19 - Budget Presentation FY 2020-2021

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Speaking with our Public Works, by making the listed purchases in the Proposed FY20/21 Budget, this will catch the City up by several years. There of course is no guarantee that something will not fail in time, forcing us to replace it sooner than expected, but through the talent and skill of our Garage Department, much of our equipment lasts well longer than normal life expectancy. Nevertheless, there comes a point when everything needs to be replaced. In addition, I am proposing that we institute loans and/or lease -purchases in the General Fund in order to update several pieces of equipment instead of just one or two. All of these items need to be addressed now, they cannot wait to be addressed one at a time over the next several years, while other pieces of equipment likewise begin to fail. Reasonable loans and/or lease -purchases are a cost effective way of maintaining your fleet while getting the job done. More details as to what these items are will be provided later in this Memorandum. 3. New Positions — In my short tenure, I have had the pleasure of working very closely with each Department Head. While much more still needs to be observed and learned, it has become clear to me that the City is in need of two new positions. These are not new concepts to the City as both have been budgeted for in the past, but for one reason or another, they are no longer with the City. First, the City of Paris is in need of a City Planner. The Community Development Department does a great job of keeping Planning and Zoning moving through the processes, but the City Engineer and I are in full agreement that this community is large enough, growing enough, and complex enough to have an individual trained in Planning and Zoning taking the reigns and guiding us through it. The City has undergone some updates to the Zoning and Subdivision Ordinances in recent years, but we now need someone trained in this area to take us to the next level. In addition, the Community Development Department is stretched very thin; the addition of the City Planner will alleviate a great load on the City Engineer and staff, allowing for focus on other key areas while Planning and Zoning will have someone completely focused on it. Second, the City of Paris is in need of a fourth Code Enforcement Officer. It was made very clear to me upon my hiring that Code Enforcement must be one of my priorities. I have worked very closely with the Code Enforcement Department these past three months, and I will state clearly that I am very impressed with the work they do. But if we are going to take it to the next level, we need an extra hand to spread the load out. The demand placed upon this Department is great. A fourth Code Enforcement Officer will allow the City to be divided up in to four quadrants while also focusing time on the numerous complaints that come in and addressing the recently approved Downtown Vacant Building Ordinance. I have other ideas that I plan to implement with the Code Enforcement Department to further enhance their work, but a key element will be adding this fourth position. In both cases, we have not budgeted an entire year's worth of compensation as it will take time to advertise, interview, and hire. Again, we are seeking to propose an efficient budget. 4. Realignment of Line Item Budgets — In developing the FY20/21 Proposed Budget, I implemented a line -by-line realignment analysis, comparing the FY20/21 requests by each department against the Actual Revenues and Expenditures of each FY since FY15/16. Such an analysis allows the City to realign all line item budgets with the Actual trend of each line item. When this is not done over a period of time, individual line items can either become inflated or deflated. The expectation of a budget is for it to reasonably reflect the services a department plans to provide the tax payers. Therefore, when these realignments are not done, the budgets can get off track with reality. When you examine the trend line over a matter of years though, you can see the true requirements to operating a Department, developing a budget that makes sense, is lean, and is trimmed to provide the necessary services expected by our citizens with a slight adjustment for growth as costs rise. An example of this is provided below. Page 6 of 15