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Jersey City Municipal Council. We had a 10 a.m. start. The clock on my cell phone is showing 10:04 a.m. May we have a roll call for the commencement of this budget hearing. Council person Brooks is not here.

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Council person Zuper is not here. Council person Efos >> present. >> Council person Little is not here. Council person Gilmore is not here. Council person Singh. Council Person Griffin is not here.

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Council Person Lavaro is here but not in the room yet. And Council President Ridley >> here. >> We have Council Person Lavalo Lavaro here. though we have four council members in

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attendance at 10:04 a.m. In addition, at its time of its preparation, the notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 at 1:32 p.m. to the mayor, municipal council, business administrator, corporation council, and

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the local newspapers so I can certify as to our total compliance with the Sunshine Law. Council President, I'm going to turn it over to you. >> Good morning, everyone. Uh this is our budget hearing for the department of finance. Thank you all for being here

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this morning. This morning this budget hearing will be led by Councilman Rolando Lavaro. So I will turn it over to him at this time. >> Good morning. Um thank you all for being here from everyone from the finance

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department and the respective divisions. Thank you again always to Ruby uh for joining us and uh guiding us through this. Um so we've been the format that we've been using and you might be already aware is that uh the present uh each director has present done the

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department presentations and then we follow that with uh questions and going through kind of every division um line by line and uh um discussing that. Um in addition and I don't know if the

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materials were handed out um wanted to also incorporate um questions obviously questions also about your presentation itself um but also questions regarding the revenue side of the budget and the debt service. Um so I've provided some

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materials towards that end and council members have a question about it. I don't know if folks were prepared for that or if you're you yourself are prepared for that. Um, and certainly not trying to play a a catcha game or anything like that. Gotcha game. So, if that's something that we need to discuss

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at a later time after taking some time to review, I'm open to doing that and scheduling a second session around that. >> Good morning, Council President, Council Members, and Councilman Lavaro specifically. Let me just address the last two items if I could with respect to revenue and debt service. uh uh with

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respect to revenue uh the local revenue we have right over 100 sources of revenue. Uh BA did mention to me yesterday there was a topic he wanted to discuss today and as you know it is a highly decentralized function right now for the city. Uh the finance department

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doesn't have a single individual that is responsible for driving those revenue items. We report on them, collect the information and report back on on performance. We had actually discussed about a month or so ago creating a position and had posted a position for

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exactly that purpose to try to drive revenue and we decided in the interest of reducing cost to pull that posting down. So we can have certainly a further discussion uh at at whenever it's convenient and try to go through those

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and address questions in more detail, but it would require I think more resources than I have available at this moment. >> Okay. On debt service, >> I was just going to jump in and say in the past I think we've had a catchall session for like revenues and

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expenditures separately. Uh and that's something that I'll discuss with the clerk. we have um some more budget sessions that we have to catch up on. So we can um try to set that up at a at a later date and give you all some time to wrap your heads around that.

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>> That'd be great. Happy to do that. And um similarly, I think debt service and we can talk a little bit about it today. Perhaps a a better discussion might be with the uh our financial adviser who has looked at our debt portfolio have had discussions with them about the possibility of restructuring

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uh and and they know the the portfolio in depth and they know the markets and what what would work and what and what doesn't work. I would also be happy to invite them to have you know to join that conversation if you thought that would make sense.

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>> Is it billable hours? What's that? >> I said, is it billable hours? >> Uh, yes, it would be billable hours. We could make we could keep it short. Okay. >> Or do a team's call separately, whatever is most convenient. >> So, if you like to proceed with your presentation. >> Okay. Great.

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>> Before we move on, I just wanted to um mark Council Person Little present at 10:06 a.m. So, we now have five council members present. Director, you can It's all yours. >> Can we get the presentation up on those? >> Yep, it's there.

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I see it. Not so if I might, I'll start with an overview of the finance department. Uh we have six core divisions. Um starting with the office of management and budget uh headed by Danny Bemouth uh treasury um Shirley Marano council control while

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Stanton purchasing Raquel Tado grant administration is Vivian Webb and the tax collector's office currently being administered by uh Ernie Borha and then next to me um is uh Kyle Greavves who I think you all know and has been my right hand since I started with the city back

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in uh January or February. Um the first thing I would like to I would like to thank each of them um before I get into the presentation because it has been a very difficult seven months for all of us but in particular I think for the finance department a lot of changes a lot of challenges

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um and I think they have all stepped up to assist me in the transformation of the finance department and I I do want to recognize that I especially want to recognize Kyle's efforts in that I think you all know have known him for Um, and I could not have accomplished

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half of what we've done uh without Kyle's knowledge of Jerry City and municipal finance. I wanted to just start off thanking uh each of them for their support over the past 7 months. With that said, so um the office of management and budget um I did add to

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this presentation to get a sense of uh the number of personnel in each department. There are 13 full-time equivalents um out of a total of 58 inclusive of two vacancies in the finance department. Treasury is uh six full-time equivalents. Accounting

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controls is eight. Uh purchasing 11, grant administration is just three and the tax collector's office uh 14. Uh in in total the six core divisions, the proposed budget for 2026 is just about $6 million.

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And I wanted to highlight just some efforts uh that we have made that have resulted in significant um cost savings or um the um acquisition of cash that had uh belonged to the city that we've been able to recapture. A significant

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part of that comes from uh almost a million dollars in cash that had been at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority that uh was brought to my attention through people and relationships I have there and returned to the city uh that had been with the Turnpike Authority for a

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number of years sitting in an escrow account. Um through other efforts u primarily through Walkeas working with public safety. We've also been able to uh begin recovering what ultimately may be uh several millions of dollars held by uh New Jersey Department of

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Transportation. We've been in contact with them and we are reconciling uh some really old uh invoices that had gone unpaid to the city and are in the process of uh going through that reconciliation having that money paid back to the city. Um, we also, and

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again, thanks to Walkeia, her efforts with public safety, have been able to identify uh $2 million from the offduty uh police fund that uh has been used in the 26 budget um had also been sitting

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in those reserves and we were able to uh use those funds appropriately for the 26 budget. Um all total one other uh one other thing I wanted to mention and thanks to Shirley's efforts uh there is uh and many of you uh may

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know and if you're not you might want to look at the state maintains a website for unclaimed properties. Um you'd be surprised when you search on the unclaimed properties what you might find. You might even find that there's money owed to you or your family. Uh in this case uh we have found so far um

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what is probably will be a few hundreds of thousands of dollars in unclaimed properties that belong to Jersey City. Uh you simply go to the website uh you search and you apply for it to be returned. These can be anything from uh old uh escrow accounts that have been

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set up that were never returned to the original parties um to properties. And so we have been going about um having all those returned back to the city and Shirley has been uh in the lead on that. Talk a little bit about what we've

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accomplished so far in the the seven months that we've been at it. Um I think as you all know um we have the department and myself and Kyle in particular played a lead role with the mayor's office in working with uh the

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governor's office and DCA in securing $120 million in state aid uh to solve the uh for the budget crisis uh of 2026. and we have continued to maintain you know that relationship with DCA uh in

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particular and working with them uh since we applied for transitional aid earlier this year. We have also been working hard to implement the Edmonds financial platform which was a platform that the city purchased last year but had not been

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fully utilizing. And so we have been kind of retraining personnel including with inside and outside of finance to take full take full control and to have to make full use of the platform itself. That's enabled us to improve our controls

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around spending. We've started to generate things like budget variance reports so we can get better track of our spending versus the budget. We've reduced the amount of paper we're using. Um we're starting to use the cash flow forecasting module. Uh we have also been

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uh integrating it with our payroll system and we think there's lots of possibilities as we get uh uh fully using the the platform to more modern to a more modern standard and to modernize the finance department itself.

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We will have the 2025 financial audit I anticipate on the agenda for the August meeting for your acceptance. Uh prior to that uh it will be published. Um it is getting close to being completed. Uh I don't have an exact date for you but my

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my plan is to publish the the 25 uh financial audit over the coming weeks. Uh I have spoken to our auditor and have asked them to come to caucus prior to the next um uh council meeting to discuss it and present to you if that's

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acceptable to the council. Um and uh prior to the financial audit, other requirement filings that uh we are responsible for include the annual financial statement which we reviewed with council, the AFS annual debt statement uh and we also uh rolled over notes uh in July and have some uh

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further rollover notes coming up later this year in October and uh December. Um I mentioned uh in terms of impact, we've recovered over $5 million in undistributed revenue from a variety of sources. Uh I did fail to mention uh

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that a couple million dollars of that uh and Ernie Ernie has joined us relates to prior year pilots um and having collected uh $2 million over $2 million in uh due to the city from prior year pilots. We also have uh ongoing uh

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claims audit for health benefits which we we've talked about before. We intend to pursue that aggressively. We think there's money there for the city to uh reclaim from uh Horizon. The proposed budget, as I mentioned, is just over $6 million.

