last year. At this same
point, last year business mercantile at 33124 was 290,000. At 33 33125, it's at 662,000. So, it's clear to us that that line item will provide the funding in
order to complete the remaining year of bring this position in. But we also believe that um it is overdue to bring the position and include it in the 2026 budget. uh in the future. Okay. Thank you. Do any comm community
committee members have any questions? Just a quick one, Mr. Evans. Um I I'm assum I know that you're all you're very careful about these kinds of things and and that is a big jump. Um but you see that as something that's going to um sustain itself going
forward. Um, can you account for why there was such a big jump in that in that line item? There were a series of audits that took place. We've seen, and I think we talked a little bit about this at budget time, a couple of the line items that have been moving up
consistently. We try not to get out over our skis on that. We keep it even. So, from the last couple years, we've been tracking and even EIT is another line item we looked at. Uh if you remember, we showed you how it took off on us and we came up gradually and conservatively and
23 we kept it we it outperformed greatly. 24 we held steady and that worked well because 23 and 24 were kind of close. We are now experiencing a growth in EIT. Again, it's up 8% over last year. So there's several line items including interest income was a third
one we looked at. this is the one we chose, but we felt that at this point at this quarter based on the amount of work we're seeing and and just the the burden um put on, you know, when you have some of the administrative bureaus, uh like we'll be talking about some of them later with financial services, but
whether it be human resources, tax bureau, all the other five department, six departments all require the services more and more often. So um based on the workload that was it can easily be seen and shown and justified that we felt there's there was a couple different opportunities to make a well-needed move
at this time. Thanks. I'm not at all questioning the workload. I'm just want to make sure that you're confident that going forward that the money will be there to support the position. Tri-State um conducted um audits and um they um
identified delinquent taxpayers that are now that weren't on the tax the business privilege tax roles that are now added to the ro tax roles. So the large amount was back taxes, but there's new revenue they found that will continue to go forward on the tax roles that will
support the 50,000. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you, Councilwoman Leo. Um, so and along that line, so this is just a position that would be added in in the next budget. So as like now it's temporary help next year would just be a position added into the budget at this
year's a contract position as we in the 2025 budget. So we will keep it as a contract position through 2025. Okay. And it will be under consideration as with any and all positions. Again, the intent is for
it to continue. It makes all sense that the projections we've seen both regard to revenue but also with regard to workload um indicates that we wanted to bring this to you at this time but uh you know going in 2026 is we're still six months off and we'll be putting those numbers together before you know
it and uh have to evaluate each and every position as we always do. I love the way you answer those questions but thank you for clarifi No, I know it's I know it's accurate. Um, no, I I appreciate that and thank you for clarifying like uh how the it's
a sustainable revenue source because that was my biggest concern with it and it's it's like that's just that was my only concern because obviously I think every budget season we've talked about this. I think we need more clerks in general whether it's in the law department, whether it's in city hall, whether it's the police department. Like we need more clerks in in the city. I
think where you guys are operating on a shoestring. So thank you for clarifying how it's um sustainable. Um, and I hope to see more clerks added along the way because you guys are doing a lot with very little right now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Callahan. Do you have
any comments or questions? No. No, I don't. Thank you. I just said I um a couple questions. Thank you. And um I'm not questioning as all the need for it. I think that there's a need and if we have the money, that's great. But um I'm wondering then, so we'll now have two full-time parallegals in the office.
Two. Okay. And as far as the money, uh Mr. Revan, so we're getting such an increase in the mercantile and business priv privilege taxes. That's what we're seeing. Okay. And if we use that money to pay for these positions, do you have any idea
how much money we'll have left in that fund that we can your mark for other things? And the reason I'm bringing it up is because I also have been um contacted by several merchants and even pe residents about downtown and I'm getting a lot of complaints about the
condition of Maine and Broad like there's the planters are like not painted and there's no flowers in them and um the slate you know I being a victim of a a fall that really um messed up my life for many many years. I'm
really conscious of that and the slate really is bad. like it's really ripped up. There's even something sticking up um up uh it almost looks like a sewer thing with a big nut sticking up on the on the um cement on the walkway at gutter and broad and I'm just really
concerned about um you know people having accidents and falling. So, I'm wondering since the businesses are paying these taxes, is there any money or do you anticipate that there could be some money in this line item that we can earmark toward um Main Street, especially given that, you know, we're
world heritage and number one Main Street, Main and Broad? Uh, so are you indicating that to add a public works position is where you're Well, my understanding is there is a public works uh designated person, but I'm hearing that that person because we're down positions in D people in
public works that they're not always coming and doing the tasks that are that they're assigned to. Okay. That's what I'm hearing. Mr. Alcohol is no longer with us. I think it more I mean that's one issue but I think even seeing like just seeing on the streets it just
really um isn't looking like it's you know I'm afraid that as we get tour hopefully we'll get more tourists in between World Heritage and number one Main Street and if they come and they see you know planters that the plant the paint is peeling there's no flowers um the sidewalks are really chipped up that
you know god forbid they leave and be like well I don't think I'm coming back or I won't tell other people to come back we want to really maintain our reput reputation um as being a great historic north side downtown and I' I've just I've truly had to have
a lot of people reach out to me both business owners and even just residents about the conditions. So I I was going to bring it up at some point but when I saw that we're looking at this you know business um privilege tax with the businesses downtown pay I'm just wondering that then can we give back to
them something that they're paying by sprucing up those those areas. Yeah, I'm just going to defer because it's the allocation of existing resources and and you're speaking of vacancies as well. I would definitely turn to Mike to be able to answer that question on how they could be maybe what we already have
redeployed. I'm not sure how he has a setup. I know he has different the different bureaus whether it be grounds or streets who who he deploys to that main street area. I know I don't know. I mean I know I I've been told that the position is in public works. I'm not sure if he has money earmarked as far as
the, you know, the flowers and the other the beautifification of the downtown area. I don't know if that comes from public works or not. Yeah. Yeah. I And I'll I'll touch base with Mike in the morning. Let him know. Great. And then maybe we can Okay. We can follow up with that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Chairwoman, can I make a quick comment? Excuse me.
