Budget Workshop #1

the line by line.

Um,

I hear some grumblings. Either someone didn't eat or somebody is telling me you should wait till 4:30. I'm going to assume that that it's the wait till 4:30.

Yeah, we should.

Okay, I got 429. 429. 429.

What do you

Okay. computers.

Uh,

it that's interesting. Um, with this minute to go, does does Donna want to sit next to Paul so you can read off the computer screen of your stuff or do you want to be at the podium? I guess Denine just told me last year that they did it from the pod or from the sit down.

Well, then let's go with the sit down. We needed that extra minute.

Grab your name tag, too, Donna. Oh, yeah.

Your name tag. Table. My name tag.

All right. Well, guess what?

I have one. When did I get one?

Oh, come on, Donna.

I never had one, honestly.

Yes.

Is that my 20 year anniversary?

No, you got it. That That didn't go much. So, uh, well, welcome everybody, uh, in the room or watching live at home or watching tape at a later date to the, uh, Thursday, July 31st, 2025, uh, first of two, uh, 2026 budget workshops here for the Webster Town Board. And um before we start off, I promised the town board I was going to keep this to uh less than two minutes, a little preamble as we enter into the meat of budget setting season. Um I uh I had a handout tonight. It was also uploaded to the town website and social media platforms 48 hours in advance of this meeting. It's a one-page summary of the last five or six years of uh budgets uh for the town. And uh I'm I'm very proud of the fact that the last five years budgets 21 through 25 uh that selfishly I have been the supervisor overseeing uh all came in under the New York State tax cap. Um what you're about to see tonight and uh

next week are 13 or 14 of our town department heads presenting their budgets uh for 26 as they sit right now. uh the aggregate of these presentations you're about to see um already have a proposed 2026 budget under the New York State tax gap. Now, once we get through these two weeks of these presentations and we get past August 7th, um Paul Adams is our finance director and department heads and legal and a lot of different people, we will spend the next four weeks somewhat making some tweaks where needed uh within the budget. But I am pretty confident that I can speak on behalf of the town board that when we uh show up on Thursday, September 4th is the tenative town board meeting date to um uh adopt what I think Paul you call a preliminary budget or Denine it's called a um

it's tenative budget. It will become the preliminary once adopted.

Correct. And then last but not least, staying within the two minutes, I am going to call attention to the the Excel spreadsheet, one-page PDF that was uploaded, uh for this meeting, but has also been handed out to all the board members, to all the attendees tonight, uh department heads. Um that does really give some critical information about the uh budgets, tax rates, uh various things that uh really uh at the end of the day uh determine if the town governance is um operating fiscally responsible uh for its citizens and its taxpayers. So um and with that being said, I went a little over two minutes. We are gonna have our first presentation. This was not by alphabetical order, but it happens to be Donna Kumar, our fearless assessor. So, I'll hand the baton to you.

Thank you. Did you want me to go through this line by line or just point out the highlights? Oh,

you can hit the highlights.

We'll hit the highlights then. Thank you. Um, as far as personnel goes, that's usually under contract. There is one difference I'd call your attention to is that we had a part-time position that was open and um you're going to see the reduction from 26 to 27 on part-time. I'm sorry, I'm in the 27 revaluation mode. Let me back up. From 25 to 26 budget, you're going to see a reduction in the part-time employee line, but you're also going to see an increase in the full-time. And that's because we took that part-time position and made it into a temporary full-time position until uh the revaluation is completed. So that is the difference in the 0.1 accounts there. Um everything else is pretty much stable. I'll point out that our office supplies is up a little bit because $1300 of that is going towards purchase of envelopes. we've decided to um budget a certain number of envelopes towards all those mailings that are going to be happening in 2027. So, we're getting a little ahead of the game so we don't have to buy all of those multiple mailings, the envelopes townwide all in

one budget year. So, that's a request there to try and spread that um anticipated expense over the two budgets for 26 and then again in 27. And then the other highlight of an increase is obviously the reassessment line that is up according to the contract that we have with KLW um for the 2026 obligation of our payments to them getting ready for the 2027 revaluation. Um one other thing that might need a little explanation, the line below that is legal consulting. As you know, um the town attorney was previously doing the work for the assessment office and now it is the retired uh yet somewhat working for us and assessing. I'm glad to say Charles Janessie has stayed with us. So the amount of money for the consulting for legal for the assessment litigation cases is now on this line and it came out of the assessment attorney line up above which now is zero at the top of your screen. That is the highlights. Are there any questions I can answer for you?