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Of that, the vast majority is personnel, salaries, and wages at 4.4 million, contracts at 1.5 million, and another 67,000. the gross budget that we anticipate will reduce by almost $400,000 from the our

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ability to allocate personnel to the collection of uh of payroll taxes, the administration of the collection of payroll taxes. Um on the topic of payroll taxes, we have had uh two employees transferred into the department uh who were previously in

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internal audit. They were responsible for collecting payroll taxes. uh we believe uh we will be more effective in collecting taxes uh housing that inside a department that is already has the expertise of tax collection. So we've moved two people uh under Ernie uh into

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the tax collector's office uh to collect payroll taxes. We uh are hoping anticipating that we'll be that much more efficient in our collection of payroll taxes. At the same time, uh we have eliminated several positions in finance over the course of the year. Um when we had a

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vacancy early on in the year, uh we decided to rather than fill the vacancy to combine that with a a second vacancy and create a senior fiscal officer position rather than having two people have one at a somewhat senior level. Uh we did that early this year. Uh we've

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eliminated um three other positions over the course of the year and uh in this search for continued efficiency and reducing uh our costs as well terms of the uh savings from those uh cuts. um the

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consolidation of the CFO and the director of finance position, which I current I currently um am in both positions and view that as certainly would be my preferred and my recommended uh status for the position of head of

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finance for Jerry City going forward. Whether I'm here or not, I believe it's the right organizational structure to have the CFO and director of finance be one and the same. Um so that that is what we've done and that's the position I'm currently in. Um we have um also um

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eliminated positions in purchasing uh in treasury um grants and the accounting and I've also eliminated or reduced our overtime uh contract contractual expenses. We've been able to reduce uh spending from

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$1.8 million down to 1.6. Um that includes a more favorable uh contract with bond council as well as with our financial advisor and we continue to squeeze uh down on things like printing and advertising costs as well. Um on and

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we've looked at everything from eliminating personal printers and using shared printers um and reducing our expenses every way uh we can find. And then finally um trimming expenses on on some miscellaneous office supplies. So

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total reductions are $765,000. looking ahead and the things that we're working on and there are there are many this I would say a a summary list where we I think we have a lot in the finance department to continue uh to improve uh as we get to become a more modern

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finance department but migrating uh continuing to migrate to electronic processes via admins reducing paper reducing paper checks and moving to a and wire payments something we have already aggressively uh been doing uh consolidating bank accounts and opening

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accounts with banks that uh not only are uh supporting Jersey City in the way we think uh they should be supporting but also in providing uh interest income on the cash balances that we maintain at banks. Uh I mentioned the claims audit and um we also anticipate doing an audit

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of our fixed assets. Um if um you will see when we uh issue the audit that and this has been a long-standing uh finding on previous audits that the city does not have a good handle on its fixed assets. Not only what we have now, but the ability to track them going forward.

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Uh we anticipate uh issuing an RFP to have somebody do a full in inventory, but we also need to develop a way to monitor and track the assets as they come in and out and move around the city. We continue uh to look for new grants and funding ideas within the finance

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department. Uh we were able to secure a $75,000 grant from DCA uh focused on uh efficiencies. Uh I am hoping to use some um of that to look at our entire what I call our quote to cash process starting

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from purchasing to uh paying our vendors. Uh I would I'd like to map out our processes in detail and get a better handle on how we pay vendors uh to eliminate some of the consistent you know problems we've been

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having with vendors being paid late uh and our you know uh being surprised by invoices and contracts that we may not be aware of. So I think there's um a huge opportunity there for process improvement. Um, but we will need some outside resources, I think, to map that

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uh for us and suggest recommendations for process improvements. But I think they're there. Mentioned earlier, we moved payroll tax collections from internal audit to the tax collector's office to streamline operations and also pro have oversight over that process from people who are uh

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in the business, so to speak, of collecting taxes. Uh, and we will continue to address audit findings and improve on our financial controls. And with that uh that concludes my over overview. Uh thank you for your time.

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>> Thank you for the presentation. Um so we'll jump right into questions. Um and so um as I said going line by line each division's budget. Um and we'll start with the director's office. So, if I'll ask my colleagues if they

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have any questions on um salaries and wages line 101. >> Yes, thank you. Um my question is um I see you're looking to hire a deputy CFO

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for an annual um $150,000 a year prrated of course uh because the person does not currently work here. But um I I guess you know I I understand you all work very hard um and you've been doing a lot of great work so far, but I guess I'm

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I'm questioning the need for for a new six-f figureure salary and and can you describe what this person will do that is different that your current office cannot already do? >> Sure. Thank you for the question. Uh we have had the deputy CFO position posted

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for several months um and have not filled it for lack of qualifications of the candidates who have expressed interest. I feel very very strongly the department needs another strong finance

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leader uh for one continuity purposes. I think the department needs more than what we have right now. Secondly, right now in terms of you know improvements of department, I think there's no question and there's really no lack of documentation the kind of

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challenges that the finance department has to become a more modern efficient finance department. My team is working at fixing the plane while they're flying it. It is very very difficult if not impossible to ask people to at the same

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time they're doing their daily work to figure out how to improve their processes u and make what are really significant changes. I need I think Jersey City needs very much someone who can help drive those changes.

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I cannot on my own stay on top of the variety of of things that we have to fix. I'll give you an example. I've been talking to Danny for months about how we get a bit our arms around our accounts payable issues. It that is has been

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sitting on my desk probably for 3 months since I last talked to him for lack of time, my time and his time. I very very strongly feel like I need someone who can take those kinds of projects and advance them so that I can

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focus my time on other things. And similarly, you know, Kyle is full out and so he would normally be the person I would go to for those kinds of projects, but there's only so many hours uh in the day. So I do think with the right person, that person will pay for him or

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herself many times over. >> Council person Singh, >> thank you. >> U Thank you, director. Thank you for the presentation. Um why the salary is proposed for 3 months for CFO position?

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>> The deputy position is on there for 3 months only because it's been vacant for a while. We know we're already in July and the likelihood of having somebody on board. I do not have a candidate right now in sight. So at most if we were fortunate enough to have somebody

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relatively soon, they will be on the payroll for 20 in 2026 for three months. So that's why it's on in 26 for 3 months. But as Councilman Little U, Council Person Little mentioned earlier, then next year the full salary I think

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we we have gauged at around 150 155,000. >> Thank you, >> Councilman. Go ahead. Uh thank you for the thank you for the presentation and um appreciate the dedication all of you are putting

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into um not only solving the crisis of our budget deficit and the unpaid bills but also just bringing this office into the modern era as you have been saying. So I appreciate the dedication and um your willingness to communicate throughout this whole year since you

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came on. Um, I I wanted to just get a better sense of what the different roles were of a CFO and a director of finance. Um, I appreciate that we're consolidating them into into just one position here, but um, why were they

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separated before? What were the different responsibilities under each? And in your estimation, why does it make so much more sense to just besides financially just to have them in one position? >> Sure. So one one thing for a municipality that is a little bit different is that uh the city is

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required to have a CFO. Um the CFO is required to have a municipal um CFO license. Uh and so it is a required position. Uh there are some statutory

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uh uh responsibilities that go along with that job. for example, the CFO's name is on the annual financial statements and signs uh the reports that go to DCA on a regular basis. So there are some very specific things that are required from the municipal finance

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officer. The director of finance, the way it was organized previously, director of finance directed and ran the department. The CFO was not part of finance and yet was responsible for signing off on financial reports.

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That structure candidly makes no sense to me. I would not I would not put my name on financial reports that I were not comfortable had been developed and with my oversight. So to have a CFO sitting in a different department to me was a

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very difficult thing to understand as the the logic for that from a business perspective. I don't think it makes sense to have two positions say a CFO and a director underneath or the other way around. So to me the logical conclusion of that is they should be one and the same. any

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other walk of life, private sector, whether it was New Jersey Transit before I got here or working in the private sector, the CFO ran the finance department. And I I really believe that is the best model. The CFO is ultimately responsible for not only directing

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day-to-day operations of finance, but for signing off on the quality of the content of the financial reports. I do believe that it it makes sense to put them together. So the responsibilities um as they currently are

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sit, you know, both of those are are are mine. I am responsible for signing off on the financial reports. I'm I'm leading the efforts of the AFS and the financial audit and so forth, but I'm also directing my team uh and the one behind um you know the direction of the finance department. I think it makes

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sense to do it that way. >> Appreciate the answer. Thank you, >> Council President. So, I guess this is more of a um comment and I think Bill, you did a good job explaining, you know, why you want the new position and I think it's the same

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thing that we hear from every department. Every department is strapped and struggling and can use more staff and I don't doubt that that is the case. But the the part that I'm struggling with is the administration decided to increase

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the current department head um role by $60,000 right from 190 to 250 because we were told that that role was going to encompass uh two roles CFO and director of finance. Now we're looking to add

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another person So, it's it's difficult for me to understand why we just just didn't keep the two roles if now we're asking for a third. So, it's more of a comment than you've

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explained why you needed it. So, I don't want you to have to reexlain. >> Okay, I'll leave it at that. >> Um I I will ask a question just for further clarification for me. Um you're currently the acting CFO. Yes. Um and so

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if you end up with a deputy CFO, um will that person assume the CFO responsibilities or will you still be the CFO at that point? >> Right now, my plan would be to continue as acting CFO as long as I can continue to do that. What I would like is for

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that candidate to be qualified to be considered to be CFO and to be a candidate to succeed me to add to the current pool that we currently have. And just for my my clarification

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edification, um who were the CFOs previous to to you at this point? >> Yeah, it's probably a question. >> Yeah, there was there were quite a few. I believe I've worked for six or five

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CFOs in the last eight years. Uh Donna Mau initially uh when I came into the finance department in 1819 >> and then uh John Mercer was appointed acting CFO at one point and he also did

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a second stint uh with the previous administration before Bill came in. Uh we had >> John Mercer the Ber. >> Yeah. And >> then we also had uh Lumna Gunir and I believe Elizabeth Castillo as well.