Oh, yes. Thank you. Um I think there is a line item in the budget for a uh a full-time person to be down on Main Street. I'm pretty I'm pretty I believe there is I'm sorry, but I I'm wondering about how
we could secure funds for the other issues on Ma main and broad like the sidewalks, the flowers, things like that. Okay, Mr. Evans, I you know what? I'll I just forwarded to Mr. Alcohol and Miss Collins the pictures that that we took
when we had our meeting. Yep. Um if I mean each one of the p there's 17 pictures, you know, in total. each one of them's a separate sidewalk and most of them are completely cracked or gone or missing. So, I I just think, you
know, uh before this summer, our busy summer season gets here uh with our festivals and and that type of thing, I think that, you know, maybe we could take uh some of that mercantile tax and and help some of those downtown
businesses because um a lot of them are struggling right now. I I talked to probably about seven restaurants that that are down there and it uh and I would welcome anybody from the administration going down. Maybe Miss Collins can go down there too and talk to them. They're struggling. I mean, not
just like struggling like uh you know, not making as much profit. I'm talking about struggling as in like very concerned about not making it through this. And I don't know if it's uh the economy uh or a lot of them are
blaming and and I you know I don't know if this is factual. I you know but I got to listen to them. Um a lot of them are blaming the parking situation that's downtown. Um and and they'll fall off after the garage came down. So, I just
think that maybe we could help help them in in assisting in getting that cleaned up because when if you go down here and you look at those sidewalks that are down there on Main Street and then when you turn right on Broad, all the when you turn left on Broad, they're all
cement, but when you turn right on Broad going up to uh Rippers Pub there, I think they're majority of those are are slate or maybe half of them. You know, there's some that are brick, but I'm telling you, when you see the pictures, and I'll forward them to you. I sent
them I sent them to uh Mike and I sent them to Miss Collins uh a few minutes ago. If if you go down there and look at them, they're they're in terrible shape. And I just think with the designation and and the UNESCO designation of the main street, number one Main Street, I think we need to do something ASAP, uh
you know, to get it it fixed up. So, whatever the administration uh and yourself and Miss Collins and Mr. Alcohol can do, I I I'd appreciate it and I'm sure the businesses down there would appreciate it also. Thank you. So, you guys
uh in in streets, right? And I I don't I didn't check this account before uh before the meeting, but uh under 50503 and streets 42060A page 97 in the budget book is the
business district streetscape. This account will cover costs of repairs, maintenance or replacement of benches, flower earns, ballards, tree trimming, slates, herbicides, uh etc. for sidewalk replacement, repair, and any other expenses that are needed to assist property owners and maintain the
business district's streetscape. So, that line item is in is in there for 10,000. I don't know what that account is currently, but that's at least, you know, a line item that I want to make sure you're aware of. No, no, I really appreciate that because I wasn't I wasn't aware of that, but um I don't
know 10 $10,000. I mean, the amount of damage down there is so sufficient uh and severe. Uh when you see the pictures, I I I walk there all the time. So, I wasn't even aware of it until the business owners asked me to go down there and take a look at it. And I was I
was kind of shocked at the you know, the shape of them. So, I don't know if uh if you can relate that to the the mayor. Uh and uh again, I'll ford them to you. I I don't Is Miss Collins over there still? Is she? Could could you forward those
pictures in in the email I sent you to uh the mayor and Mr. Evans also? Miss Collins? Yes. She said yes. Thank you. I I couldn't see her. She's she's in back of the chair. Thank you, Miss Collins. Okay. Okay. We'll pick up where we left
off. I will accept a motion and a second to recommend approval of the administration's request and the place appropriate legislation on the May 6th council meeting. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Miss Quetch. I. Miss Leon. I. And Miss Grampy Smith. I. The appropriate legislation
will be placed on May 6 council agenda. Agenda item number five is to review a proposed adjustment to the general fund maternal child health initiative account. the health bureau to receive funds from Lehigh Valley Health Network to purchase portable cribs and
next plan on I will call in representative from administration. Uh so the health bureau is requesting a $10,000 increase to its matern uh maternal child health escrow expenditure account and this will add
funds received from LVHN uh as noted to purchase portable cribs and nex plenon I don't know if I pronounced that correctly but um that's u part of the maternal child health program with the city portable cribs and
then that's a long acting birth control for plan family planning clinic. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else from administration that makes any comments? Okay. Do any committee members have any comments or questions? This is a grant program you said.
So, it's a contribution from LVHN. Um, and I believe that's part of their annual contribution to the city as a whole. And with uh when they give us money, do they tell us how to spend it? Like this is the money that we want you to spend on this or do we have discretion with how
we spend the money? know that I actually do not I do I I don't know as it relates to money that goes specifically to the health bureau. I think LVHN makes a variety of different contributions. Some are for the health bureau, some are for other purposes is my understanding. No worries. All right. Thank you. Yeah.
Guidelines. Thank you. Council, you have any comment? No. Councilman Callahan. I No. No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll I'll accept a motion and a second to re recommend approval of the administration's request into place the
appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Miss Quetch. I. Miss Leon. I. And Miss Grampy Smith. I. The appropriate legislation will be placed on tonight's council agenda. Agenda item seven is to review a
proposed adjustment to the general fund budget recycling grant. She skipped one. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm I'm at six. I skipped six. Okay. The sixth agenda item is to review a pro proposed adjustment to the general fund budget,
the Betham Chamber of Commerce Foundation North Side 2027 planter project. I will call in a representative from the administration to discuss this request. Um, as noted in the explanation here, it's pretty straightforward. The
city was uh awarded a a very small $1,000 grant from the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Um and that is going to the North Side 2027 Planner Project. Um you know, North Side 2027 is doing a variety of um investments uh
throughout the neighborhood. One um area of interest from neighborhood residents and folks involved in that program is for decorative planters. Um, so, uh, Selena, the coordinator, um, went after this grant to, um, help push that project forward. Um, the grant was
awarded in 2024, and I believe the plan is to, um, spend these dollars down, uh, in May. Um, I think we're anticipating ordering the planters in the next two weeks or so. Okay. Thank you. Do any committee members have any questions or comments?
No. No. Council Callahan, are those planners just for uh where where are they? Just the north side or they are part of the north side 2027 neighborhood. Um and I believe I left my other notes over there. I think um a
broad and maybe center and then another another corner up in that up in that area. Yeah, because there's a there's a I'll send you some pictures, but there's a couple planners uh on Broad Street that uh are just a weeds right now and you know they need some I know one I
know the one business owner um is they like adopted that the one um square planter and they they put some plants there, but it's nothing that the city did. And I just if we can, you know, fix up those areas down there with some mulch, whatever, you know, prior prior
to our busy uh summer season, I'd appreciate it. Talk to Mr. Alcohol about it. Thank you. Could Could you relay that for me? Yeah, I said I will talk to Mr. Al about it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just I'll just add on to that because I think it's great any anywhere we could get planters. I think it really
adds um some ambiance to it. I know. I even saw a planter. I think it was on Main Street um that literally had like a a plastic poinsetta in in it in it and it's still there. And you know, not that it's a huge deal, but it just isn't a good look for Main Street a World
Heritage site because it's April. Okay. So, if you could relay that. Thank you. I will accept a motion and a second to recommend approval of the administration's request and to place the appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Miss
Quit. Hi, Miss Leon. I Miss Grampy Smith. I The appropriate legislation will place on the May 6 council agenda. The seventh agenda item is to review a proposed adjustment to the general fund budget recycling grant. I will call on a representative from the administration
to discuss this request. That's me again. Um so the uh recycling bureau has uh received its uh semianual or every every every other year um award from act 101 section 902 municipal recycling program development and
implementation grant. Um the award is for $185,968. Um and that is going uh this year um to support equipment purchase for a new leafac and uh the remainder of the grant is going to be used for a new
um rolloff a few new rolloff containers for the recycling bureau. Thank you. Does anyone else from administration have any comments? Is do any council committee members have any comments or questions? No. Councilwoman Cal Councilman Callahan. No, thank you.
Okay. I just the only question I had is what are what are rolloff containers? Do you have any idea? Um, yes. So, like if you're over at the recycling center like basically like the containers that that that sit solid and then you can put
them, you know, on a on a truck to move them to another location. Okay, great. They're on and then they roll off. Okay, I think that's accurate. The balance of the grant will be coming um in another memo from public works for the um this
this memo only covers for the expense for the rolloff truck and then my gal call will send a memo um later for the next finance committee meeting for the new leaf back. Okay. So that won't that will not have to go on the agenda for council. That will go to the next finance meeting then. Yes. Yes. Okay.
Great. Thank you. Okay. I'll accept a motion and a second to recommend approval of the administration's request and place the appropriate legislation on the May 6 council agenda. So moved. Second. The clerk will please call the role. Miss Quak. Hi. Miss Leon. I. Miss
Crampy Smith. I. The appropriate legislation will be placed on the May 6 council agenda. Agenda n item number eight is to discuss accounts payable policy and procedures. This matter also was requested by the chairperson. So, um I've I've met and discussed this issue
with uh Mr. Evans and Mr. Yo, I just wanted to bring it up to see if there's anything we can do because it seems like it's more of like a process within internally within city hall that there's concerns that invoices and all the necessary paperwork to process bill payment is not being forwarded to all
the the departments in a in a timely manner as needed so that the bills can be paid at on time at times. Um so if any if someone from the administration wants to address it. Sure. Thank you.
