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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCalled Commission Meeting November 10, 2015 (B CALLED MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBER November 10, 2015 Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 1:00 P.M., Tuesday, November 10, 2015, the Honorable Hardie Davis, Jr., Mayor, presiding. PRESENT: Hons. Lockett, Guilfoyle, Sias, Frantom, M. Williams, Fennoy, D. Williams, Hasan and Smith, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. ABSENT: Hon. Davis, member of Augusta Richmond County Commission. 1.Presentation of the FY2016 Budget. Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes Administrator Jackson for a presentation. Ms. Jackson: Thank you very much, sir. We will present as quickly as we can get through the recommended budget for 2016. We do understand that there is a public hearing scheduled for 1:30 so we’ll try to get through this as quickly as we can and entertain questions and then you all can proceed with committee meetings. This recommended budget presentation follows up on the booklets that were distributed to you on Friday afternoon. I know based upon the volume of calls I received several of you have gone through the budget in pretty good detail already. This presentation serves to hit the high points of that and then as I mentioned we’ll have a public hearing at 1:30. Commission workshop right now there is only one scheduled that is on Monday at 10:00 a.m. from 10:00 to 12:00 in Room 291. We also would invite you all if you would like to have additional workshops we can schedule those as requested by members of the Commission and according to the City Code, budget approval is supposed to take place on the th third Tuesday in November so that is why it is showing for November 17 at 2:00 p.m. If we begin discussion on that day and do not finalize it the Commission can follow the normal procedures they have in previous years which is to recess that meeting and then come back at a later time for further discussion and approval. In terms of overview of the current year’s budget, our government has over 30 functional areas in broad general categories: General Government, Public Safety and Judicial. Our total authorized positions for 2015 for all funds, this is not just General Fund but for all funds is 2,793 and the budget for all funds in 2015 is $898 million dollars. Our staffing distribution, just to give you an idea of where those people are, we see General Fund at a little over 1,000 people, Sheriff 749, Fire 346, Utilities 360, Environmental Services 52, Airport 86, Emergency 911 Services or phone services 71 positions, Housing & Community Development 26 and all other units of government would be 85 positions. For 2016 so you can see the contrast between the current year and next year’s proposed budget total positions would go up to 2819. Again the General Fund number would remain the same. This would reflect increases in the enterprise funds and we’ll get into a little bit more detail about which enterprise funds would have additional positions and by definition because they are enterprise funds they should be self-supportive and not dependent on the General Fund. Proposed budget for all funds 2016 is a reduced number from the current year $746 million dollars. Those reductions are mostly due to changes in debt service obligations, bond payments, etc. Staffing distribution for 2016, this slide just provides some comparison and you’ll note the most significant change there is in the General Fund that is, a good deal of that is related to the 1 creation of the stormwater utility which we will get into later as well. Also seeing increased numbers for the Fire Department and the additional 22 positions there to meet additional needs in Fire. Increase of about two positions for Utilities and those are some of the changes in the enterprise and special funds I referenced earlier. This is a very general organizational chart just to illustrate how we’re set up currently. When we’re faced with the task of balancing a budget, these are the types of things just so you have an overview of what we consider to get a balanced budget. You’ve got choices: increase current revenue, decrease expenditures, reallocate existing resources, use fund balance or a combination of any of those mechanisms above. In our current budget we have based this upon the revenue that our digest, our sales tax revenues and other things would generate for us so there’s been no other attempt to increase revenue other than what naturally occurs in our local economy. Decreasing expenditures, we’ve made selective cuts based upon the requests of departments. We have done a pretty substantial reallocation of existing resources and we have not projected to use any fund balance to give you an idea of the background about how we came up with this recommended budget. The budget must balance and this one does as recommended. We have it set up such that our expenditures match our revenue. Major sources of revenue are the ad valorem tax, the sales tax and franchise fee, and the only one of these that we really have any control over are the ad valorem tax. As we know there was a property tax increase