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>> So and John Skura. So it it has been a revolving door >> since I've been here. And >> on top of that there's also been you know >> who was the last one and when >> John John Mercer was the last CFO for the city. >> There's also been three finance

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directors in that in that time period as well. So that's >> okay. Um, anyone else? Oh, the only other thing I want to bring up is the payroll tax administration offset. Um, which is great, but um, could could we just get

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an accounting of all the payroll tax administration? I see it's peppered throughout the department just kind of where where the payroll tax administration I know we're allowed to spend up to 3%. um couple things just like a summary of all of that not just in your department

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but across the city. >> Sure we we can provide that to >> it's a pretty rough estimate I will tell you uh in advance we allocated a certain percentage of as many people as we thought would be involved uh with the collection of payroll tax to come up

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with our best estimate but happy to provide that to you. >> Thank you. Uh colleagues do you have any questions about any other line items for the director's office? That's uh the 200s, 300s as well as the acting position and 400.

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>> Um this it looks like uh almost $2,000 of furniture was not requested, but it was included in the draft. So just wanted to check on the discrepancy between it not being requested and it being allocated. line item 401.

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>> I I could speak to that. So, Bill obviously was not here when we initially put our budget proposal together and again that was something we adjusted uh after he came in to reflect, you know, the needs of of the office and what's what's been utilized to date.

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>> Okay. >> It's been expended already. >> Got it. Thank you. Um if there are no other questions we'll move on to the next uh division um office of management and budget

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anyone have any questions regarding salary and wages line 101 I'll get us started if it's uh you just explain the consolid it says consolidated into senior fiscal position um just explain what that means itself

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>> we had um early on when I joined the city, we had one of the fiscal officers join council president's team and rather than replace that position one for one, uh what we decided to we

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had at the time another vacancy in the department, what we decided to do was to consolidate the two and create a senior fiscal officer position so would have broader responsibilities over multiple departments rather than assigning a fiscal officer to just one. So, the idea

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was to um have one person do more but also take on some management responsibilities. We relatively recently filled that position um with someone else who uh came from the Jersey City um uh one of the other departments in

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Jersey City to fill that senior fiscal officer position. >> So, two positions became one and a senior position. >> Correct. >> Yeah. Okay. Any other questions from council colleagues on line 101? >> I have a question um in the

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justifications salary correction. What is that in reference to? >> I can answer that one for you. There was a increase given to an employee a couple years back. um the way that calculation

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was done through personnel did not properly account for that employees base and longevity. So the employee did raise this at some point last year. It went to HR for um you know to investigate the

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claims. Um employee was correct. Uh longevity wasn't adjusted properly for for her. So there had to be a correction to the employees base and then ultimately what the total salary would be uh for this year.

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>> Okay. >> If I can just follow up on that, the salary was adjusted for longevity. Um and was that adjusted in 2026 and then is it uh >> yeah there was it's a retroactive adjustment. This is the

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this is the total salary for 2026. Now, >> does it include the back? I would assume there was some back pay for like not >> Yeah, that was that was resolved last year. >> resolved last year. Okay. >> Councilman Efos, you had a question. >> Yeah. Um I preface this with just saying

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I especially under the the leadership of the department right now. I I have full trust that you all are doing truly everything you can to bring us out of this financial crisis. And I again just want to express gratitude for the work you've been doing. Um, I just be remiss

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not to ask into the the years of service of the folks in uh, management and budget and just thinking through what roles people have played in the previous year's budgets because my understanding is that the the failure of the past

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year's budgets to be truly balanced and in a responsible way is a lot of why we're here right now. Um and so if the office could just speak a little bit to folks who have been um in this division

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for some time and have helped do the budget and management work for some years especially in the past five years um speak to the the roles and responsibilities there in um to better understand uh yeah I'm just trying to

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get a sense of what all went wrong in the past five years and how are we going to make sure that it it is not replicated going forward. forward. So I I can start and we can talk a little bit more about the longevity of of individuals if you like but there is a fair amount of longevity across the

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board on the list of people you see here not only in OMB but on my team for the most part they have been here sometime I would say and is you know my my observation not having been here but I think I have a pretty good handle on how

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things had operated previously um that you know finance wasn't really driving the budget process here. Uh that decisions were being made at the top, top down and dictated, not driven by the people you see here or

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the people you see on the budget. Um so I I understand the concern. Um, and all I I could say was one of part of the reason I wanted to start out by thanking them is that I have had nothing but support from the people who are on my

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team to try to do things the right way. Uh I think they have been extremely open and candid with me about how things happened in the past and have been very open to not only suggesting different ways but

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being open to doing things in a way that is transparent. uh we I think when we've been before the council and I've certainly talked to everybody on my team when they present uh I have told each and every single one of them they answer every question they get as candidly as they can and if they don't know the

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answer to just say they don't know the answer and we'll get back to you period. Um I have observed like some of the practices in the past that to me um would have led to feeling less confidence in the answers from the uh

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the dancing around questions and other things that I have observed and I have told my team I think they would confirm that I I don't want to see that from my department. It's not it's not how I operate. It's not and I take a lot of pride uh in you know I want this to be a

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first- rate finance organization uh and I want them to be part of it. So I you know I certainly understand the genesis of of the question but I I can say certainly with my my experience with this team of people they have their the highest uh integrity and cander with me

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um and have been helping me since day one to you know identify problems and find ways to fix them. I I really appreciate that. I appreciate the confidence um and pride in in your team and I I hope my question uh came across with like the due respect that that I

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have for you all. So, thank you for the answer. >> It does. Thank you. >> Most of the decisions are obviously made by top heads or made by top heads. So, they were just following what they were told to do. >> I I believe so. Yes, council person. I I

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I really uh think that um the finance uh department in the past has presented budgets that were just simply not accepted. Um and the budgets that were ultimately adopted were adopted based on top- down instructions. Um we've talked

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a lot about some of the more visible um what you know certainly would appear to have been intentional underbudgeting of major line items. I don't think there's anybody at the table here uh who was in favor of of those types of decisions and we certainly have been as clear as we

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could be about how you know we do not uh view those as being appropriate ways of budgeting uh for the city and part of the reasons why we're in the problems that we're in. >> Yep. Um I'm Councilwoman Lilad. >> Thank you. Um I I do see an additional

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position that was added, senior fiscal analyst. Uh this person did not work for uh the finance department in 2025. Um it says they were transferred from public safety. Um and I I happen to know this person um was the police director prior

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to this and um was a civilian police director to be clear. So I I I don't know this person's background. I don't know them particularly well at all. Um but I I'm a position of senior fiscal analyst seems to have um some you

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know some specific job duties and and so I'm I'm wondering if this person was moved because that is their professional background or if they were moved because they needed to be retained because of civil service and this was just where they were put. So I can say that

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this person is currently functioning in support of the law department as a fiscal officer and I have had nothing but positive feedback about the job that she's performing there. Uh most of these positions as you know support one or two

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departments depending on the size of the departments. Um and you uh corporate council has been you know very open with me about her I think has the support that she's getting. Um so probably rather not get into the

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specifics here about the reasons for the transfer but from my standpoint it has worked out quite well for the finance department and I think for the law department where she's been assigned to uh support. >> Okay great. I'm I'm really happy to hear that. I know in some cases we've seen

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people moved around just because of you know to positions that may not be where their background has is um because of civil service requirements and I'm happy to hear that that's not the case here and this is a good fit for this individual. So thank you. >> You're welcome.

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>> Uh I would like to chime in on this um on line 101 salaries and wages. So my understanding in the past that um fiscal officers were kind of assigned to different departments um and maybe even um resided physically

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in in those other departments. Has that changed? And our fiscal officers uh in the department itself and are they they almost essentially served like two two supervisors, right? The department director and then the department finance director. um their allegiance is torn.