How are you, Donna?

Hi, I'm good. How are you, Councilman?

Good. I just have one question on line number, let's see, A1355 40025. So, the actual for 2024 was 5200.

Um, the budget for 2024 was 9,800. And then in 2026, you're budgeting 31,150.

Thank you. I didn't mean to skip over that. Thank you for pointing that out. Um these are appraisals. Sometimes we have a professional appraiser give us an opinion. We have um two solar farms that that I have on one hasn't really actually happened, but there is one that as you know of is moving forward,

right? We would like to get a professional appraisal on that property. And then Fair Life, I've budgeted $20,000 for that appraisal for Fair Life to put an appropriate value on that property. Um, and some may say, why do you need to have that property appraised? Uh, if they're going to be in a pilot agreement and they have standard tax payments, that's because their special district charges will govern off of what is put on the assessment role. So, what I put on that role is still an important number.

Great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Anybody else? I Well, hey, what a fun year you're going to have in 2026. I think it What are we doing? A revaluation, a reassessment starting January 1st.

January 1st, a lot of that back work is going to start happening. We'll be doing data verification um coming up. We have all sorts of things planned to connect with the community trying to uh make them aware of what's behind the scenes in the process. We have parts for them to participate on, but our staff is going to get really crunching and busy uh starting in January of 2026. We'll be tired by the time the public comes around and starts talking to us. We'll have done so much work. I just want to say that uh at the library back uh nine nights ago uh Tuesday, June 20 or July 22nd, there were 70 plus people in that room plus four or five media outlets. And Donna, you were fantastic. How you presented, how you answered people's questions. Consate pro. That was fantastic.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I enjoy that. You can tell you're a teacher. All right. Well, we don't want to short you.

Well, there's one. Do you want to talk about the software licensing and and your plans for

Oh, I think that's a good thing to call out.

Sure. Thank you for that. Um, so we have had a program that we have been using and there's a link on our website now to something called ImageMate Online. That company that hosts that software for us is now been purchased by another company called Schneider Geospatial. They're a national company and what they do is pretty much the same thing as image made online. So, what kind of software am I talking about? It is um all of our really geeky technical behind the scenes, you know, how do we call a ranch a ranch and this and that and it takes all of those numbers and things that we put into our computer software and it puts it out there in real terms. So if you have a ranch house, it says ranch instead of the numbers we have to put the codes we put into the the computer and it and your exemptions are going to be labeled as you know it's the basic star program instead of the code we put in the computer. So, it gives the public an opportunity to look up their property, see what we have on file for them. Um, and then behind the scenes, we have all all sorts of pictures and survey maps and tax maps and things that our staff have attached to that. Thus, the image mate, it's matching images to the database that we have. So, it's a separate program from the program we use in the state. Um the state has organized

a program for us called RPS and we use that to do all of our valuation and maintaining the data. Now that program being sold goes off to Geos Schneider. We're we're going to be using their program called Beacon. We're going to be able to offer subscriptions so that from the convenience of your home, you will be able to or from your office. If you're a real estate attorney or um an appraiser or a realtor and you want to have all that public information, the convenience 247 at home, we're going to be able to offer you subscriptions coming up next year. It's part of this budget. So, we can't get ahead of that and do it now. But there's also a feedback page which we are going to launch this September. So come to our exemption workshop on September 25th right here in this room from 5 to 7:00 p.m. Come find out what kind of exemptions you could have but also according to this sub this um software you can look up your property and we will be able to um help you verify the information that you have. This is the first step to making sure that we do produce good values and the revaluation and I really want to encourage anyone to come out or use that once we get it online and once we have made that conversion from the one software to the other I think you're going to find it to be very user

friendly and very easy to use but we'll help you walk through that if that's what you need correct the data if your house isn't 1692 square feet let us know and we'll make the correction for you might need a site visit to do that. But if we don't have accurate data, we're not going to be able to produce good values and so um that's an exciting time too. There's really a lot of interesting things happening this year in the assessment office.

Thank you.

Thanks.