Sure. I turn to you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Chairwoman, if Oh, absolutely. Sure. Anyone from the administration is welcome to speak. Thank Thank you. Thank you. Um I I wanted to uh I wanted to kind of start because I'll read uh
directly from two of my uh about a dozen goals and objectives for the controllers's office for 2025. Um, one of them is uh continue to encourage city administration to reduce the amount of paper checks through bill consolidation and increasing the
electronic payment capabilities. All right. And then another one is work with city work with city administration to implement document policies and procedures uh documented policies and procedures for financial services processes. Right? So these are these are
two things that uh I have an interest in as as well. um and uh at least wanted to give my you know my input on the discussion as as all of us have kind of met on these things. Um and I probably have some of the updates that you you guys may not have yet. Um and a lot of
that is from the uh who you may or may not hear from tonight but from Joe Vasek the uh who who's the lead in in finance down there and Joe who's not been here yet a full year. Uh I think when we talk about encouragement and working with um
he he's uh he's been a guy who's demonstrated the qualities that we're really looking for out of the controllers's office and we've been excited about kind of the interaction that that we've had and uh and and so I I'm excited kind of about the the the
the path forward, right? and and uh you know as the controllers's office we embrace uh our independence and uh we we embrace the notion that we are there to
hold people accountable and and uh it it's the reason that we have these meetings and the reason that I'm in you know Eric's office more than he would like I'm sure often and often unannounced right often unannounced right and and that's what
I've done since I've been here in 2015. That's what I did to Dave Braum. That's what I do to Eric Evans. Uh it is what I will continue to do until I leave office. Right. So, um, and and as much as we embrace this independence, um, and
and, uh, all my staff knows from from the the staff that I inherited when I got here, uh, and had to kind of work with them to get on the same page to the staff I have now where I've I've completely turned over and hired, you know, the the two Michelle's. Um,
everyone in all those cases, uh, we we all work together to make sure that, uh, uh, we really embrace that independence, but know that the best path forward is to have cooperation and to have good working professional uh,
uh, relationships, especially in the leadership roles. Uh and and again that's why we're we're I'm personally and and Michelle Michelle are excited about the work that that Joe has done because he's demonstrated to be somebody in a leadership position in those
financial services that is absolutely uh willing to to have broad shoulders work with the controllers's office. And so, uh, I have heard a lot of these, uh, that you may hear, um, but wanted to at least from from, uh, you know, make sure
I'm clear from my point that, you know, these are absolutely our goals and objectives and encouragement and working with them is I think the way forward for sure. Uh, and and again, we're we're excited uh, to hear about the updates as well. So, thank you guys. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yazo. Okay. And I and I just want to clarify too because I I just thought it was important to bring this up to the finance meeting so we can try to um look at the issues and try to solve it together. You know, it's a systemic issue. We have a huge city hall, many departments, many different people
involved, especially in bill payment. Um and it's certainly not pointing the finger at anyone or any department, but I think it's just something that maybe we need to discuss and see how we can maybe do things better so it's more efficient. Go ahead, Mr. Evans. Thank you.
And speaking of uh the bureau because we have our departments or six departments and each department has a number of bureaus some more than others and financial services is one. It's small but mighty in that the staff is very lean but the volume of work the complexity of work that rolls through
that bureau which really entails most of the first floor. If you go walk into the lobby the cashiers and the people behind it and the glass wall behind it is where you're going to find our financial services housed. So I I've collected some comments I want to share with you tonight. First of all is just it to put
Financial Service Bureau into context. They do handle accounts payable including electronic payment which we're going to talk a little bit about. But and that's only one of the many functions that it is responsible for. So it does do payables although payables require everyone. It's a team effort
because they can't do it alone. Payables come from all six departments across the city and they end up uh in in uh financial services. so they can be executed and the payments can be made. Uh it is currently headed by as you heard Joe Vloic who's with
us with us this evening and he'll also have an opportunity to answer any questions you may have. Uh he accepted the crucial position last September. We're happy to have him as a member of the team. Joe brings with him auditing experience the position as well as the ability to really look at a lot of the
process we have through an outside lens. He's he's new to the city but he's not new. has been up it'll be up on coming up on a year relatively soon. But the outside experience is what we really felt was something that separated J from some of the other candidates that we looked at last fall. And the other the
other part of financial services is uh Lineia Lazar saying by my side who you know as our budget finance director and she served in financial services for 27 years most of them as director. So she really has assisted with the transition. is now firmly in Joe's control, but
having Lenny here still with the city and working in a new role has really helped assist with the transition. Uh the financial bureau besides as accounts payable performs as responsible for performing all the necessary and proper accounting for and
financial reporting of all the city funds. So when you think about scope of what we're talking about, uh our staff is six. Six people in that bureau used to be eight back in 2014. We reduce it to 25% and they they run when they're fully operating and everyone's here and everyone's healthy and not on vacation.
We have six that staff uh is responsible for handling the city funds which includes a general fund. We know that budgets 112 million. But then you also need to reflect on the fact it includes a water fund at 24 million, the sore at 20, golf at 2.5, liquid fuels at 27, the
non-utility at almost 27 million, water capital 11 million, sewer capital another 10 million, CDBG home at 61, and storm water 86. So that means it's a total when we talk about all the city funds that roll through financial services, this $223 million or a quarter
of a billion dollars in payments going out. But if you think about the way it's revenue coming in twice, you're seeing the 226 on a balanced budget coming in and going out and it's all moving through that same bureau. So 222 time two is almost a half a billion dollars
moving through that bureau. And again, it's a lot of assistance, a lot of teamwork, but it it's a whole lot of responsibility that we're talking about uh with financial services. Um it's a group that arrives early. They work over lunch often. you'll see them working at their table uh from time to time. You'll
see them if you pop in on a weekend to make sure the respons responsibilities of B are being met. And at this time, we also want to make sure we give special credit to Carol Stone. Some of you may be uh familiar with Carol. She's worked for the city from some time from water to CED. And now we have the pleasure of
of her serving in as a financial operations accountant, a very skilled employee that's been with the city and dedicated years of her career to uh ensuring that we run as efficiently as possible. So, that's the backup or the a little bit of the backstory of the bureau. Uh,
electronic payments. I'm going to start with that. Then I'll move into the regular checks and we'll talk about our our process and how it is. It's maybe a little bit more complicated than you might just think on the surface. Excuse me, Mr. Just I don't know if it's appropriate to do that. I know that is going to be the next agenda item. We we
separated it, but is this if it's better to combine it? If I could I'll blend them together. Let you know that we did separate it. So, sorry about that. Yeah. Okay. electronic payments on the we also refer to them as you know a auto automated clearing house the city when we talk
about payment transactions in uh the city will process over 20,000 payment transactions each year out of financial services uh when we did a deep dive it was in at the end of uh it was in summer of 24 we're using 23 complete year
numbers there was actually nearly 21,000 payment transactions At one time, moving back, all those transactions would have been printed checks, 21,000 checks. Now, we have a different setup. We have different
technology. All employees are now required to have direct deposit AC. Authorized employees are now able to utilize PC cards, which are AC a debit cards they can use to make purchases. Uh, total checks have been reduced to somewhere around 5,000. So from what was
once 21,000, it's down five. We're still looking to reduce ACH can be very effective. It's our method of payment for all our bond payments. It's our method of payment for our weekly medical bills by AC workman's comp, our sales tax and payroll tax. Most recently, uh
with the assistance of Joe's leadership and financial services, PPL payments, which are our PPL are hundreds, I can say hundreds of accounts, hundreds of accounts. We have uh you know meters out throughout the city. We need to do it
that way. We study, we analyze them that way. We do cost studies. We understand what kind of electric usage uh that we have in different parts and what it's for. So all those accounts will come through on the old uh just monthly billings.
Working with Joe, uh we have now moved that to a debit via the PPL secured portal. So once again, we're going to shave hundreds of what was printed checks into the AC format. So it can definitely be an effective uh especially
for reoccurring payments, many that I just mentioned like uh the medical bills, sales tax, lease payments, bond payments, and we'll continue to review opportunities for an AC as a method of payment uh in the future. Uh I we do want to note that AC is not most
suitable for all payments. We cannot all be made through AC. I can give you a couple examples. If we have a one-time pay, someone that we have an invoice, this is going to be once and done. We can tell it we've never used them before. We'll load them up as a vendor. It may be simpler and easier and faster.