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Uh I'm making it dramatic. I'm just joking. But um but in all seriousness, uh is is everything consolid? Are they answering to to you? And um and are they clear with regard to um or do they still have to kind of balance the

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uh departmental needs and and politics frankly? Right. I'll say like that. >> Sure. Understood. Uh Councilman. So I I I think of it as uh people going native uh when they reside in a department and

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they start feeling allegiance more to a department than they do to the finance department. We still are somewhat decentralized. We do have people residing uh in different departments. Um it has not been an issue for me. I feel like uh so Danny for example does not uh

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reside here in city hall. Uh, but Danny and I talk nearly every day and we're together uh nearly every day and so are other other members of his staff. Um, if I could, would I prefer to have them all in city hall? I I would say yes. Uh, I

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actually I like seeing people. I like seeing my team. I like interacting with them. And so I I find it a little bit more of a challenge when they are dispersed. uh and I do get that it is a challenge over time if you're residing in a department uh to start feeling an

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allegiance for a particular department uh and I need my team to be first and foremost uh aligned with my goals to be candid with me um and of you know there there is a normal tension between finance and operating departments kind

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of all the time it kind of goes with the territory um so I can't really afford to have people you know not uh 100% candid with me about what's going on and why decisions are being made. But so far, I would say it has not uh it's not been an issue. Um but if I had my brothers and I

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had the space, would I put everybody here in city hall where I could see them more frequently? I probably would. >> Okay. Yeah, I would think you'd want to hold the line between these hard times to expenses and physical officers can get

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persuaded by uh others if you're seeing them on a day-to-day basis to >> to change move some numbers around. So, >> um that being said, um I'll defer on the rest of the items for um Office of Management and Budget um and uh other

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expenses. Anyone? items 2011 306 307. >> I'm just curious uh the unmet request for 22,000 for training and and meeting expenses. Is this also related to um consolidation of these kinds of things in HR?

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>> Yes, that's correct. >> Okay, thank you. >> Okay. Um we're going to move on to the next division. Um purchasing and central services and um we'll start with the salaries and wages line 101. Again, before we do

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that, Councilman, I just want to mark Council Person Brooks present at 10:49 a.m. Not PM. That we'll now have six council members present. Thank you.

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>> Okay, council. Council members, any questions on line 101 for purchasing and central services? >> Um, if if I may. >> Yes. >> Great. Thank you. Um, if you could elaborate a little bit on the difference between purchasing

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assistant, assistant purchasing agent, principal buyer, buyer, and senior buyer. Um, I understand civil service job codes are not always reflective of what the individual is actually doing, but um, just making sure there, you know, just looking at any potential

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redundancies and any any, um, any areas of inefficiencies, just, you know, trying to get a handle on what what the different job descriptions are and what these people are doing on a daily basis. >> Sure thing. Great question and it is beyond my ability to answer. So, I'm going to ask Raquel if she could

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describe those job functions in a little more detail. >> Hey everyone, I'm Raquel Tado, the purchasing agent. Uh, the different titles, a purchasing assistant falls right under me, and that's a civil service title that you have to take an exam for, and

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my two assistant purchasing agents have been there together about 50 years together. Um purchasing assistant is kind of level one when you first get into purchasing. That's what um is given. Uh so you're an

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assist your purchasing assistant first and then you move up to buyer and then you have senior buyer or principal buyer. Those are like supervisory roles and purchasing assistants or management roles. They're under me. So, if I'm out on vacation,

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the purchasing assistants, uh, the assistant purchasing agents take over when I'm out. >> Raquel, can you talk to the licensing requirements in your department? >> Well, I am the appointed QPA

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and that allows us to have a higher thresholds, which is currently 53,000 for bids and 7,950 for quotes. Without that, all of that drops down to 175 for everything.

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Uh, everyone in the office is open to take the QPA exam if they want to, and I encourage that, but because of budget constraints, we have to cut back on trainings. We have one other QPA in the office who's also the principal buyer. Other

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than that, they were studying, but we're cutting back, so they've stopped the training for now. But they can all take the QPA exam if they'd like even twice a year. >> Thank you for explaining. This is not my area of expertise. So I appreciate

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>> stand council members. Anyone else in line 101? Not. Um we'll move on to council members. Sing. Yeah. No. Okay. We'll move on to um the rest of the lines for purchasing and central services line 103

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and the 200s and 300s and 400. >> I do have um may I >> sure council person sing? So item 314 314

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can you talk about um what constructual services are being eliminated because adopted 100,000 and then requested 40,000 and dropped 40,000. So it's a

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huge difference. We had bids which is our it's called bidnet now. It's our online bidding portal and this the 2026 request the bid net is 40,000

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for the year. That's what they charge us for the year. Now, the year prior 2025, there was a contract that we had, don't recall it, and we don't have it anymore. So, that was taken off in 2025.

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2026, all we have contractually is bid net. That's all we have. That's the $60,000 difference. I don't remember. 25. We had a contract which we no longer which no longer falls under us. Uh, but I don't recall which one that is. Do you

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want to explain what bidet does? >> Bidnet is our online bidding portal. Anything that has an estimated cost of 53,000 or more has to go out to public bid. So we put it out to public bid on bidnet that is broadcasted to anyone who

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subscribes. Subscription is free. Um it is broadcasted to any interested vendors. We receive proposals. Uh we currently receive them on paper. We still we hope to convert to electronic. Those are one of the things that we're going to bring now that we have bill.

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We're going to move up to the times and actually start doing paperless bids, but right now we still do paper. >> Thank you. >> The council person, if I may follow up on that on bidet specifically? So, um,

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is bidet like an open-ended contract of any sort or is it just a annual contract? It's anything over 53,000 with the exclusion of cooperatives and state contracts. >> The contract itself, I think the council >> competitive contract,

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>> the contract with bidet itself is what you're asking, councilman, is it's 40,000 per year. >> 40,000 per year. >> Yes. >> Okay. And then when do we renew it? >> We just renewed it this year earlier. >> Council already approved that. I don't

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know. I don't recall. >> It's a state contract. Mhm. >> We purchase it through a state contract and it's under 53,000. It wouldn't go out to bid and using bidet is a software so we can use the double D. >> Okay. I'm I'm looking at the the records

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that were provided by Kh Kyle. Um the expended expenditure for 2026 is 29,481. Last year it was 2025 for this line item. So, what I'm trying to wonder is that is that the full contract at 29,481

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or again I was asking if it's open-ended if there's more to be spent down on it. Um, it's closed at 2941 and we're done for the year then we'll look into the details and show you what that 29,000 is for. But, um,

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>> thank you. Have >> that in front of me. Counc uh can you talk about line item 305 printing and advertising? >> We used to advertise in the newspapers

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and the laws changed effective this year that we don't have to. So that reduced a lot of our costs for printing. >> Thank you. Other council members, any other line items? I I'll just share that I've said

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this at other hearings as well. Um again, analyzing kind of the spend rate on things. Um the office supplies uh currently less than a quarter I guess uh 20% of the budgeted amount or posted

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introduced budgeted amount um and about a quarter for the mile is it membership and subscriptions. Um then on professional line 312 um it's budgeted for 12,000. Currently,

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there's zero expenditures to date. So, >> just want uh on the office supplies. So, this office does purchase supplies for citywide use, um payment vouchers, uh purchase order sheets, things of that nature. So, we do need to

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keep somewhat of a cushion there in the event, you know, offices run out of their supply. >> Y So, that's just one I just want to elaborate on that line item. >> Okay. I should say in fairness it's um last year spent over $10. So that's >> Councilman. On terms of spend rate, I'll

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just um add that the department overall has spent about 55% to date of the budget being proposed. So we're pretty much on track for that 6 million. Uh each of the divisions uh ranges anywhere from 49% to the highest 65% but overall

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55% of the budget. So, we're pretty much on track year to date with the 6 million. >> Just on line 312, it's zero spend to date. Can you share what that's

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intended for? >> Well, we'd have to look into it. >> Look into it. Sure. There's no other questions on purchasing and central services. We'll move on to Treasury and debt management. Any questions on line 101, salaries and

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wages, council members, there's no questions then. Uh oh, um I do have a question. No, that's 2025 salary increase. Never mind. Treasury and debt management. Um

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I I did see I I had a question. Um the supervising administrative analyst resigned in April and the comment is replaced with deputy CFO. How will these responsibilities be absorbed into the deputy CFO position and and can you

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explain a little about the rationale behind that? So the person um who resigned with my complete support um our our thinking in terms of budget

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would be that that that money would be better allocated to a position like the deputy CFO rather than limiting it to someone strictly to in the treasury department. So among the skill sets that I would be interested in having in the deputy CFO role, it could be someone

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with extensive treasury experience, debt management, that could be it could be budgeting, could be accounts payable, it could be mun municipal, there are a lot of skill sets that I think would be really additive to the team in the deputy role. The key difference in my

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mind is that the person I'm looking for would have a little bit more seniority, would have managed through the kinds of issues and problem solving that we're facing here and not strictly

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limiting that person to the Department of Treasury where I don't think I need someone at a senior level. I need someone with broader experience and at a relatively senior level. And

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the idea was to take at least some of the savings or the the note refers to taking some of those savings to pay for that. >> Thank you for the explanation. Um, for the public watching, I'll just note that the um the position that is being eliminated because the individual

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retired was a salary of 100,000 and the uh deputy CFO is a salary of 150,000, but the deputy CFO will be doing more things. It sounds like >> that's correct. >> Okay, thank you. >> Council members, anyone else on line

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101? If not, um, moving on to lines 103, 105, and all other expenses. Any questions? Yeah. Council President Singh. >> Uh, line item 312, professional services.