So is that program going to be associate or we have to pay an extra fee or is it you know common for realtors and lawyers and you know appraisers? I think that anybody who owns a home in Webster will find it interesting to look up their own property to see what we have gathered on it. We're going to be able to tell you the age of your pool, the age of your deck, the age of your garage if it wasn't built at the same time as your house. How big is your garage? How big is your house? Is it one story, twotory? Do we think it's a split level? Do we think it's a colonial? How many acres do you have? That's all the kind of information that we collect on properties. and people at the average everyday resident or business owner will be able to look up their property and see what we have on file because we need to know that we're using the best data and if we don't have the right data maybe you did fill in that pool. Well, let's take it off the inventory before we go and produce the values. It's better to do that in advance and produce a correct value than to have to circle back later and correct it after we've produced the values. So, I the the additional pictures and the surveys and that will be most valuable to the closing attorneys, the real estate attorneys, and the appraisers. Um, I think that the average person

could also find that interesting. As it is right now, the current software does do that. Um, and if you wanted to see everything that our employees can see, you can come into the town hall when the town hall is open and have access to all of those records. And it's complimementaryary. Correct.

It's complimentary. It's a public access terminal that we have right and our our wing for the DPW and engineering building department assessing office. That wing has this uh computer right there and you can look yourself up.

Okay. I noticed you have a uniforms in here and you didn't have it in 225 but 2026 you have

I mean it's only 300 but still it's uniforms

um well I I don't call it uniforms um I guess that's Paul's term for that that budget line number people who are out in the field such as myself and the appraiser um will purchase shirts or jackets that has the town logo on it. So that's why my budget is small. There's just the two of us that would be out in the field at any given time where we want to be able to identify ourselves as a town of Webster employee above and beyond the badge. Sometimes the badge gets in in the way and cumbersome so we'll we'll sport a jacket or a shirt when we're going to be out in the field.

Thank you.

Anything else?

No. Thanks, Donna.

Thank you, Donna.

Thank you.

All right. Well, next up We have

Paul

Paul Adams finance

always an interesting one.

All right.

My budget is uh relatively brief. Uh the the salaries are mainly driven by the white collar union contract. There's a 2% cola increase built in this year according to the contract. And uh I've built step increases for any employees that are are in line for that. Uh which is the main reason for the $12,000 increase in the uh full-time employee compensation. Uh capital purchase I kept around 800. Uh nothing big planned there. Uh computer equipment and licensing it's actually dropped about $3,900 and 25. I had to purchase a number of computers to comply with Windows um 11 uh 26 I won't have that need. So it's just basically paying for license agreements for Microsoft uh Adobe etc. uh seminars and conferences. Uh I've built in attendance at some GFOA events, uh Association of Towns, and I've been trying to encourage my employees to uh

take some training throughout the year as well. Um I know that Kim Hendy is actually in the process of getting her uh they call it a GFI. It's the Government Financial Institute. It's part of the GFOA and she'll achieve certain certifications uh on the finance side and um she'll get exposed to some things which she normally doesn't see on a daily basis. So, I think it's been good so far. Uh financial software tools uh that uh is basically $1,500 for program updates and about $3,000 for a program called Lease Crunch. Uh Lease Crunch uh is used uh to comply with Gatsby 87 uh where we have to actually calculate u long-term values on the leases and they end up getting booked as debt service. So it's a requirement that's been in place for about two or three years now. Financial consultants we do contract with a number of consultants which uh include municipal solutions. Uh they handle our bond consulting. Uh we're

currently in the process of going out to do a um a small serial bond and a bond anticipation note toward the end of August. And they're a key player in not only selling the bond, but monitoring the entire process and working with the town's bond council. Uh this line also includes actuarial services. We're required to um get get evaluation of our other long-term postemployment benefits. Uh that's also to comply with the Gatsby. Uh but it ends up being booked as a liability within the financials at the end of each year. So we use a consultant for that. And this line also includes lifetime benefit services which uh they play a role in our HR and our HSA monitoring. Office supplies pretty flat. year machine lease uh that's up $800. We we're leasing a a top pure printer from Toshiba, so it's a little more expensive than our previous machine, but still quite reasonable. Uh software fees are up about 9,000. The

main driver of that, it was the end of our three-year deal with Tyler Tyler Technology. uh they provide munis which is uh the complete financial package that this that the town uses. Uh so that's up 5% plus we've added TCM which is a software that we'll use to go paperless for purchase orders and for invoice entry. Uh basically it allows images of PDF documents to be tied to the data within MUN. So, as you're reviewing a transaction, you'll be able to actually see the the supporting source documents. So, that's a project we're currently working on. Hope to have it in place by the end of the year. We'll see.

Excellent.