And we we can also tell talk about why checks can be secure for us and the programming we have. Rather than collecting information needed to send in a you need the proper name of the organization, the bank account name, the uh account number and the routing number. And sometimes if that's not on
the invoice, it's going to take time and effort and that is money. We talk about personnel and we talk about six employees to track down that information to collect it. We find some people might be hesitant for security reasons to release bank information, routing numbers and account numbers. They might
be just as well suited to receive a check. So we still straddle that balance where we see the efficiency and electronic payments. We seek these new opportunities. PPL was a big breakthrough for us and that's within last month. And in the meantime, uh we'll also be able to make check through other uh payments through other meth
methods which includes uh the checking account which we we run. Uh when we talk about checks, we send um our nonac payments. We have an accounts payable manager that works in financial services and she conducts
three to four check runs each week. We do our best to keep them balanced for review both in financial service as well as working with the controllers's office on the on the check runs. But after review is conducted by the director of financial services which is Joe. We print the
checks. The controllers's office will review the checks and the and the payments. Once they find them suitable to return to financial services if there's a hangup, if there's a bug, we'll talk about what some of those might be in a little bit. They will hold them. They'll call us. They'll communicate and the job will make a
visit up. They might stop down and we're going to work out what we need to do to make sure we can get that check handled um and get it out the door. Uh financial services when the checks are cleared to be mailed secures the checks in the vault until they're ready to be placed
in the mail. And when they do head to the mailbox, I'll note that we have a a a function called positive pay. It's a service provided by our bank. It provides protection to all our checks. And how it does that is we'll send a file in the morning once a check run is set, once a checks ready to be mailed to
our bank. The bank will automate and make sure that and confirm that all our checks, check number, check date, check payee, check amount are all exact. If any of them are altered, the check will not clear. So when you hear of some of the fishing scams when trying people
pull them out of the mailbox they change white out for the amount or vendor may do that and you know some not it's never happened to us that way but it could happen to it has happened the other way where they will try and white out the pay somewhere some along the stream of the mail to the vendor we'll pick it up
attempt to make a change it's immediately flagged by our positive pay and it doesn't go any farther than that. So at that point we realize we have a problem. Uh but the problem has been intercepted and uh we we'll move from there. We will uh reissue the check. We'll launch launch a police
investigation and work from there. But overall um our checks have been efficient and working and we're looking to balance them the best we can with electronic AC with our check runs. Uh I want to talk a little bit about our process for payments.
Most invoices that we get cannot go directly to financial services. If you get an invoice, you think you're going to be able to take I have a couple an example I'm going to show to you. You might want to look at say let's get this thing paid right away. But the reality is in financial services, they don't have that same lens. They don't have the
expertise to know what some of that stuff might be that's coming out of the water fund or the sewer fund that has special chemicals or some that Mike Alcohol has ordered for public works or a part from uh the mechanical bureau.
So, uh the invoices will typically start at the bureau level and department level. That's where they know they have expertise of where it is, where it is in their account, what's on that invoice. They also have to justify through a receiving slip that it actually in fact
arrived. If we get an invoice, there's no way in financial services for us to look and say, was this thing installed? Does the door work? Does it open? Is it tilted? So, uh we have an account mailbox, accounts payable email box that comes in. Uh at that point, those if
they do come in that form, they're distributed to each of the bureaus and that's where the work starts. It's also a good to have it that way because that way it's vetted multiple times when it gets to the bureau level and I'm going to use an example of I'll stick with mechanical. That's a bureau under public
works. Example I'm going to to uh walk you through is a new piece of equipment for the mechanical bureau on Stefco starts by getting quotes for whatever that equipment or that building or that project is going to be. The quotes come back a decision is made to
move forward. If it's below the bidding requirement, but uh it does have two or three quotes. We're going to make a decision on the highest quality, the best the best price, requisition will be ordered. A PO will be issued. A purchase order will be
issued. At that point, the vendor will arrive or the product will be delivered to the bureau on site. If it's at the mechanical bureau, it's a door, they're going to come put the door in. It might be auto parts. It's going to be arrived maybe in in some of the delivery trucks that they bring them in.
When the invoice is presented or the project is built, we want the bureau superintendent out in the field to inspect the work, inspect the materials, inspect the equipment. Once that's done, the invoice is going to be coded by the account clerk out at the mechanical
bureau because that's Jasmine Morales. And she knows the budget out there. She knows the account slip that I'm the account number they're going to use. and they're going to add a receiving slip. And that's really the confirmation page that lets everyone know that yes, this has
arrived. We can confirm it's here. This is the account. The purchase order should be on there and then can move into city hall. So, by this time, it's been looked at by a couple people outside and at the bureau level. Now, comes department level. This is where Mike Alcohol is going to want to take a
look on. He's a very hands-on department uh head as we know and he's going to confirm them. He does uh according to his schedule I I believe it's on Friday when Mike makes those runs once a week. Mike's going to take the time to look at those projects. He knows they're big. He knows what the budgets. He wants to be
hands-on and keep his uh up to date way things are moving. So uh the business manager in public works is going to prepare the document, make sure the receiving slip is in order, the invoice is in order. should be at that time hopefully put together correctly it moves to Mike Alcohol. Mike is going to
take a look at it and sign off and once he believes it's set and only then will it move finally get to financial services. So, it's been on a path and I want to note that that path takes time. Not everyone I just talked about is always waiting for these slips to come in. They all have full-time jobs with the city with a lot of functions and
responsibilities. this is one of the things they do and uh some days some of them might be out they might be sick they might be on vacation that could slow the workflow. So for a invoice to arrive even when it's followed the exact order and touching the hands it needs to
move through when it needs to be vetted it's going to be likely two weeks. It could be depending on the weekends fall when holidays fall or anything else till it even gets to us in financial services. We hope it's perfect, but we know that uh nobody is perfect, whether
it be anyone I spoke along that workflow to this time or once it gets into financial services. It has um involved multiple people for good reason, but it can be subject to human error. So, I think that this is our point where we stop and say, you know,
we want to make sure everything's set when it comes into financial service. So, we're going to take a good look at number of people have had the opportunity to take a good look at it. We're hope it's set up, but we're also going to say sometimes there are errors that's found along the way when we get to financial services and we know two people are going to take a look at it
and we're going to continue to strive to improve the process all along the way and look for procedures all along the way, technologies that exist now and in the future to assist in the pursuit that every one of these ends up home free 100% within the time frame that we
expect it. The time frame we would expect and our terms both on our website and in our purchase order are 30 days. That's the set time. So if I get I know I get a bills in the house. I pay them both and with aligning with my paychecks
every 14 days. I can do that. I'm one person. I know what my bills are. Here you're talking about multiple people that need to see it. So I think it's quite standard across the industry. The bill comes in you could expect that we are going to pay you in 30 days. That's our goal. That's what we strive to hit. There are things that get in the way of
that 30 days. Um, I will tell you almost all the time we do hit it and almost all the time we hit it without blips. But as I said, we are humans and there are things that are picked up along the way. Uh, we also know that for a host of reasons, if something is contested or
disputed, it's going to hold it up. If Mike doesn't like something he saw in it or even going back to the earlier in the workflow upstream, you get back to mechanical and Joe has an issue as a superintendent. the way that door's installed, that invoice isn't going to move ahead until they know it's put together, it's working, the door opens,
the door closes, we're not going to pay for it, and then get stuck with it on the back side. So, there are times when it moves along, maybe at that time they should ask for a new invoice, and we're we're there's some education that we are working with and have planned to make sure they go get a new invoice that's dated, up to date. We don't want to
accuse of being late when we had to sit for two weeks to wait for the vendor to get the door right. And from time to time, as you might imagine, through the dozens and dozens of people that work through this um workflow I'm speaking of, that does occur. There's also the
real realization that we have staff absences, whether it be vacation, a well-deserved vacation, or sick days when the person in charge of doing what they need to do is not there. And it might be, you know, a couple days, not a lot, but it might be a couple days to slow it down. And we also have strange invoices that arrive. Uh, I'll share one
with you now with due dates that are not in agreement with what our 30-day ask is. And this is copies. Yeah, I think they're the same. Mhm. Oh, I see myself. I know you didn't keep them. Okay, I remember what's in there.