last year. We’re not projecting any increase for this year so we’re not relying on that mechanism to increase revenues. This slide just gives you an idea of how our revenue sources have fluctuated over the last several years going from 2012 to 2016. We won’t go over in detail there but just to give you something to study in terms of looking at how our revenue picture or some of those numbers, they dip, go up, down, etc. and this gives you an idea of where we are right now. In terms of the assumptions for this budget, no appreciable growth in the tax digest, it’s very, very minute growth there. Minor growth in the LOST revenue. We’ve held our non-governmental organizations and authorities at the 2015 level despite requests and that’s something that you all will get a chance to take a look at later. We’ve budgeted at full employment anticipated lapsed salaries at historical levels. We always know that all of our positions are not going to be filled at the same time so we’ve made allowance for that in the budget. We’re also absorbing a projected increase in health care costs for our employees and retirees. Because our employees have not had major cost of living adjustments over the last several years we felt like it was fair for the General Fund to absorb that cost and not pass along any of that cost at this point for our employees. That could potentially change later but that’s not what we plan to do in this budget. Also one of the major increases in expense for 2016 is our election costs. We have major elections coming up and that should cost us slightly over $300,000 to conduct those elections in 2016. We also the challenge this year of integrating the stormwater program which has resulted in movement of positions from the General Fund into the stormwater utility. It is set up as an enterprise fund as you all approved and that is responsible for some movement of people and dollars in this budget. Budget highlights, no increase in taxes, we’ve discussed that already. We have funded all of the programs and services that we currently undertake at the current levels. In some cases it is costing additional money to fund at the current level. A good example of that, for instance, with our Information Technology Department, they’ve moved into a much larger space. Utilities cost have increased as a result of that so in order for us to fund the same program and services it’s costing a little bit more to do that because they’re in a different facility with higher utilities and other costs. General Fund head count as we indicated earlier it maintains the same although I would like to do and have recommended that we realign our head count to allow for establishment of several key functions 2 with an organizational focus. Following up on our discussions related to SPLOST over the last couple of months we have talked about increasing accountability and transparency. We are going to have to create some new positions in order to make that happen in the way that it should. First thing on the list is a Capital Projects Manager position in our organization. Previously I understand some years ago housed in the Finance Department that had some responsibility for capital projects management, however, Mr. Schroer actually was the person that came on in that capacity. As he has been with the organization he has had to take on additional responsibilities now being Deputy Finance Director and frankly, he cannot devote as much time to capital projects management as he had previously. I would like to have a position that also reports directly to my office that is responsible for managing those projects. One of the other challenges with the position not being located in the Administrator’s Office is that sometimes when that person calls a department and asks about how are you doing with this particular project, it’s time for you to reevaluate those types of responses, those types of requests don’t have as much teeth as they would have coming from my office so I would like for the capital projects function to report to the Administrator’s Office. I also would like to create a new department referred to as the Central Services Department. As a result of the 2011 reorganization some of our divisions wound up in departments that they probably in my judgment, my professional judgment, are not as well suited there for instance, being Facilities and Fleet. Those are the two primary concerns. Our Facilities division has been housed at our Recreation and Parks Department and I think to a person when we interviewed our Recreation and Parks Director candidates, they all thought that was a little odd. In terms of my professional judgment coming in that is odd. The 311 function has been a freestanding, sort of independent function that did not report to any specific department. I’d like to solve that problem by rolling that in to the Central Services Department. Fleet Management wound up in Finance again, something that’s a little unusual. I’d like to pull it into Central Services and real estate services which relates very closely to Facilities but right now frankly our Law Department often gets the first call when it’s a question about something related to real estate and we need to have that more centralized