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Um, can you talk more about it, please? Why did we spend so much on professional services last year and requested more this year? Um >> the spend uh last year or and in that

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category in general is comprised uh mostly of two things. Uh our use of bond counsel and our financial adviser. As you you may recall we retained uh recently new bond council much more favorable financial terms than the

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previous contract. Um and you know so far right we've done one uh note issuance uh with uh their support uh and their bills are you know significantly less than we we had been paying before for the previous bond council. Similarly

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uh the financial advisor um is some of more favorable rates. also talked to them uh and they are amendable to making some amendments to the fee structures and specifically um I'm not a big fan of paying a percent of note offerings because I think that's

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a bad incentive but that is the way our financial advisor uh had bid and won the contract. Uh I have talked to them and they're open to talking about either restructuring that fee structure or putting some kind of cap on it. And right my the logic in my mind which I

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think they understand is if you do $50 million bond or $100 million bond it's pretty much the same work. There's no reason to be paying twice the amount for a financial adviser. And the same thing uh goes for bond council. I'm not a big fan of paying percent of the offerings.

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Um but this this contract with current bond council is at a significantly lower percent of the note offerings than we had previously. So we do even though it is a large number it is a significant reduction from previous years. Um and

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these are really required um services. A bond council obviously is needed for any type of note issuance as a matter of legal requirements. They also do work for us on evaluating uh the use of bond proceeds and uh and

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other assorted kind of miscellaneous projects. And then similarly the financial advisor is required on certain um projects like bond offerings. They did a they because we did not have bond council retained they actually did carry a lot of the weight of the rollover

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notes we did in July. Our financial adviser did a lot of the drafting that normally the the law firm might do. Um and uh while they have not been heavily involved in the in the budget process, they were early on very uh involved in

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helping us build the financial model that we had been using for forecasting uh multiple years. So that is work that our financial adviser did as well. Um and then I guess lastly there is an accounting firm in that uh line item as well.

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Okay, then skip that. It's in accounting controls, but there is another contractor we use as an accounting firm that does a variety of research type projects for us aside from uh the accounting firm that we do use. But can I just follow up briefly on that? All

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right. Yeah, I was also >> I I just want to briefly ask what the um what you would suggest is a restructuring of the payment plan or uh payment structure for bond council if not the kind of percent or fee based on percent of offering.

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>> Yeah. So when we did the RFP, we asked um the the proposers to give us alternative either hourly rates or percent of bond uh offering a value of par value. Um

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most did not comply. Most gave us a proposal based on a percent of bond value. Uh this one in particular was a significantly lower percent than previously. Um and but we also have the ability depends on the on the project

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the way it was bid to do hourly work for them. So like we asked them to do some miscellaneous work research for this for us for example they'll build that on on an hourly basis. The other alternative would be to cap even if you did a percent of bond fees

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to put some kind of cap on it. For example, again, going back to the example of, you know, there's not twice the amount of work to do 50 million versus $100 million at some point, you should not get paid much more to do it. >> Thank you. >> That's President Little.

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>> Thank you. Um, so just I just wanted to seek clarification. Um, it sounded like many of these services that um it sounds like many of these services are required to not be done in-house that we were required to have a third party for them. Um are are any of the

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aspects of what is being covered in this prof in line item 312 professional services could any of them be brought in house for cost savings or are these all um or is every function essentially required to be a third party? >> Yeah, I think bond council uh has to be

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a third party firm and makes sense to do it that way. Given the expertise that required in that field, I don't think it'd be feasible to bring it in house. the financial advisory services. If I had my brothers, I'd rather have a team internally to do as much work internal.

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I do think that makes sense and would pay for itself. However, it takes time and is difficult to build and acquire those kinds of skills particularly with the kind of um the pay structure that this the city has. In my previous jobs, I have built out those kinds of teams. I

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think you I if I had my brothers I would like to be able to go to somebody internal um to do analysis and have more people around me who are capable of doing financial analysis than we have now. I would say that is an area where the

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finance team could be stronger and I will look to try to make that um those kinds of changes and improvements. That's another area where if I had the type of deputy that I would like to fill this role, that person I would expect to

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come with the really abilities to uh to do complex Excel modeling. Uh that is something we rely on. I rely on a lot. I don't have a lot of people in the department uh who have the time or the ability or the background to do that

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kind of complex uh modeling skills. um we have uh other than relying to some extent on our financial advisory the modeling we've been doing since you know back in uh January February has mostly been uh myself and Kai

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>> okay thank you so so this is not in-house for the time being but long term you might envision us um building up our capabilities inhouse for and and phasing out this contract for long-term cost savings >> I I think I think so and they can I make

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minimal use of our financial advisor now. I use them really pretty sparingly when I need to. Um I have always I think I preferred I kind of came out of that industry uh providing third party financial advice and uh I I do think you

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pay a lot for those services and a lot of it can be replicated inside um if we go about it the right way. >> Thank you. Any other questions on this? Um I I have a question or two um on this. So the financial advisor is that

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Aadia is >> Aacia and And who's the bond council? >> Dworth. >> Dworth. >> Dworth. D I L >> Dworth. Okay. Um and these are open-ended contracts.

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>> Yes. Aacia's three years. be renewed every year. >> So I I am I I I can imagine you're going to spend the entire 300,000. Um last year for the record it was 560,000 adopted. They spent five 737,000

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um in excess of 177,000 of the uh was allocated. Um but to date the expend rate is uh the amount expended is 12,61. I'm just guessing they haven't build us. Um >> yeah, >> we just recently got uh

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for the no rollover. >> Uh just want to touch on last year's expenditures. Those numbers obviously were inflated due to the amount of times the city went to issue notes. There were instances that towards the end of the year where

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we issued emergency notes for health insurance, >> special emergency notes, for accumulated absences, um things of that nature, rolling over tax tax appeal funding notes, all things that we are properly funding now in our

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budget that won't require us to use third party services to finance them. So that drove a lot of the costs in prior year. Okay. Understood. Um and then if you could just speak to the line 314 contractual services. What's entailing?

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>> That is that is a another third party platform that the city retained two years ago. It was a 2-year contract with them. Uh this is our final installment. There aren't any plans to renew it moving forward. Uh we're moving towards,

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you know, managing that data inhouse. And what that is is essentially a database that tracks all of our debt obligations. Um we upload all of the issuances and the schedules. Uh it's just a more of a userfriendly platform

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that the office has been using. Um but an effort to save in the future, we're not going to renew it. Um we tried to exit that contract this year. Um but just due to the you know initial terms of the contract that was awarded in 24

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or 25 we had an obligation to pay that fixed amount this year. >> We did try very hard to get out of that contract uh and it became pretty clear that it was going to become a legal issue and so we decided we were kind of stuck with it for a year. >> Okay. So had a zero expended date just

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FYI. So I'm going to move on um on any other questions. No. Uh to grants administration. So if uh colleagues if you have any questions on line 101 salaries and wages. I I do have one question and it's not

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just specific to this one but to everywhere throughout the throughout the city. Um we it's noted that there's longevity increases. I'm familiar with the longevity as a as a as an idea and and what entails there,

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but could we get um some sort of a schedule or something that clearly shows us what longevity increases? I'm are they contractual? Is that >> it's uh management executive order that I think as of 2010 any employees hired

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after that date don't receive longevity. There is a schedule. It is based on obviously your hire date and years of service and there are benchmarks every year or two years. There's a 2% increase in your longevity for management

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employees. There's also longevity for um uh uh unions that do get fixed amounts. There's are a little simpler. It's 250 $250 uh dollars then 500 750 and then they're capped at $1,000. Management

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employees are capped at 16%. But yes, HR should have a schedule and tell you, you know, employees hired this year when they'll get their their next um >> so new employees also get longevity moving forward. No, >> no. >> Okay. What's the hiring cuto off date

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for longevity at this point? >> I'll confirm for you. I believe it was 2010. I don't know if Sean knows 2010. >> It was under Jeremiah Elely. He did an executive order that ceased all longevity from new hires. I it's either two20 or 2011. >> Okay.

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>> I'll get you I'll give the council the copy of the executive order. >> Okay. And these are all written into contracts. Is that >> exe executive order and for management and into contracts for those units?

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Are we modeling that for future years knowing who's out there and I mean who's been hired and who might be getting longevity in the future? >> We took we take a standard approach to projecting salaries uh across the board on what we think what it would net out

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to on an average. So yes, usually our pro I think our projection is three or 2% across the board on you know contractual increases. So in a way yes but not you know obviously not I individual.