Yeah. Uh software conversion costs uh 3,000. Uh I try to build in some money for some ongoing training. The MUN software is quite certain parts of are quite complex and uh Kelsey Feny and Kim Hendy and Braden uh are very much into maximizing maximizing the potential of the software. So like to build in some training consulting fees throughout the year u which helps everyone um maximize the potential and do things right within the software program. And the the other piece is the independent audit. Um it is up slightly year-to-year about $3,300. Uh we utilize Mangle Mezer and Bar who does the annual audit. Uh in addition to agreed upon procedures engagements for the court, town clerk, and receiver of taxes. That's up slightly. So overall, the budget's up. I don't have a grand total here, but it's up about 23,000 or about 4% year to year. So, all in all, it's not too bad.

I appreciate the team's work and going paperless. And even though there's an additional cost to that software, what we're going to find over time is that there's going to be a reduction in supplies. There'll be a reduction in paper. There's going to be soft cost, but a reduction in the amount of time it takes to process all of these vouchers and whatnot. It'll make it easier for those who need to approve the bills to be able to do that electronically from anywhere. So, uh,

yeah, I think overall we're going to gain some efficiencies. Um, I'm sure we're going to hear some complaints because, you know, it's a departure from what we've always done. Um, it'll be an adjustment for some of the departments, but We'll all get used to it eventually.

So, I want to just mention a couple things. Paul,

first of all, I I want to thank you very much for giving the historical actuals for each department.

It's a great tool.

Oh, it's fantastic. Um, and while you're you are up 25 30,000 year to year from 25 to 26, if you look back to if you compare 2021 to 2026, you're actually you've reduced costs $29,532 given that time span. But this just gives you an actual way to take a look at so you budgeted x amount of dollars in 2024. you can look at 2024's actuals to give you a bit of a barometer as to where you want to be or you think you're going to be in 2026. So, thank you so much for doing that.

Yeah, we could definitely go back and and look at what lines can be tweaked not only my budget but throughout the entire budget.

Correct.

Um if we want to get to that to that level. Sure.

Thank you.

Yeah, I know we just talked my overtime line probably can come down a bit. Um, a couple years ago it was running quite high. 24 not so bad. Uh, so I think that line still budgeted a bit high. Probably take it down. That's just one example.

Yep.

I mean, the tools there might it'd be a great tool to use. I mean, because I went through every line and I just I saw the actuals and I focused in on the 2024 actuals compared to the 2024 budget and there's some pretty big deltas there, not just the department. I'm just saying and as a general statement

and comparing that to the 2025 projections.

No, you're right. Like uh one example is historically employee benefits have been budgeted quite generously. uh actual coming in quite a bit under. That gap is getting less and less and less. Uh so I don't think you're going to see that going forward, but um historically there's been extra money in there,

which is part of the reason our surplus has been built. John, just are you this is the part that you like the uh

Yeah.

And how I think if I understand he's got the 2024 actual versus 2024 project.

Yes.

But if we could also show what those budgets were for 23 22 21 is that

No, I just I was complimenting him on putting the actuals in there because you can see a historic history from 21 to 24.

Yeah. Uh but when I was going through each line on the entire budget, I would compare the 2024 budget to the 2024 actual and then look at the projection for 2025 to see what the deltas are.

And it's a great tool for all our departments.

No, it is. You know, and it's funny, and I know it could potentially be a rabbit hole to go back and look at 23 actual versus 23 budget,

but you know what this what we're basically,

it's just nice to have the information.

It is. And we say this almost every year at budget time, this town, long before I was supervisor, long before you were on the before any of us were on the board,

conservatively budgets. And so within conservatively budgeting, revenues are conservative in the budget. We end up more revenues actual expenses are conservatively budgeted. So that means our actuals end up having less expenses. And I think the sheet that I referenced earlier that shows the fund balance aggregate of the town um that one of the reasons why that fund balance continues to grow of all these funds is that conservative budget. Our actuals for the last five years. Uh Paul, I would I think 24 uh we had budgeted for a 2 million $3 million loss

about three million

and then we ended up having about a $2 million gain.

Correct.

So where we thought we were going to bring our fund balances down by three million that we were using them to make ends meet, that year actually had us grow our fund balances by $2 million. Um, so anyway, conservative budgeting is a good thing. Okay. Anybody else have questions or comments for Paul?

Thanks, Paul.

Thank you, Paul.

All right. Well, guess what, Braden? You're four minutes ahead of time here.