in a department that manages, maintains and takes care of all of our real estate related services. We are able to create a department director for this using existing vacancies so again there’s no increase in our head count to do that so we can create a department director and merge all of the personnel that are currently in those four units into the Central Services Department without any net increase in salaries for that. The management analysis unit, I’d like for us to make some better, some more informed decisions. One of the things that I’m accustomed to in an organization of this size is that you have people whose job it is to research, plan, bring information back so I can provide better information to you all so that you all can make more informed decisions. I would like to start that with two individuals that would come in with the necessary background in terms of statistical and qualitative research to help inform our decision making. Public information. One of the things we have discussed is how well we communicate our story. Having someone on board who can help us communicate our story I think would be a great asset to the organization. Also I look at that as an effort to improve our transparency as we talked about with the SPLOST process. One thing was accountability having somebody who watches all the numbers for us and makes sure that we are addressing over- expenditures or under-expenditures as needed. Part of the other need there is to make sure the public understands what we are doing. So I see this public information person as being somebody that can take what is written in finance language and what’s written in engineering lingo and put it together on our website, our annual reports, other public materials in a way that 3 the general public can understand. You know, move it from engineering language to English language so the general person, the average person in our community can quickly look at the reports and various things that we promise to do and make it such that that person can really understand what’s going on. Next our Law Department requested two Paralegals. I’m recommending that we fund one. What they have over there in succinct terms is a small law firm. Particularly with a small law firm you’d have at least one paraprofessional staff that can assist them with the more mundane tasks so they can devote themselves to the higher level tasks. Procurement Department is one of those departments that is going to see a tremendous increase in the volume of their work as a result of SPLOST and as a result of the stormwater utility having been created. A lot of the work that will be done under both of those will be tasked or contracted out. They have requested additional staff, one at the lower level to scan documents and so forth that will be the Document Management Technician. I understand that as a result of litigation that the city incurred several years ago, one of the requests or requirements as a part of that litigation was better document management so this fills that request of the courts and the procurement management will be somebody to help out with the increased volume of work and be able to solve problems and generally assist the director in making sure that things run smoothly in that department. Also lastly on that list from the Tax Assessors Office they requested three property assessor trainees. I will not be shy about what we’re looking at here and I feel like we’re showing very minimal growth in our digest. I’m hoping that if they have additional personnel on board, they’ll be able to look for and determine where there may be additional growth such that we can have a full grasp of the value of property in our community and the revenues that will result from that. Additional personnel from our enterprise and revenue funds. Two for Building Inspection. 22 for Fire. One for the Airport and two for Utilities. Again these would be positions from our special and enterprise funds and there’s resources available in those funds to support those positions. Also I’m proposing a modest or 2% cost of living adjustment to the workforce beginning April 1. This would mean that we would incur that expense for nine months of the year and we’ll take some later about what we’ve done in the past related to COLAs and why we believe that’s important. Lastly we want to realign our workers compensation function with Risk Management. This is also one of those items that moved during the 2011 reorganization. Given the number of things that our Human Resources Department has on their plate, I believe it would be appropriate for the Finance Department to take this on. Other highlights of the budget. I want to fund a pay and classification study. We have a significant problem in our organization with pay compression partially because we have not been able to give regular increases. Also job descriptions have been changed and things like that from what I understand the last classification study in this organization was done in 1997. Generally organizations do these types of things or should best practice dictates that you do these about every five years so we’re a long ways off from that. We would like to move forward with that. Next disparity study, a