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>> Okay. Um council members any other questions if not >> on other expenses line items 200 and 300s. >> I have a question on the terminated position and it says uh no backfill but

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it looks like the in the draft budget I'm assuming that's like the prrated rate. Is that person in is the position currently filled or is it vacant? >> That position is vacant and I just want to make a correction on the comment that employee was terminated uh in 2026.

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>> Okay. >> 25. So that is for the wages uh spent this year. >> Gotcha. >> Okay. Any other questions on other expenses or anything else? Council Brooks. >> Yep. Uh line 314 um grant right is a

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that's a contract that the council has already authorized is amplified a contract that we have yet to authorize or we have already authorized >> grant right is a contract yes and it I'm

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sorry repeat the second part of your question >> there there were two contractors listed there amplifund and grant right and just to refresh our memory I remember grant I remember the discussion but I don't recall a discussion about amplif >> so grant right is our grant coordinators

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and they're um responsible for the applications and coordination reporting so they are the driving force for our grants from start to finish and amplifies so it's strictly tracking there's no

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input when it comes to applications or anything like that. >> An amp amplif. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, council members? None. Moving on to accounts and control

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for the line 101 could speak to the individual who was um um terminated on July 26 and what the person's role was. uh the individual uh was responsible for recording our deposits, the daily

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deposits that were coming into the city. Uh but we've moved that role over to somebody else that was um kind of a floater. Um she was helping out where needed, but she's taking on the responsibilities at the moment. >> Her his responsibilities have been

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assumed by somebody else. >> Yes. >> Anyone else have questions on line 101? Um the new hire principal account clerk which um was attempted was was budgeted for 6 months prrated in 2025 but

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ultimately um and then the 2026 request was for a full year and um then the 2026 uh draft budget um is zero. So is that position was that position able to be

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filled in both 2020 and 2026? Was it a vacancy that was eliminated because the job functions are being assumed by other positions? Uh can you speak a little bit more to that? Yes, that position was not filled in 25 and the director made the request for

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the annual salary as she should and ultimately we decided not to add to the headcount and make and first you know cover what we can inhouse with the staff that we have. So that position was vacant this year as well.

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>> Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Council President Singh, >> I I had a a question about the vision. Um just can you describe a little bit more detail about what controls um there

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are that protect public funds? um because that was brought up in the presentation was that this this division is uh responsible for general ledger reconciliations, financial statements, year-end audit prep and internal controls that protect public funds. If you could just go into some more detail

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about what that kind of work looks like at least that would be >> so we essentially um maintain the the general ledger. All the deposits and expenditures run through our office. We do monthly bank rec reconciliations to ensure that the general ledger, the

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budget reports, the revenue reports all balance out accordingly. Um we present the financial reporting for the annual audit and the AFS. Um those reportings generally come through us. Um some of the financial controls are uh for

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example in our office the person who posts the deposits can't reconcile the bank statements. their segregation of duties that have to kind of follow suit and and follow order to make sure that everybody's doing a separate job so that

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we can kind of maintain um continuity within the the divisions. >> Thank you. And just um if you could refresh my memory, the AFS has already come out. The 2025 AFS has already come out. We're waiting on the financial

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audit of 2025 to come out. Is that correct? >> That's correct. >> Okay. Um, and when is the expected deadline of the financial audit of 2025? >> The legally required deadline is end of August. We will have it well before

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then. Uh, my my hope is to have that on the agenda. The council will have to accept the audit. It'll be published, but the council is asked to accept the audit. Uh I would like to have the auditor come to caucus prior to the next council meeting. Uh I think a council

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meeting is the 19th of of August. So that week I would like to have the auditor present. Prior to that uh we will have published it. So you will have had you and the public will have had time uh to read uh the financial audit um as well as the findings. uh it is a

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very different document than the AFS whereas the AFS is a very kind of dense just numbers. Uh the financial audit is not only the actual financial complete financial statements uh it does have uh verbiage describing 2025

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uh and then the findings of course are also you know uh in in in plain English and relatively understandable. Uh my expectation is in terms of the findings um is they will look similar uh many as to previous years since they relate

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again just to 2025. The audit does not really talk about 26 um with some improvements in in some areas where we were able to to to address but so we will then continue to address those findings going forward with the hope that 26 will look

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materially better. >> Thank you. And and that financial audit is I don't want to jump ahead Councilman Lavaro too much, but that financial audit is completed both by staff within the division and by contractual

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services. So a mix of those two. So we do have an outside auditor, audit firm with the OC CPAs. They're the required licenses to perform financial audits. Um the way the process generally works is and Walkeia is kind of a point

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person in finance for this with a lot of involvement from uh from really the entire team because the auditor uh requests the voluminous amount of information. We farm out the information to relevant departments and relevant people across the city and act as the

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interface with the auditor. The auditor reviews the information we provide him, samples additional information based on what we provide, may ask additional questions. There is a lot of back and forth over the course of many many months to get to the end of the audit and then ultimately

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the auditor will publish um the audited financial statements, right? So income statement, balance sheet, information about the pension um and so forth. Thank you council person.

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>> Thank you councilman. Uh my question is uh for line item 312. So will courts is this a professional accounting firm? >> It is >> is okay. >> They are not our auditor though I should

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say. So we use a different firm to do the financial audit that I just talked about. Wildcats, while they are an audit firm, they do not do our audit. We use them on specific projects um and and to support the finance team in general. So,

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they are not our auditor, but they are an audit firm. They do perform audits for other uh municipalities in New Jersey. >> Can we have in-house or it has to be third party? like the resources they provide us are

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really we we use them when we do not have the resources internally to do the work. Some of the research they do we probably would not be able to replicate internally. However, I will say there are areas where I would like to see us be able to take over some of the work they do. Um

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for example, I don't know if they're listening they'll lose this business if we do this, but I I would like to see us do more of the AFS internally. They did a lot of the heavy lifting for us on the AFS. They do a great job. They've been incredibly supportive, but I would like to see the department do more of the AFS

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going forward. Whether we have the ability to do that next year or not, I don't know yet. But that would be one example where I do think it would be cost effective to do it internally, but we need the staff. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Anyone else have questions on account control? Any other items?

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>> Thank you. >> Not um >> do council. >> Thank you. Um this is a followup on line item 312. Um the annual audit. So so that's not wipe. Um but the annual audit is this the statemandated third party

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yearly audit or is this a different audit? >> It is a required annual audit. >> Okay. Thank you. >> That contract also um will be up for renewal I think after this audit. So there will be in all likelihood an RFP

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to procure an audit firm. They've done, I think, a terrific job for the city. They've been with the city for quite some time. Um, I know I've shared this with council president. I think they have been very candid. If you read the previous year's uh audits and their findings, I think they have been very candid in their observations. They just

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observations uh for improvements were not adhered to uh and therefore replicated year in year out. But I think they have done an excellent job for uh for the city. Great. >> That's Brooks. >> Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I missed the

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presentation earlier, so it might have been covered, but um >> it was the best. >> I can't wait to go on, you know, on YouTube later and do it at like half speed so I can get the full effect. um

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in terms of auditing. So, one thing we've heard from the public is kind of a a distrust in the um process around how we got to a deficit. Um

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is a midyear audit something that is either legally permissible or a quarterly audit? Um what what would that look like? or is that you know ultimately duplicative of something that's going to happen later?

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>> I think it would be councilman duplicative and it is it is a lot of work to do a do financial audit a lot. Um so I think an annual audit is already it is required and there's no uh choice but to do that but it is a very very

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heavy lift for the finance department and for lots of others. It is not just the finance department. I mean last week you know we were working uh intensively with the HR department for example because a lot of the requests for information from the auditor relate to

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HR matters. So there's a burden then placed on the HR staff to collect the information to get to us to get to the auditor. Um and it touches nearly every department. So I think to do a true audit more than once a year probably be duplicative and it probably expensive.

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um the 25 audit when it's published I think you you will see some of the things we've been talking about um some of them are already in the AFS and the audit it might be a little bit clearer for example property sales will be clearly

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detailed in uh the income statement as revenue uh the use of surplus um the deferred charges and emergency notes all of those which those are in our debt statements they're in the AFS they will also be in the audit and they will be

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really clear. Um, it won't be quite, I think, the straight line to the $255 million gap that I think sometimes people are expecting because it's a 2025 audit. It's not about 2026. Um, and so I would just kind of caution

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that, you know, in terms of expectations of what an audit is and what it's not. um the 26 audit then obviously you know that next next summer we will have the 26 audit

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hopefully we'll do be it do it faster next year I would like to see it done before August um I would like this year to have done it in June candidly that was my target um but lots of other things got in the way and so here we are in uh heading towards August I would

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like to see it sooner next Um, next year I think the audit will certainly show uh clearer what 26 actually is in terms of revenue, in terms of expenses and uh and you know maybe go a little bit uh closer towards

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matching that expectation of what is 26 looks like. Um I will just say on on that issue of the skepticism. Um obviously we we submitted an application with DCA for transitional aid earlier

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this year. They have vetted our numbers and our work. We've had initially had uh quite a bit of back and forth with DCA uh and answered their questions. Um and obviously I would say to their satisfaction because DCA was an

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advocate for Jersey City um in Trenton with the governor's office um to provide us the aid to get through 2026. So to the extent you know there's skepticism I would point to uh I don't you know that is the the where municipal finance

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experts are housed within the New Jersey state government. It's in DCA. They've looked at the numbers. They've validated them. And I think they came to the same conclusion we did, that we need a substantial amount of aid to not only pay the one-time bills in 2026,

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but to close the structural imbalance in the budget. Council members, any anyone else have questions related to control? Nope. Last uh division uh tax collector's office collections.