There's a copy. As you can see, the date on the top is April 17th. So, it's recent. It came. It was forwarded to me. And it's it's from an 0901 account. It's a Civic account. And it's it's a very small invoice, but just shows you again how human air on the outside coming in says the date's April
17th. The due date is April 17th. And from time to time, we get that. We'll get ones that say it's due in 10 days or it's due in 15 days. I think the understanding, the realization is if you're doing with a a organization as large and complex as a city, we believe we are efficient, but we also are going
to vet our purchases and it's going to take that appropriate amount of time to work it through the workflow that we feel is appropriate. So that's just a sample of what we might see in regards to invoices, but I can assure you the
city uh fulfills all its payment obligations. We have the outside auditors as a part when we talk about the policies and procedures with accounts payable. It's very important to any business and certainly is to ours as well. We want to get paid and we want to make
sure all our vendors or customers, citizens are being paid. So when the auditors come in, they come in um they were in last week. Yeah. And they're coming in next week. Yeah. It's a time for uh the audit right now. It'll
continue for a couple months to go going forward. But uh when they come in, they're going to ask us for a whole lot of different records. But one of the things they do is a full review of our processes and our records each year. They take a look at it from the outside through an independent view. Uh we can
tell you that in the audits, which we do share with you and they're posted online, that the there have been that no findings have been documented regarding accounts payable with regards to the process or the payments. We can tell you
if it would happen that we would certainly address it immediately. Uh from the inside we have an audit as well. It's our controller, the control's office led by Mr. Yaso. And as business admin administrators, he he mentioned I do appreciate his visits and uh the
communications I have with Mr. Yaso are usually very productive and very constructive. We talk about a wide range of city topics, not just accounts payable, but anything that might be on a finance agenda or in the budget or somewhat related or distantly related in regard to city business. and uh that's
appreciated. Uh I will also say the financial services bureau there's there's several employees that maintain a dialogue with the controllers's office on a daily basis every single day. Uh they're in each other's offices covering and communicating. Uh we appreciate respect the the role that the
controllers's office has uh in our city. We appreciate the um communication they have with us whether it be in regard to accounts payable or uh elsewhere in the city in regards to any other topic that comes up. The range is is wide. Um there
are times I will say that we may agree to disagree uh but we our intention is to be accountable and transparent. So I I've been in this room my 16th year in this room and I've agreed and disagreed on many different levels with many different people. I think that's just
part of the process that we know that we're going to work together. We understand we're three branches of government. We have missions and responsibilities, but all in all at the top of the pyramid, we want the city to work better. We want to work with each other the best we can to make sure the city doing the right things and it's and it's moving forward the right way. So,
their office has had a big part of not only this and accounts payable, but also everything we do with regard to the budget and finance. Um, lastly, I'm going to speak to the initiatives. We talked a lot about process. because I want to, you know, talk to you a little bit about what we do and how we do it to just get a simple invoice paid or sometimes
they're more complex. There's a lot of moving parts. Excuse me. Can I can I just interrupt the minister? I I appreciate all this, but I think um the reason I put it on the agenda is I just wanted to talk about I mean I know there's challenges certainly with the volume of bills that need to be paid, but that there's times when the bills
are not being paid on time and then we have to pay late fees and that's what's concerning and I just wanted to talk about what we can do to avoid that. Um Okay. And I guess like even for this invoice like I get it, but I mean is it a matter of do you call them up and say just so you know the same the date is
the same for the due date and the date that we in that case we did it. It's it's frustrating because it takes time when you have a one's not bad but when you have a stack when you're trying to move forward and you have it we attempt to pick them up and catch them as much as we can the bigger the stack and when you hit 99%. So, I'm going to finish up with my initial because I'm at the end
of my statement, but I want to make sure we had a full put everything in context to what we're talking about the size of the numbers, but Joe has specifics too about some of the things and and I do want to also allow him to answer any questions you might have, but I want to speak to his initiatives because that's
kind of ties what into your what you're saying, chairwoman, is that it is a peak time of our audit. It is the highest priority for our C staff right now, especially in financial services. It gets very intense. Uh, as I said, they were here. They're going to be returning next week. But before, during, and after that, they're going to be picking on or
picking up files, records, and communications, and that will continue to be exchanged. Uh, when the audit wraps up or the the peak of the audit wraps up, Joe's going to have the time to pursue some of the initiatives with regard to accounts payable, but also as
a bureau in general. Number one, we did speak. This is his ninth month in the position. So, we want him to continue to learn the comp complex responsibilities of the position, which I've attempt to lay out. Number two, once he gains a fuller understanding of the current processes that exist that he'll work to
identify areas for efficiency and improvement in accounts payable, but again, across the whole bureau, there's a lot going on in there. Uh there are multiple AP initiatives right now and and the controller he also uh moved to this for a minute that Joe's working on in between his audit and every other
duty that he has and I'm going to highlight them before I turn it over to him. Uh but it does involve the entire organization, all six departments, all four business managers and numerous administrative assistants. Number one, it's out um to develop the accounts payable process report. This will be a
living document. It's already in a drafted form. It's it's been moved along. Um I believe the control's office eyes have been on it. The auditor's eyes have been on it. It will continue to change and develop, but that's uh designed to memorialize the process and the workflow. Number two, he's going to
be introducing a consistent citywide receiving slip. We talked about the fact receiving slips get added to the invoice. A lot of the issues that have been coming across that brought to our attention is something is not lining up. So we we and Joe's done this with help of a business
manager and some of also some of the rest of us in finance with the idea that we're going to put a checklist on there to make sure whoever's sending it downstream to financial services that make sure everything is put in play like the due date like has a is it under
contract like has the invoice been scanned is it legible is a PO on it if it's over 30 days is there an explanation for it so it delivers more accountability to everyone along the workflow Uh once that's completed, uh his goal will be then to introduce as a leader of
financial services and educate staff those 30 or 40 people that are involved uh with processing invoices from the beginning to the end. And then uh fourth is to continue is overarching and monitor and evaluate the order of review
for pending payments in general. The one I just attempted to lay out is the one that exists. It's existed for a long time. the new eyes are on it through a new lens and we certainly look forward to how he's going to be leading this u this bureau in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. So that that
concludes my extended comments, but as you can see, Lenny is also here to answer questions uh as well as Joe or comments that you have. So thank you for the time. Thank you so much. Can I just ask clarify? So are you going to have like a a slip on on that they're going to have to check off that they have
everything included? Yeah. Great. That's that's great. Thank you. Yeah, and just to uh highlight on what Mr. Evans said, um everybody is using a receiving slip currently um but it's not universal. And a common issue that I
come across and the controller comes across is errors on the receiving slip which can hold up a payment. Meaning the amount that's being asked to be paid is incorrect. The description of the items incorrect, the account code's incorrect. Um, so we're really focusing on trying
to educate the business managers and different departments, hey, these are the things that we need to pay attention to and correct to process the payment quicker. And I I just think, you know, from a a personal standpoint, everybody should be using the same slip because sometimes I look at one and look at
another and it's completely different. Um, as far as the late fees that were mentioned, the the late fees that I'm aware of were mainly related to PPNL and I guess what I want to emphasize with that is so historically we paid PPNL
bills by check and up until I think and maybe Mr. Yaso would have better information, but um, at some point the the PO box that we mailed the check to changed and it changed to out of state. So although the payments from the city
were being made three to four weeks in advance in some cases, it still was not posting until after the bill cycle flipped over, we would get hit with a late fee. Uh so to counteract that or I guess to make the city whole again, what the process was is if we identified the
late fee, we have a rep at PPNL um who I've had discussions with, who uh both Michelle's in the controllers's office have had discussions with. we would reach out to them with the accounts. Here's the account. Here's the late fee. This is when we po mailed the payment. This is when the payment was processed
on PPNL's end. And and more often than not, they would credit our account on the next billing cycle. Um, now one of the things that I'm proud that we've moved to is AC with PPNL because what like Eric, Mr. Evans was saying is, you
know, that's 200 accounts a month, which from a controller's perspective, getting a stack of paperwork like this is, I mean, it looks ridiculous and then having one check. Um, but the the other beauty of the AC payment is the payment
posts in one or two days. Um, so we've gotten past I I believe as of yesterday the initial round where we were cleaning up the late fees, but I did note that when I was reviewing the accounts that we were paying, they had credited our
accounts that we asked to be credited for that additional charge. Um, as far as other late payments or or late fees, I I have seen the invoices that have a late fee on them. Uh but we always go back to the business manager and if I
don't catch it, uh the controllers's office usually does and we reach out to the vendor and I I've seen it removed and now I haven't looked at every single invoice since I started. Um but I'd say from October or midepptember on when I
implemented the new review process for financial services, I look at every invoice that comes through before it goes to the controllers's office. So, there's times um that I will preemptively see something that is an issue and I'll reach out to the business
manager uh if I think something looks weird, if I think there's an odd charge on there, if I think there's something the controller will ask because through working with them, I've developed like a pretty good idea of some of the questions they'll have. Um so, you know, I think that we continue to improve that
process and emphasize working together to fix it. And I I think we are starting to see, you know, success in in a lot of areas, but obviously there is work to be done. Um, and I mean, we'll just continue to review things as they come
up. Thank you. I think I think it's great all the work you've done, especially with going AC for PPNL. Thank you, Joe. That's great. And I know being a co-cracker, I can't expect anything less from you. Right. Right. Um, the only thing I mean I I brought this up again
just to see what we can do to try to resolve it, but um I think this is great because I've used this a lot in my um positions, but I'm just wondering because I know a lot of it is education and with all the staff and departments and I like that you're you're working on that. Is there a would it be appropriate
and beneficial to put time frames on here like that you know please forward invoice like three days or two days or whatever something like that. One of the things and when we meet we're going to meet in small groups with the business managers because you know some business
managers process all of their payments meaning like they put together the receiving slip where other departments it's various different people touching it. Um but one thing that we want to add there is a payment due date. Um, so we know when we get it in financial
services, here is the due date and it it will, you know, hopefully automatically be there, but we're going to move to if things aren't included in the checklist or looks like something wasn't done, then again, it gets kicked back to the business manager or whoever, you know,
for correction, which is kind of what's happening now. It's just we want to educate. So, you know, some of these other individuals touching invoices are more mindful of some of the things that come up on the back end when we're auditing the invoice.