topic that has been discussed around this table on a number of occasions is the need to update our disparity study. I think it’s about seven years old. The last one is about seven years old so we’ve placed aside some money to do that. Next, establishing marketing and special events contract supplement what’s available through the Recreation and Parks Department. Again on this theme of telling our stories and letting people know what’s available in our community. I have talked to a couple of commissioners over the last few months and one of them said there are a lot of events going on in our facilities that we don’t even know about. If we don’t know, the chances are the general public doesn’t know either so I feel like we can afford to and should devote some resources to better marketing our venues and events and 4 activities taking place in Augusta. Lastly moving the business license function into south Augusta, one-time cost of $108,000, we know that that’s where an increasing amount of activity is taking place and we feel like we should have a presence in that vicinity. This gives us just a history of pay increases. I won’t try to go through the detail but the big thing to see there is that in 2008 there was a cost of living, a Public Safety only cost of living adjustment of $2,000. I don’t think there was anything that year, excuse me, 3%, I’m sorry, 3% in January of 2008 for non-public safety employees. Going from that time, 2008, 0%, 2010, 0, 2011, 0 and we realize that was in the depths of the economic recession, 2012, there was just $500 per employee, 2013, 0%, 2014, a $500 retention bonus that was not made a part of employees’ base pay as well as the ability to buy back up to three days of vacation and then 2015 0% increase to non-public safety employees. Prior to that though if you look from 1999 to 2008 this organization on a regular basis gave cost-of-living adjustments in the three to four percent range so there’s been a pretty stark change in how we’ve been able to compensate our employees since the recession. Those employees who were in the organization prior to then will remember and fondly remember those days when we were able to give some increases and we feel like this year that the money is available to do across the board, not as much unfortunately as we had done previously, but 2% I think is affordable. Looking at the budget just overall the big number there is the $745.8 million dollars. This shows how that is allocated among the various funds and you can study that one. We don’t need to go through that in detail I don’t believe. This breaks down the General Fund budget which is $153 million dollars. Law Enforcement almost $60 million, General Fund $93 million. This just breaks it down by category so you see where our revenues are coming from. We talked a little bit earlier about those major revenue sources. This shows that obviously taxes are our biggest source, 73% of our budget and the rest of those funding sources are relatively small. Revenue by type, breaking down taxes by type, excuse me. Ad valorem is 45%, franchise tax is 22%, local option sales tax, 27% and alcoholic beverage tax is a little under 3%. Generally I will say in my experience that you’d like to have the ad valorem, the franchise and the local option sales taxes be roughly a third, a third, a third of your budget. We’re a little bit off. We’re relying on property taxes a little bit more than I would probably like to but that would be long- term discussion about from now in terms of how we develop those other revenue sources so that we’re not so relying on property tax. General fund expenses. You see personnel with any local government organization and most organizations period. Personnel services and employee benefits are going to be the largest portion of your expenditures. We’re at 57%, a shade over 57% for personnel. Contracted services, a shade under 11%, supplies, a little over 13% and the rest of those expenditure categories are relatively small. General fund by function. Just to give you an idea where does all of our general fund money go. General government, 18%. Judicial services only 13%. The big number there is the 41% for public safety. That’s just where our money goes. We’re local government and it’s customary that public safety is going to be your primary expense. Stormwater fee. Just to talk a little bit about the impact of this in terms of revenue as well as the impact on our organization. We project to collect $14.8 million dollars as has been discussed earlier in the year when we moved to approve the stormwater utility and like the rest of the county we’re going to have to pay so the charge to Augusta right now is in the budget at $555,000 and like other non-residential customers, we would be eligible for some credits so our engineering staff will be working to determine how much of a credit we’re eligible for just like the other entities in the county. Hopefully we’ll be able to get that number down from the $555,000 but right now we have budgeted assuming that we’ll pay a $555,000 charge for various facilities that we own. Outside agencies, just wanted to give you a summary. 