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Uh council members, any questions on salaries and wages? Line 101 collections. >> Yeah. >> Tax collectors. >> Yes. >> Want to have a question?

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This one. Um, can you explain sort of the different roles between this division and the tax assessor's department and are there any opportunities for consolidation between the tax assessor's office and

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and the division of collections in the in the finance department? >> Yeah. So, I'll I'll let Ernie turn talk in a little more detail, but there really is a good reason for those being two separate functions. and you know one is is doing the assessment of property values and the other is responsible uh

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for collections. Um Ernie just by way of background uh since we lost our previous tax collector who left to take a similar job at another municipality has been essentially acting uh for us as the administrator uh of the tax

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collectors department for the past several weeks u while we recruit a new tax collector. Ernie has taken all the courses required to be a certified tax collector, but for some reason never took the exam. Um, and so he does not

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have the the license, but is eminently qualified. Um, he also by way of background has been responsible for handling uh the collection of pilots for a number of years for the city and then more recently we added to his responsibilities um the collection of

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payroll tax. So, the two people I referred to earlier that were moved into the department not work uh for Ernie. So, with that, Ernie, maybe you could address the council person's question. >> For just collections and tax collector, are they both the same offices or

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different offices? >> Collection and assessor separate offices? >> H collection and assessor separate offices? >> I'm saying is tax collector the office downstairs right there at the front. That's >> that's collections, right? >> That's collections. Correct. That's where Ernie res.

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>> Yes. >> Ernie, can you talk to the reasons for assessor and collector being separate? >> Sure. Uh the collector's office is pretty much charged with the billing, collecting, enforcement, and reporting

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of the uh taxes once rates are struck. The assessor's office on the other hand determines the assessed values of the properties um that we essentially bill for that levy >> and they're statutoily separate offices. >> Yes.

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>> roles. Yeah. >> Go ahead, Councilman Efro. >> Thank you. Um yeah, I'm just curious uh about the particularly the special taxes like the pilots and other abatements. Um if you can speak to I we have the pilot

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audit uh underway right now that will hopefully be completed soon. Um just what what is the day-to-day work of collecting on these kind of special uh tax structures? Um how does that differ from the work that the pilot audit needs

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to do to go back and see what we think were owed uh by these different um companies that we've contracted with uh like the developers? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So um overseeing the daily uh collections of

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the pilots because with the multiple uh project we have we have maybe a couple hundred um we pretty much assess what's owed per financial agreement where the auditors come in and basically double check to

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make sure that we are getting what the city is owed. And in doing so, we do annual audits based on audited financials that the projects are sub are submitting um to make sure that everyone is compliant.

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I guess I I missed the first part, the the day-to-day collections on the you said maybe a couple hundred of these kind of specially structured abatements and and pilots. um that that day-to-day collections is separate from the like

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digging into compliance that the audit does, >> right? So the money for general collections and pilots come through the same office. The amounts to be build under pilots follow their own separate

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financial agreements that are determined when you guys approve the ordinances for the tax exemption. So um in doing so we make sure that all amounts to be paid are collected. >> So just to add to that so the ER's job

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is essentially to assure compliance with pilot agreements. So the pilot audit is a essentially checking in a more comprehensive way years of pilot agreements to see if in fact there are opportunities to go back and or find

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areas where they may not have been compliant either with uh submitting financial reports as required uh by the agreements uh whether the payments have been correct whether you know the agreements have nuances that might may have been interpreted differently. So the audit is kind of a more

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comprehensive look at the entire portfolio whereas Ernie's day-to-day job is to ensure that they are compliant with uh with the agreements. >> Thank you. Yeah, excuse the ignorance of my question. Just trying to wrap my head around around the work. Um so suffice it

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to say in order to have more comprehensive compliance year round even outside of the audit we would need three four earnings to be able to do that kind of work five six of you to be able to like don't suggest three four

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earnings because they'll be asking me for three four earnings uh but we did uh candidly so one of the I think advantages of moving the two people from internal audit was to focus on the payroll tax, but Ernie and I have also talked about

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making maximum use of those people and and also using them on the pilots, which I think we have an opportunity to do. So rather than Ernie being one of two people doing pilots, it' be one of four people doing pilots and payroll tax which we you think will be more

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effective uh use of everybody's time and as well as also candidly I think a good career path for a couple of those people. >> Sure. Yeah. >> Council President Singh >> other than Thank you, Councilman. Other than having more earnings, what are the

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significant steps or things you feel we can do to strengthen this department >> in the uh the area of of abatements in particular? >> Yes. >> You want to take a shot at what else you would need, Ernie? Now he'll ask in the

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next budget. Well, the addition of the two employees um if potentially getting them a path to uh essentially articulate to constituents um how their bill actually works. For the most part, most people

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receive a bill and they pay it. Um we are have been streamlining uh since I took the role on I would say within this 20 year period I've been here. Uh we have moved from a very analog paper driven uh system to

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essentially all digital uh working with our uh vendor that we've had for the last 20 years. And you'll see them in the uh spending contracts that uh we have a very good relationship to make sure that uh they're serving our needs to cover all the resources to make sure

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we're not leaving any dollars on the table and making sure everyone is being buil. This is an area where the software platform that we use for pilots does actually not integrate well with the Edmonds platform that we're using overall in finance. Um we think for now

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that probably is going to have to stay that way because of the limitations that uh Edmonds has with dealing with pilots but I would say it it would be preferable to me the more we can get onto one platform in the finance organization the better off we are.

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eliminates the need to for different platforms to talk to one another or to make manual entries uh and is more efficient workflow but I think that's a little bit uh it may still be far out there we've not found the ability to integrate those two yet >> and I believe moving it to digital would

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save lot of time and manpower >> I mean absolutely especially when it comes to forecasting and modeling just to project what happens with pilots as we should we approve new new exemptions or to keep track to make sure expiring

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pilots that were approved back in the 80s make sure that we're we're keeping track of all of that. I'm very interested I would say just finally on this point I'm very interested in trying to learn how to make better use of AI in finance. I think that is you know it's a

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relatively new advent but I know like for example some of our consultants do use AI to uh and I think a lot of the work we do is right for that kind of analysis where you can have that first pass at what's going on in the data

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flagging things that may be off track so that then there can be any kind of human interaction and at that point to assess how do you fix things that may be going off track. So I would be very interested in trying to see how we make better use of that. I'm told admins uh for will

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have some capabilities with on their platform to do that. Um and I you know I think those are the kinds of things sometimes take investment as well. Um so we trying to keep an eye on how to make better use of technology to uh to continue to be more efficient.

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>> Thank you. Um, I have a question about going back to the payroll tax audit. Is that being conducted in house? I don't know if you said that or not, but or is that >> payroll tax or pilot? >> Is that

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>> payroll tax or pilot? >> Sorry. Um, pilot audit. Pilot audit. >> The pilot audits being conducted by a third party. >> A third party. >> Yeah. >> Who's the third party? >> Wildats. Wildats. Okay. Um, under their existing contract that we have with them.

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>> Correct. >> Um, anyone else have questions? >> Any other question or just on can I ask on >> I'm sticking with salaries like can >> I don't. Thanks.

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>> Um, then I I do have a question. So, and um I I know Mr. Boura does a great job. Um the the increase uh is that it says based on payroll tax duties April 2nd 2026.

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Um so was there it's determined that there was some additional work being done for the payroll tax. >> That's correct. >> So that additional work required increase. Is this an ongoing um um

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salary increase in that in that respect or is it a we've had this conversation other departments about acting position costs and whether um it should be budgeted within acting position costs um as kind of a one-time expense for additional

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work that somebody's doing. Understood. >> Speak to that. >> So the intent is uh for this to be permanent. the responsibilities uh that Ernie's taken on in overseeing the payroll tax collections is a permanent addition to his responsibilities. So the intent was to

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reflect that in his compensation. >> Um so the the whole payroll tax collection I know I'll get a list of all the offsets. Um is there a and I just got your org chart so I haven't looked at it very closely. Is it separate unit or is

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it going to be kind of folded into collections in general? >> Folded into collections under Ernie. There's two um two people in there. I don't know exactly how the org charts laid out, but there are two people there that were transferred from internal

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audit um whose primary responsibility will be payroll tax with some support on pilots under Ernie. They're on the far right of the division of collections. Uh Jason McGrady and uh Cindy

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will be added to Ernie's team, which used to just be uh Donna. The And I'm looking at this for the first time, so I don't not sure if I'm looking at it um accurately, but um the Mr. Bourja is underneath abatements and

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special taxes. And then there's a um entire section on in the org chart of collections leans payroll tax and enforcement which is led by um Charlene Dalippo. Um so just trying to reconcile the the

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justification of the payroll tax increase. Those are the cashiers who are actually just you know doing the administrative function of deposits and reconciliation with with taxes. They're not doing any analytical work.