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Y thank you. Do does anybody from administration have any other comments before I go to C um committee members? Mr. Uh, so I think after you guys listen to Joe for just a couple minutes, you
understand why we like him. Accountable, transparent, uh, ready to be a, uh, a solution, right? Rather than give excuses. So that's everything we we want out of the administration. So again, I think you you guys could probably figure that out
just from listening to him for a few moments. And then again, as far as again, I appreciate that this that these things are on the agenda as as they're very important to our office. And I think, you know, as Joe said, we're all we're going to do is continue to work forward, right? You know, uh Mr. Evans
mentioned through their process, right, sometimes things get up once the checks do get printed, everything's cleared, they get up and we do find more mistakes, right? And what we do is exactly what you said. We hang on to them. We reach out to whoever needs to be reached out to um you know whether
they it's attached to a contract that's expired or or the address is wrong or whatever whatever the case is, right? It gets handled then the check eventually gets released, right? And all we're after is that that amount of checks that we have to hold and and and uh and you
know that aren't in good order ultimately gets uh gets reduced, right? And and it's again, like I said before, it is a constant, right? It's a constant continuing improvement, right, that we're all after that we think is is appropriate and we're excited to see
that that being embraced, right? And and excited to see what the outlook is going to be going forward. Great. And thank you again for bringing everything. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do any committee members have any comments or questions? I actually just have one question. Um maybe Mr. Velasic would be
the correct person. I don't know. I'm just curious um if you ever foresee a time when this all becomes paperless. It's I mean it it it feels like and and then this is nothing to do with our city or anything like that. It's it's it's you know
broadly speaking. So that that's a great question and I think that the dream is that one day it will be paperless. But then there's also um businesses and you know other individuals that have concern because wire fraud and a fraud has also
come up as a a hot button issue. Sure. Um so as like Mr. Evans was saying in some cases I think bit smaller businesses are more resistant to it. Sure. Um but you know hopefully one day we will move to a system that is more
paperless uh just because that also cuts down on some of the the errors that come up. Yeah. I just I guess [Music] um I I wouldn't expect that maybe like you know you're working with a mason or something locally and they still work
very much you know like casual paper and all of that. I get it. Um but certainly with like the bigger um contracts we have, the bigger vendors that we have who we're doing millions of dollars of business with that that it might be uh possible to at least reduce the the load
of paper and and therefore make it more happen faster also. Yeah, I think that was that was maybe pre and Mr. Evans may may be able to better because I think this predates me. I think that was in investigated a little bit and I think that there is the possibility of adding
some of those bigger vendors as an a payment. Um I can tell you that the PPNL was because PPNL is so large and so many people pay their bills online through PPNL, they already have the AC portal set up, right? um big contractors and
stuff, they probably don't have it set up um just because the nature of their operations, but I imagine that there could be a way I would imagine that they probably do take wire payments or or a we could, you know, further roll that into the things that we have planned for
the future. I think I'm thinking less about the payment itself than the process which takes you to the moment when you actually do either pay or cut a check. That's really where the the the paper slip uh the the process of it moving between offices and all of that
that if there was a system where it moved through um you know through instead of instead of paper it's literally you get an email. Oh, you have some invoices to look at. You look at the invoice, you know, it's your turn. You go through make sure it's okay. You
check off and it moves to the next person. Right? I that might also you know and I'm sure that those kinds of systems are very expensive um and difficult to implement. I'm I'm sure but I but I they exist certainly. Yeah they do they uh so from when I used to do
audits there's a very popular service called bill.com um that manages that's almost like a 100% management software that manages invoices coming in and payments going out. Um, the thing that's nice with the system like that is it has an electronic record of everybody that's
touched it. Yeah. So, the the receiving slip is kind of the old school way of seeing everybody that's touched it. And and that's another thing that, you know, we've discussed is sort of improving a way like not to say to put a tracer on an invoice to see it move around the
city, but something that we could look at to see the length of time that it takes for an invoice to come in and then eventually find its way to the check being cut. Right. Okay. Well, I'm since it seems like you're kind of in an innovative kind of attitude and and
forwardlooking, I hope we can continue to discuss yes potential solutions that that could uh reduce paper and and time um and keep things rolling um electronically. Yes, definitely. Council Le um so I do have a couple
questions if you want to hang out. My first one is actually for you, Mr. Evans, because you've been here for a couple of administrations. I'm I'm curious as to like is have are we seeing an uptick in late payments? Is this something that is just like an existing persistent problem? Um have we seen more
late payments recently than before or is this just identifying an ongoing problem? It is it just working to improve an ongoing I said that because of the number of people that this moves through. It just needs more attention to
get get it done more efficient whether it be quicker maybe be paperless might be part of those solutions but uh just spending more time educating and training. We do have turnover like any city as well. So that's why you go back a little bit. We're dealing now and looking at receiving slips at different
departments. We do become departmentalized and we work to bring together and and unify. We're in different department for different reasons and you see that the budget time but we would like to unify receiving slips or whether it's a workflow software like SharePoint or the one you
had spend the bills to do that to make it uh but it it also requires investment in personnel staffing and training and education. So by the time it receives what by the time it ends up on Joe's desk it's ready to go in in a much upgraded fashion than what we've seen.