5 There’s not any changes here as I mentioned earlier. We are leaving it at $5.3 million dollars which is in the current budget and that’s our recommended number. These just give you a breakdown of those agencies that it addresses and all the same numbers for each one of those and each one of those categories there is a request I think for an additional $1.3 million dollars if you were to add up the total requested amounts for the various organizations I think it’s roughly $1.3 million in additional requests from those organizations. Here we are with those numbers. When I say additional items for commission consideration, as we balance the budget there is an additional $502,000 I believe is the specific number that is available for you all to make various decisions over and above what I’ve recommended and those to choose from would include funding levels for the non-governmental organizations, $1.27 million dollars in additional requests from those. Our Superior Court and Probate Court judges have asked for increases in their supplements which would total roughly $200,000. Regarding commission travel budgets we have not seen a requested increase. There has been discussion from a couple of commissioners to me asking if we can reshape the way that we handle those expenditures as in dividing the pot up into equal proportions so that each commissioner would be allocated the same amount of money for travel and training expenditures and I understand that there may be other requests as well that you all may want to bring to the table for expenditure of the $500,000 or so that would be available. Again, the next budget work session would be scheduled for this coming Monday from 10 to 12. We can schedule other meetings as requested and we’ll rely upon you all’s requests to let us know if we want to schedule any additional meetings. If you all have any questions and so forth, please try to get those questions, what I’d like to do in terms of process is to get those questions from you all, if you could get them to me either via email or through conversation with myself, Chester Brazzell or Donna Williams, if you all could get those questions to either of us, we’ll try to make sure that coming into our next work session we can address all of those questions as well as if any of you would want a one on one type of sit down conversation, we’d be more than happy to do that. I do want to thank our deputy administrators, the Finance Department and all of our departments and agencies who are working with us so well to put together a recommended budget and from here I’ll take any comments about next steps. Mr. Mayor: We’ll take just general questions. I know we’re going to have a workshop th that’s scheduled for the 16 and so at this time the Chair will entertain any general questions or th comments. Commissioner from the 5, Commissioner Lockett. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to applaud you and staff and all others involved. I think ya’ll did a yeoman’s job in putting this budget together especially considering the fact that you were on pins and needles trying to ascertain whether or not SPLOST 7 was going to be a reality or not but I think that ya’ll did an outstanding job. I just wanted to let you know it. Ms. Jackson: Thank you very much. st Mr. Mayor: I’ll recognize the commissioner from the 1, Commissioner Fennoy. Mr. Fennoy: Just to follow up on what Commissioner Lockett just said, Ms. Jackson, I think in the past we have received a budget and then it was up to the commissioners to balance it 6 and this really has made my job a whole lot easier and I want to applaud you and your staff and the various department heads for putting this together and this is something that we can work with. Ms. Jackson: Thank you. Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Hasan. Mr. Hasan: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ms. Jackson, you made mention about the third Tuesday in November. Would it be your desire, your wish to try to ratify this budget on the third Tuesday? And if you did, excuse me, and if we was to do that, would you think that it would be something else we needed? I know you mentioned that we’re going to have a meeting on the th 16, I think that would be Monday? Ms. Jackson: That’s correct. Mr. Hasan: Would you think another workshop would be in order if that was the goal for us to do it on the third Tuesday? Ms. Jackson: Sir, with all due respect it really depends on what you all feel like you need in terms of getting questions answered. If you all feel like you need two work sessions to get questions answered, I welcome you all scheduling that. It’s our desire that you all have all the information you need in order to make a sound decision so if you all would like to schedule another one that would be fine with me and my staff and we’ll make arrangements to do so with the information that you need. Mr. Hasan: Thank you. Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Guilfoyle. Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Janice, thank you as well as the Finance staff and everybody that compiled this budget. I think it would be a great idea to do a secondary workshop because the one we have Monday is only set up for two hours and I don’t know if you divide that by ten people, that ain’t much time per commissioner. My concern is the standard operating procedure that has been done in the past. I can only go by past precedents and previous years it was always the commissioners as well as the directors who took part into this budget but this year it was not. I just wanted to make sure that the directors are responsive, that they were of knowledge of what went into this budget, how it affects the department directly and with this new department that’s being compiled or being established, we just want to make sure that we do it right. I know that we went through a restructuring in 2011 and the whole concept was to save money and it did not work out that way so I look forward to Monday’s meeting. We’ll have some questions. I’ll probably reach out to you prior to that but I do want to thank you and your staff for getting this budget. It wasn’t easy. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 4. 7 Mr. Sias: Thank you, Mayor. Ms. Jackson, I just want to say it’s a very professional put forth budget and I hope we can be quick and comprehensive in our review and make the necessary adjustments where it is without recreating a budget. Thank you very much. st Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 1. Mr. Fennoy: Yes, motion to receive as information. Mr. Lockett: Second. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, I want to make a suggestion. Mr. Mayor: I think you’re going where I want to go. Mr. Hasan: Okay. Can I go ahead? I know you’re in the mind reading business. Mr. Mayor: I want you to whisper in my ear first. Mr. Hasan: Not publicly, Mr. Mayor, I’m sure you don’t. Mr. Mayor: Let’s hold that thought for a moment. We’ve got a motion and a second to receive as information. What you want to talk about will require a second one. I think it will. Mr. Hasan: Yes. Mr. Mayor: Hold on just one second. We’ve got a motion and a second to receive as information. All right. Motion carries 9-0. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’ve been just listening but I done did enough of these budgets myself here to know that they’re just a document that we’re working with and it is subject to change and I think that with the conversation that we may have in our workshop, it may take another one so we can at least lay some things out, express those things that we may not understand or even be satisfied with but I do think this is a great start and I think it is something that we can work with but I heard and I read some things in my homework at home and ya’ll don’t think the commission does much work but we’ve got a lot of homework and I stayed up late, Ms. Bonner, trying to finish mine and I didn’t quite finish it. But I do want to continue dialogue and talk about some of the stuff that I see in here and some I agree and some I think we need to at least bring forth and get some clarity on. Mr. Mayor: Okay. So there’s some discussion about a potential new date, new dates for workshops on next week. That’s what’s being talked about right now. The Chair recognizes the th commissioner from the 9. 8 th Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do think the meeting is scheduled for the 12 right? th The Clerk: The 16. ththth Mr. M. Williams: So if we did one on the 12 and the 16, what’s the 12 on? th The Clerk: The 12’s Thursday. Mr. M. Williams: So can we do that on Thursday and then if we need a follow up? The Clerk: And Monday? Mr. M. Williams: And Monday is my suggestion now. I just asked the question. I think one’s going to dictate whether we need the other one or not. If everybody’s satisfied and we’ve th got no questions. So I’m going to make that in the form of a motion that we do one on the 12 and one on the 16th. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Hasan: Third, then. The Clerk: So we’re doing the budget on Thursday, November 12 and then on Monday, th November 16. Will they both be from 10 to 12? Mr. Mayor: Well, it’s just a discussion right now, Madam Clerk. We’re just throwing out a single date. I think there is some broad interest in trying to do multiple meetings on next th week. There is already some scheduling challenges for the 12. We’re aware of that already. th There are some challenges already with the 12 we’re aware of. The Chair recognizes the th commissioner from the 5. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Mayor, you covered what I wanted to say. Thank you. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, I know. I told Commissioner Hasan I read minds. Mr. Sias: Did you read hands too? Mr. Mayor: No. I read lights that don’t exist. I was looking for the light. Mr. Sias: I can read that one too. It’s saying five fingers. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 4. th Mr. Sias: The challenge is also for me on the 12 as I have several appointments and I th would definitely want to be in there so I would ask that we maybe consider the 13. 