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They're just >> they're not doing what? >> They're not doing analytical work. They are just simply collection uh you know front-facing employees. >> So are you is abatements and special taxes is special taxes also payroll tax?

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>> So we've added payroll tax to that. Yes. >> Okay. Um anyone else have questions here on line 101? Um I see another increase um for the senior program analyst. Can you just speak to what that increase is?

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And >> that that is the other employee uh working under Ernie now assisting with the payroll tax office. >> Say again. >> That's the other employee, the existing employee that is also working under Ernie in that new branch for payroll tax and pilots.

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>> Okay. Is there going to be an offset on payroll tax? It's not noted here. >> Yes. So those people are when we we share with you the offset, you'll see those people are listed in the offset with a higher percentage of the salary being offset than say myself who will spend relatively limited amount of time

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on the payroll tax. So that was the we'll share with you the methodology. But in that instance, so 100% or 50% of our salary say might have been offset whereas you know mine might be 3% or something. >> Okay.

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I want to monopolize council colleagues. Anyone else have on line 101? Um I I will monopolize then president. No. >> Okay. >> Not on. >> Okay. >> Um just moving to the tax collector. So

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we have a replacement for Trisha Greco. Um who was the tax collector? She when did she uh leave leave office? >> I don't know the exact date. I would say it's got to be month and a half, two months. She she left in in June, early

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June. So her six months or I guess it's five months uh five plus months is incorporated within the tax collector line or the new tax collector you're bringing in. Is that >> correct? Correct.

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>> Okay. Um I was looking at the employee information. Thank you to um Troy for providing that. um it looked like she um her salary was less than the salary

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that's been offered to this the new tax collector. So, um I I guess I'm saying I mean it's only I say only it's $5,500. Um, and I've talked about this this idea

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that for replacements and so forth that uh kind of maybe a separate line for the amount that should be captured for that individual um and how much has been spent expended for that person um that has to be included in the budget because

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it's already spent right so and then and prorating the new salaries for folks who are replacements. >> Sure. moving forward so that it's a cleaner kind of >> I would just say that um Trisha's salary was increased just prior to her departure when the fixed salary

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ordinance was passed and so the new collector should be approved by council will be making less and I want to make that clear because otherwise Trisha will call me today. Is that >> Trisha will call me today? Trisha will call you?

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>> Yes. if she uh if she hears that we're paying somebody more than what she was making and so uh that is not the case. >> Um so I just wanted to make that clear. >> So the records that I have or not

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>> I think it probably does not reflect the salary that she had at the time she left. It was very uh the increase in the salary happened to be very close to the time when she uh resigned. >> Okay. Um and and then can can you speak to her

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departure in any way? And >> um I did not want her to leave. I did everything I could to keep her to stay. Um she had a very long commute and she found a job that uh was very close to

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home at a relatively similar salary. So I think it made sense for her. I think it was I would all say I know it was a tough decision for her. She had a lot of years here. Um I had a lot of conversations with her and um

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unfortunately I think for us she decided to leave. Uh if anyone else has questions on line 101 if not we'll move on to other expenses and overtime wages. What's the person saying?

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>> Question on other expenses. >> Yes please. director, what is HNL tech software and what is how do we use this? What's the use of this software? H&L tech software.

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H&L is the vendor that I mentioned earlier that's been dealing with the city for the last 20 years um providing us software in order for us to bill and collect um

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they're uh in for a 120 125 a year and that's been a stable amount I think since we acquired them. Well, >> it is basically it's financial software. It's a platform uh that provides uh it

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is very specialized for tax collections which is why we use that separately. We do not use admins uh for that particular purpose. And again I would over time I would like to see that integrated as much as possible into admins to simplify

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our own internal processes but it is highly specialized um software platform. >> Oh and um I believe the next question is item number 305.

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Um I believe these are the tax these are the expenses printing mailing tax bills right >> that's correct >> it's yeah printing uh of the actual bills the mailing of the bills uh as we're actually going through right now

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for third quarter um those are those uh bills are um being printed as we speak >> thank you >> anyone else have questions can open it up to other questions outside of the divisions if that's okay.

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We only have a few more minutes. Uh actually just nine minutes. So >> Councilman, you did a good job. We almost finished within time. >> Um and then as I did say, I wanted to discuss revenues, but I think council president will do a separate um session

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for all of that. So revenues and debt service. I I do want to with with councilman if you have specific questions on those if you want to provide them in advance uh I'd be happy to you know be as prepared as possible to address them.

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>> Happy to do that. Um so just going back to your presentation well actually before I go to the presentation since we finished with the tax collectors I've gotten a lot of uh um inquiries about the the third quarter tax bill. Um, I'm just wondering if your

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office is handling that and and how that is being explained to to the general public about kind of the the retroactive um increase on from first and second quarters to the third quarter and how that's going. Yeah,

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>> sure. Ernie, do you want to speak to u what the questions the tax collection office gets? I candidly they don't come to me personally, so yeah, absolutely. the uh staff is very well trained in not only showing empathy but explaining

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clearly to every constituent that calls shows up in person. We open every day from 8:30 to 4:30. Um our emails are answered daily. Um, I think we we have a

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really really solid team that runs the front line to make sure that everything is answered clearly and respectfully. Uh, in spite of the type of constituents that call when they receive that bill. >> Since we're on the record, I'll just say constituent comes in, they say, "Why is

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my third quarter tax bill so freaking high?" What do you say? What what's the response? Typical answer is uh we are basing this on the estimated rate which is a reconciled figure where we net out the first two quarters that were build

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which is typically based on the prior year's rate. Then they'll ask me what the rate was and we'll go over the numbers together most of the time. >> Okay. >> And then we provide them your cell phone >> and snip your thing and send it out to people. We

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>> on that note, is it possible that there have been properties that have been um assessed in between quarters two and three and so there might be uh a jump in what people think they're going to be taxed?

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>> Well, any assessment changes that occur midyear are typically met with what's known as an added assessment bill, which is tacked on and calculated by the tax assessor's office. So, if you had say vacant land and you

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put a building there today and it was done and substantially complete, um they would technically be built for that improvement for the remainder of the year. >> I have a specific question about a building in my ward, but we could talk about it offline. >> Sure. >> Yep. Thank you.

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And and just again for the public uh on this note, uh council authorized an estimate of a 12% uh increase for quarter 3. Um and I know there's been some confusion because the

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Jersey City website with the estimated tax calculator, I believe for at least some time had 15% as the the total estimate. Um, so if you could just speak to is maybe this is separate in terms of

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communications, but is our communications online um and in these tax bills consistent in terms of what the estimated quarter 3c increase is and how that's um trying to bring the quarters one and quarters two up to date. I believe the tax calculator

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that's online is uh much more consistent with our expectation of the calculation, the actual calculations um for uh Q3. Um I did test that with my own home. For the record, I live in Jersey City, own a

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property in Jerry City in case there's any doubts. Uh, I did test that and uh the calculator is uh wasn't 100% accurate the last time I checked, but I'm I was away last week and I candidly did not check it again. It was close though.

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>> Okay. All right. I appreciate that. Yeah, just making sure that um >> that would be the easiest way to check is to like pick a home if you have one and actually put it in there and see if you get the same uh same result. The uh tax bills for Q3 are available online.

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So you when a one who owns a home can go online uh in the absence of having yet received the paper bill um and check uh their third quarter bill. Appreciate that. >> I believe your question was also about

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how we represented on the website. Is that right? >> Yes. >> Meaning what percentage is behind the tax calculator um calculations. So we can definitely take that back um for our website to be

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clearer what percentage is used for the tax um calculator. >> Thank you. Because 15% is what was signed in the as a term in the memorandum of understanding to get the state loan. 15.5%

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is the increase commensurate with the proposed budget we received from administration. But then 12% is what we authorize as council for the quarter three increase. Um so I just those are a few different numbers and I just want to

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make sure the public is is clear on what quarter 3 represents and then what the expectation will be when that fourth quarter bill comes out as well understanding that we are still in the budget hearing process. So we can check that again and then Q4 ultimately will

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be determined uh when the budget is set. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> And if no further questions then make a motion to adjourn. >> Say thank you to our uh director Vicera

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and Ruby Choy and the entire team finance. So we have emotion.