It's not an ongoing problem. It's just like Joe said, it's the PPNL bills and since last week, I guess last two weeks, we've been paying them through the portal. And there'll always be a very small percentage of late ones like Eric
said from his um from his memo that if there's a discrepancy if someone's at we're very thin um with there's like so many business managers if that business manager is on vacation there it might sit on the desk or there's turnover or
but there is such a small percentage there's a reason why a bill is Nate it's not that it's sitting somewhere where and people are ignoring it. Yeah. So, it's um the PPNL was the big one and now that is solved. Yeah. Like I'm I'm
tracking with that. I think anybody who runs a business I know we have business owners on council 90% of the bills everything goes great. 10% normally it's fine. Um when Terry Riker who's the accounts payable um individual when she was out um Joe and I learned how to
print the checks and there's nothing there. she proc everything she receives from the various um departments she processes that week assigns it a due date and if something is getting close to a late she puts it on the next run
like it's priority so she's very um aware of everything that she has at her desk the due dates um she also she gets all the um emails from the accounts payable um email she timestamps everything then sends it out to the
different business managers. She keeps this timestamp invoice at her desk and if she sees that it's going to be late, she contacts the business manager and like where is this? Like I have I sent you this invoice last like two weeks
ago. I haven't received it back. So she's on top of preventing things from being late. So it's a very very small percentage and there's a good reason why it's late if it is late. So the largest one the PPNL bills which which you've already discussed one great job on on
making sure that the communication is there to recoup late fees that we should not have incurred. So outstanding work they're making like being responsible with the the taxpayer dollars. Really really appreciate that. Um I had a question about the switching to uh a via
or versus checks and stuff like that. Are we incurring any additional expenses with AC deposits as opposed to a physical check? Uh the AC 1% 3%. Oh, I'm sorry. The the AC payments that we're doing now and the wire payments we're doing now, we're not incurring any
charge. Okay. All right. Um those were those were my major questions. Just a really large congratulations to finding this guy. um you you seem like you're really spearheading modernizing stuff within the financial department as well
as working with with a team. I know I say this all the time. You guys are in Slim. Um so great job modernizing what's what's going on in the financial department and keeping your eye on everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um the only question I guess I don't know maybe Mr. Yazo um as far as
that was a good question about seeing an increase in the late fees. I just know that it was brought to my attention because some of the issues are um and again it's not that I'm assigning blame to anyone or any department but sometimes and I think this receiving slip will certainly address it is that
um sometimes the invoices are not legible or they all the information is not received that needs to be received for a bill to be processed. Is that correct or can you comment on that? Yeah. So, I'll just the the various
reasons, right? Um uh and and it it could be again a a myriad of of different things, right? Whether it's a you know, wrong address, a transposed number, uh you know, just just a mistake in in inputting things. Um you know,
whether uh you know, it was it was uh Mr. Alcohol or Mr. Boscola didn't like something about it, but it wasn't communicated back to get a new invoice. what whatever the case is. Yes, I say I would say it had been,
you know, there it's an always an ongoing battle, right? It's continuous improvement. Um, and it's something that I've always been after from the beginning. I will always be after until until I leave, right? That's just that's how it is. I I I I I do think um you
know to your to your question and to u Miss Leon's question as well uh when it comes to the late fees um we all know city should not be paying any late fees right and I think the most important thing which Joe touched on is if they do
show up they are going to first make every effort to make sure they are removed and if they are unable then we will make every every effort to make sure or they were removed and and both of those cases have happened, right? And and that's I I
think what it comes down to. Um, you know, we we we want to make sure that we are uh incredible stewards of the taxpayer dollars. It's the reason I we that we all work together like this. It's the reason that that we put so much pressure on everybody because it has to
be as good as it possibly can be. and we will never stop until it's never going to be as good as it possibly could be, right? So, we will always continue to look for that and continuous improvement. We appreciate that it's discussed at a council like this. We appreciate that the initiative
is being taken and again um would we love to see more followup and and we're going to continue uh you know to to work on these on on both Joe's initiatives as well as the process and procedures that are in place that we feel can be improved. So yeah, we're
always going to be looking to improvement. That's not going to stop. Nothing will change. We appreciate that things are being spoken about in the open. Again, you you saw about as as uh accountable as an approach as you could get from Joe, right? And that's all we that's all we want. That's all we're
after and that's what we'll continue to be after, I think. Does that kind of answer the question? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Because I know I mean there have been some issues with, you know, and we discussed that. I think this receiving slip is going to be great because it will address it right here that making sure everything's legible. Everything
that's needed is here. Um, I would just highly recommend maybe adding some time frame or, you know, I mean, I know it's it's difficult, but I think that if people know that, you know, I think just, you know, there's so many different offices and departments and they don't know how important the time
frame is because they don't see what you do every day. And I would say maybe just putting them a you know like send this within two to days of receiving the invoice or three because you know more then they'll try to do that and if they don't okay there's a reason but at least it's there for them to see. Yes, I
agree. And um it's that is in draft form as I I don't if I mentioned or not that wanted to put eyes on it so you see what it looks like, what we're talking about, what we're doing with it. But we also have shared with the controls office and we'll be looking for additional feedback as well as the business administrator that we talk about or the I'm sorry, the
four business managers. We want their input before really let it fly and then Joe will run with it from there. But it's um it's think an improvement for sure. Yeah, agreed. Your ideas are are good and I think that's the idea, right? These these are all, you know, uh all we're going to polish and and continually improve as much as we all
possibly can together. I think three the three branches of government as we like to. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Councilman Callahan. Thank you. I I want to thank you all for uh you know the in in-depth
u conversation we've had. So um Mr. So the the invoices did were you seeing an uptick in the number of invoices that were late or that were had had penalties or is it like st I mean how many years
have you been controlling since 2015? So was it I mean it was something that was going on back then too or it just something that started upticking a little bit more and you were uncomfortable with it. Well, I would I would say um again, if you go back to um uh continuous improvement, right? Like
as as I've developed my office and I've upped my standards, I think we find more things, right? A lot of the things may have always occurred and maybe we weren't seeing them as much, but you know, we have and and I understand that the controllers's office, our review uh
of the invoices and the checks is probably always going to be more in depth than theirs. And again, that's by design. My name's on the check. It's right at the top of of of uh you know, things that are important to to our office. So I understand that we will
still always continue to probably catch things right that that um that they do not um but as we as we have improved and and we catch more things we just expect them to do things as well. Now again Mr.
Evans referred to, they had turnover, right? As I told you guys before, we embrace our independence, right? And and we've demonstrated that throughout the years, no more so than conducting an 100% independent investigation against a person who sits in a chair like that
who's now out of here, right? That was that was our office with no involvement uh up until we up until we turned everything in to HR, the police, the mayor, all at the all on the same day. Right. That No, there there is nobody on the
administration that is above uh you know our our supervision when it comes to that. Um but also um you know when that something like that happens that that that is a a tough blow for the administration because as much as that
person was had to be out they were a large part of the process. when you talk about a small team of financial services, right, who's running on a little, that was a big piece of a small piece, right? So, I of course understand that's going to take some time, right,
to recover from that. So, I to to just make sure that I'm very clear in answering all this, there's always issues. There always will be issues. We're always going to address them. I feel like as the controllers's office develops, we find more stuff. I feel like they've maybe had some setbacks in
personnel, right? And uh but we don't look backwards, we look forwards, right? And because we all have limited time here, right? As public services, we want to public servants, we want to make the best of it, right? And so we are always in that constant pursuit, that chase for
perfection, for things to be better, for processes to be better, for us to become more paperless, all these things, right? It's a combination of all of them, right? that we just are always going to be more demanding as we as I I I just have. Right. So maybe it's that I'm just more demanding as a controller as I go.
Right. But in in any case, I will not I will not stop. I'll only probably be more of a pain in the ass to Eric even as he improves all all these uh all all these processes and procedures. But again, we live in the moment. We live to to move forward to work together with all the branches of government. That's
why I I think I I look as to not look to the past as much and look to the future and and somebody like Joe who's willing to come in and step in and work with us. So So the outside of the PPL invoices, were there other uh was there a number
of invoices that were either late or we had were there that had late fees, penalty fees outside the PPL? There have been throughout the years that is it's an accurate statement to say that that was a big problem. Right? The PPNL itself
was a big problem mostly because there was 200 invoices that were we have to review all 200 invoices to pay one check. And I'm not talking about the I'm not talking about the ones where Mr. Evans said, you know, there was a example where um the garage door wasn't
installed properly or something. I think that's totally understandable and I think at that point whoever's uh checking off on the installation of that garage door or whatever it might be. Yeah. Um I think that we should whoever that is and it's handling that and
sending it into the uh pay, you know, in in for payment needs to make sure that that business is told, hey, we didn't you didn't finish this job correctly. you need to resubmit uh an invoice and I
to I totally get that. Yeah. But when you did start not at what point did you start noticing and I understand it took you in in your office a little bit more time to get up to speed on things and as you have got more up to speed, you know, you've been a little bit more critical on things. So what what what timeline
are we talking like six months ago, two two years ago that you started noticing this stuff? So again, I when we talk when we talk about we say like this stuff, right? This stuff, right? There is there there are a ton of
different issues that we we discuss, right? It seems to be the the one that you guys are discussing right now at the moment is late fees for things, right? The city has never had a issue with having late fees. When I say like
it is a problem, an epidemic, something that is dangerous that would damage our credit rating, anything like that, there are instances over the years where there have been late payments. And what we do is anytime, right, anytime there's
anything like that that we find, we're going to go to the administration first, have them get it removed, find out why it was on there, all the things, right? Because when we when we f get something at the end of the day, right, and it happens to be one of those checks that sits up in my office that is not in good
order. It could be for any any number of things, right? We don't necessarily know where along the line it got screwed up, right? That that time that chain of a bunch of people touching the the checks depending on which department it came from, right? So, we have we have to work
with them to figure out where it was, make sure they get it removed. If they don't get it removed, I'm going to get it removed or we're going to get it removed, right? But throughout my time and throughout my entire time here, we stand by that we do not uh you
know, we do not have a habit or the the administration does not have a habit of making late payments. Right? When I say more critical, meaning we we don't like any any any one mistake is too much, right? And um and I don't think it's that necessarily we weren't addressing
it or that they weren't addressing it or trying to do it. It's only that it was never talked about in in a council setting. That's all. Right. It's not like, oh, hey, there's a problem. There's a problem that exists now. Or, hey, there's been a problem that exists this whole time that nobody has talked about. That's not the case. The
administration is careful. We are uber careful. We are again to uh to like the nth degree. So again, from the moment I've stepped in, I'm down in the business administrator's office every week talking about a lot of these things. We just don't necessarily talk
about them with all you guys in front. So it's not like again, it's not like there's this horrible problem that existed that all of a sudden is coming to light and it's also not like oh all of a sudden it's just we we you know we're falling apart. So, so when you notice things like that, you go to the
business administrator, you have a discussion and you work on it and you work it out and they've been receptive. Yeah. I, you know, again, Mr. Mr. Evans and I have have certainly had times where we've disagreed, right? Um, throughout throughout these these
processes. Um, and I I get it, right? like you know he he's he's he's running his his uh you know his branch and I'm running my branch and not you know and again I'm I'm there I'm also very critical right
so there are times of course where he's going to disagree with me but as far as uh you know never never has has there been a time where we've stopped right where we've had to see you know cease uh
working together right just because we don't agree or or we uh you know we may butttheads on some certain issue. Right. It because that's not that's not that's not fair to uh the city. That's not what the residents elected me for. That's not why he's in his position. Right. Right.