9 Mr. Mayor: No, we don’t want to do that. So you know, this is one of the most important things that local government does. It’s reminiscent of the single most important business that the legislature does is pass a balanced budget. I think there’s no difference between that and the city and I think you received it on Friday. There’s a lot of discussion that will take place I’m sure. I too applaud the efforts of our staff, Madam Administrator, and all of our department directors for the work that they’ve put into this and I know there’s conversations that th need to be had. What I would offer is that we have the meeting on the 16 and quite frankly again we could probably schedule a meeting towards the latter part of next week as well. We understand statutorily by law we are to have a budget passed by December 31. That’s what the state law says. And so as a local ordinance recommends that it be on the third Tuesday of November but I want to make sure that we follow the state law. There’s a lot of information that’s in this budget and give folks an opportunity to ask the right questions. The presentation has been stellar and let’s just take the time to do it the right way, okay? All right, commissioner th from the 7 you’re on deck. Mr. Frantom: I was going to say let’s keep the meeting on Monday as we have it and then let’s see about Tuesday at noon possibly if needed before the Commission meeting. Mr. Mayor: Yeah, I just don’t think we need to rush it. I think our posture is that we th have a meeting that is scheduled on the 16 and it would be prudent on our parts. I like what the th commissioner from the 9 said that we need to take time, ask the appropriate questions and what th I’d like to offer is that we do the business of the people on the 17 and come back for another workshop on Thursday of next week. Give folks a week to plan. th The Clerk: It would be the 19? Mr. Hasan: It would be a substitute, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: Yeah, it would be a substitute. Mr. M. Williams: I’ll make that substitute motion. Mr. Fennoy: I’ll second it. The Clerk: You made the original motion. Mr. M. Williams: Yeah, I thought that was it but with all this conversation, I mean we was elected to do the people’s business so if we’re going to do that, let’s do it. The Clerk: I just need a second. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Hasan: I second it. 10 The Clerk: Okay, now we have the substitute motion to hold the work sessions on thth Monday the 16 and on Thursday the 19. Mr. Mayor: I think it’s important for us to do this. It gives the elected officials sufficient time to review it, to have the right questions. I think the information that’s been presented to us is wonderful and it gives the general public an opportunity to know that due diligence has been put into this by their elected officials so all right, we’ve got a motion and a substitute for these as our two workshops. Voting. I want to thank the chairman of Finance, chairman of Administrative Services for the work that you all have done. That’s you, commissioner. Mr. Guilfoyle: I realize that. Mr. Mayor: For the work that you have put in. For us new folks learning how this works. Motion carries 9-0. th Mr. Mayor: Yes, sir. The Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 4. th Mr. Sias: Let’s just be mindful that we didn’t set a time frame for that 19 I believe and if we’re going to do that, not saying we set one exactly now but that should be a long day session. th Mr. Mayor: Okay. So on the 16 it’s currently from 10 until 12 and so are you suggesting that we also take action now on Thursday that we go from 1 to – Mr. Sias: Ten to four. Mr. Lockett: Oh, man, please. Mr. Mayor: Have you got any recommendations on that one then? All right. So here’s what I’d like based on what the commissioner just said, why don’t we do it from 10 until 1? th The Clerk: Ten to one on the 19? Mr. Mayor: Ten to one. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Mayor, I’d like a point of personal privilege. ten to one on Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right. Before we go to the personal privilege, th Thursday, November 19. I’m going to recognize the commissioner from the 9 if he’ll make that in a motion. Mr. M. Williams: So move, ten to one. Mr. Hasan: Second. 11 Mr. Mayor: All right, voting. Mr. Sias votes No. Mr. Fennoy out. Motion carries 7-1. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair. Mr. Mayor: Oh, yes, your personal privilege. I’m sorry. The Chair recognizes the th commissioner from the 5. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, sir. I just want to say that I hope my colleagues will not attempt to do with this budget what was done with the stormwater fee and with the SPLOST 7. We are professionals that have devoted many hours putting this together and the good thing about a budget is you can go back anytime pretty much you want to and make adjustments so I would hope that we don’t go redo what has been done because if we do, I think we’re going to make a drastic mistake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor: All right. If there be no further business in this special called meeting, I believe our posture is we adjourn this meeting. [MEETING ADJOURNED] Lena J. Bonner Clerk of Commission CERTIFICATION: I, Lena J. Bonner, Clerk of Commission, hereby certify that the above is a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Called Meeting of the Augusta Richmond County Commission held on November 10, 2015. ________________________ Clerk of Commission 12