We all have to hold our our standards much higher than that. When when you say though I mean when you say that hey there was a a disagreement or for lack of better words a butting of heads. Was it because there was like was it something financial Mr. reven that we just couldn't afford to get more
staffing or or or computer software or whatever. It was just No, it's I mean again we we meet all week all the time so any single conversation not coming to my mind right away but it's almost like uh on council night some you agree to
disagree. We both see each other's point of view. We're just not on the same page. This is the way we need to do it based on whatever the circumstances were at that time. And that's happened. We've disagreed sometimes down here too on different things that are in front of you and we make our points like you do
and move forward. I I think we both respect each other's position and decisions along the way. It's friendly debates. Yeah. But when when those debates do happen and there's disagreements in in the controllers's office comes to you, you're making the the mayor aware of these situations. I
would hope. Yeah. It depends on the level. I don't, you know, not every single thing that happens at what level, but if it's something that's important, yeah, we talk like on the late fees and things like that. Was he aware of that? So, yeah. Let me let me let me clear let me just something up here because yeah,
this this conversation is kind of getting I I think a little bit off off topic, right? Because I I I'm just going to make this point, right? So any everybody is very very clear, right? Regardless of my
agreements, disagreements, interactions with Mr. Evans throughout all all the years or Mr. wrong before that or Bob Donz just so everyone is very clear. If I personally as the controller have any
issues that I feel needs a swift and thoughtful response from the mayor, I get it myself as that's just from me. So every you would have that conversation with him. What's that? You would have that conversation. I would have the conversation. I feel anything's
dangerous to the city. I feel that the controllers's office needs an answer directly from the mayor, a thoughtful, timely response. I'll get it from him at any time. And you've done it. You You've done that. I I would assume. Have talks with the mayor? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Of
course, I've had talks with the mayor. Yeah. All right. I just want to make sure it's being addressed appropriately to your satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. All right. Because the mayor made a statement the other day or yesterday that he he was unaware of it. So, well, him and I him and I have had
no conversations at all in the calendar year 2025 about about this. We've had a lot of conversations. Was he aware of the late fees and late invoices? Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm I'm I'm talking right and I'm addressing Excuse me. I have the floor so don't speak when I'm speaking.
Thank you. Be polite. Okay. But I'm I'm just asking when we had late fees and in invoices and penalties, he was made aware of that. I'm assuming so either you or Mr. Evans would have told him that. Correct. So we could fix it.
Yeah. Okay. So I think I'm asking a simple question. I think he answered that simple of a question. I think you're not you're not referencing any specific thing. We're not referencing any specific question on the things that were brought up tonight by both by
everybody all parties. He was made aware of it at some point. He had to be. He should have. Right. Did you ever make him aware or did Mr. Evans ever make him aware of? I've had I've had I whenever I feel it appropriate to have a conversation with the mayor. I have a conversation with the mayor. I have no problems getting
any any responses from the mayor about anything. I have an issue and Mr. You would have you would have made him aware of those things in conversations also. Correct. The fees you're referencing were reversed. It was a work in process. I'm not going to run to him right guess what might be if we know there's a solution to it. Joe told you what he did
to do it. I'm not talking about micro micro issues. I'm talking about like in general would you have the payments that got reversed is what you're talking about. So they reversed. So should I go tell them we had payments and they got I'm just what I'm asking is was he aware that there was payments being made late
and and and there was invoices that were being charged late fees and so so he could fix it. No, they weren't made late. No. Was he ever made aware of it? the fees that were um late, which we got reimbursed for, were immaterial. You
wouldn't bother the mayor with something immaterial that's during a daily process, right? Would he ever have you ever had any conversations? It doesn't They were immaterial. I'm just asking I'm just asking a question. I'm asking I'm asking a question. And was he ever have you ever had any discussions with
the mayor about the late fees for PPL or anybody else? No, it's not his Have you ever Mr. Evans, have you Thank you. Thank you. Have you ever had any Okay, I'm I'm just going to Can I ask one question? It's a simple yes or no. Okay. Have you had any discussions at any
point with the mayor about the late fees and find and and uh and late charges ever? Have you ever had those discussions with the mayor? It was the same questions, the same answer. That's who are you asking? Mr. Evans. I Mr. Yaso has already admitted that he has
had those discussions. I'm just asking. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang Hey, this is so this is so out of control right now. This is way out of control. I'm asking a question out of control to order right now. Never had those way out of control. You never had those questions out of control. I have never
never personally tked the mayor with uh with a late pe a late fee. No, I'm asking if you've ever had any of the conversations about the issues we're talking about. That's all I'm asking. Have you ever had those conversations? I think that we I think that you already asked this question and he answered it
previously. So, you never had him. You're you're not like you're not asking straightforward questions, Brian. This is this Let me make it Let me hold on. Let me make it straightforward. Okay. All I'm asking is this. The issues that we're discussing about the late fees with PPL and the late charges. Have you
point Have you ever had I have never I have I've never tked him asked him. That's all I want to know. No. Thank you. And Mr. Evans, you have never discussed it with him. Correct. Mr. Evans, you've never had that discussion with him. Okay. Councilman Callahan, I'm
I'm going to interrupt now. Okay. The reason I brought this up on the agenda is because it came to me as a chair of the finance committee. Then I met with Mr. Yazo and Mr. Evans regarding this issue more than once. I was told that
the mayor was aware of this. Now, if no one wants to if the mayor and no one else here wants to acknowledge that, that's fine. But the bottom line is we had issues in city hall with finances. As a finance chair, I felt that it needed to come to the finance committee.
After I met with those involved several times, and we talked about ways to resolve it, but I felt that it was my duty as finance chair that the other committees members are aware of this. And I am very grateful um especially to Mr. Velocic for the work that has been
done to rectify it because it was issues. We definitely had issues. There was no doubt about it and we have rectified some of them and I think that we need to work on continuing to rectify the issues. Um obviously there you know it's a big city hall is big many
departments but we need to make sure that the proper departments and people get the proper paperwork necessary to process vendor invoices and in a timely manner. And there's been some issues with that and I think that we had a really good conversation about that
tonight and ways to ways to work and improve that entire system. I I I appreciate that. I was just trying to make sure that there was an awareness at the uh at the top level of the situation of what we're discussing. That's all I was asking. Does anyone else have any
more comments regarding this whole issue? So I again I thank everyone for the work and I think this um receiving slip is great and continuing to work on um in in increasing the amount of AC payments that we can do is is a really good is a really good path to go
forward. Meaning a journ then thank you