Well, let's keep that trend going. The uh request for 2026 for the Department of Human Resources is a maintenance of effort uh budget with very little changes. Um our 26 budget will be uh $283 less than our 25 budget essentially. Uh we uh found um internally the ability to offset the uh personnel cost increases uh with uh reducing software licensing fees uh which those are monies that we put in there if we need extra support projects for um the uh MUNS ERP finance and HR share that product and it's budgeted in both locations and then Um the the other thing is uh I went back and looked at some prior budgets and our 2021 budget was 145,200. [Music]

Um our 2026 budget is one uh 141,236. So we're uh about $4,000 less. We're down 2.7% compared to 2021. Um and then u well that's uh then it's open to questions. There's uh not a ton going on there since it's a department of one and we are controlling our expenses.

No complaints there. Right. So, I see you you budgeted $4,500 in 2024 for capital purchases of uh computers and your actual that year was and then you're budgeting 4,000 for next year.

Yeah. Uh for uh capital purchases computers 2011.

Yeah. computer equipment and licensing. No. Uh no, we're budgeting uh we're budgeting for 2011. We're budgeting $660.

Yeah. My form says 2026 says $4,000.

That is for line 4000. Safety and department based trainings.

No, it's right here.

That's why I brought my ruler.

Is the screen. How does the screen match up with your paper? It could be just a copy. Yeah, my my copy is wrong because my copy says 4,000. Sorry about that.

It does.

Probably just a shift in a spreadsheet somewhere.

Yeah. No questions.

Good job, Braden. Thank you.

Thanks.

Keeping it short for you.

Wow. Um, okay. Well, maybe we need that time because Chief, you're up. 450.

Good evening. All right. So overall the police department uh requested budget is uh $388 $259 over last year's of that 78.4% of the is that is personnel cost um mostly uh contractual. So starting at the top there with uh my salary it's actually salary and compensation because it's not completely salary. Uh base pay which is a 2% coal increase um in line with the other department heads. uh longevity and education incentive which is derived from the 1000 club contract uh based on the the position and then there's an additional 12,000 for uh the retirement buyout that the town board approved uh last year. So I don't uh so the town doesn't contribute towards uh any long-term u retirement fund for my position because I'm retired in New York State uh retirement system. So right now for a tier 2 employee that retirement percentage um is around 30% for based on salary. So instead of contributing $48,000 or so to New York State for a retirement fund, uh the town pays out about $12,000

directly um for that. When you get to officer salaries, uh there's two real components that made that um significant increase. One is a 3% cont contractual increase uh for the 1000 club which is about $109,000. The second one is contractual step increases. So as we uh hire new employees, as they gain experience, their uh salary step increases uh year-over-year. One of the strategies we took in the last contract is to extend that out. We added an extra step. So the town uh now has six steps when it comes to um salary um uh growth. So out of the uh increase of 263,170 there's 109 for the contractual percentage and 153 for the step increases for the employees. Now when you look at that over the next five years um that starts to drop significantly. So if there's no change in staffing over the next 5year period, that step increase goes down year after year. So it cuts in half next year uh drops down another 20,000 a year after that 10,000 then 20,000 then it's down to to zero. So that they've all reached

top step at that point. When it gets to salary compensation for retirements, uh that is um kind of a a gamble as to whether there's people retiring or not. Uh when you look at the buyout for vacation, sick, and comp time um for the contract when the employees leave, uh the last three retirees have averaged about $45,000 um per retiree. So we've seen in law enforcement a trend um out of the last uh 13 employees that have retired uh the average length of service is 20 years and uh two months. So we see people when they hit their 20 uh they leave. So currently we have uh one patrol officer that can leave. When this budget was created there was actually two uh Lieutenant Webster retired this week um from the department. So uh that increase or um uh the budgeting there was zero uh increase on it but that is a statement number so I wanted to cover it when it comes to non-h holiday uh pay uh we budgeted 40,000 that is one that is very hard to um project so if you look at it contractually each employee uh captain

down I'm sorry below the captain lieutenant down in the union uh has the option of either taking holidays in pay or holidays in comp time. If they take it in pay, it's uh almost a $200,000 expense. Most employees take it in comp. Uh but we don't know that when we initiate the budget as to whether they're going to do that for the next year. So, um our our spending, our actuals over the last three years have averaged about 28,000. Uh so that 40,000 budget is more just hedging our bets that if some people take it and pay and have less comp time that we have um some money to cover that increase. Uh another significant portion of the budget is the police overtime. Um we're holding that flat at the 300,000 with that as a target. Uh historically we've been over that. Um if you look at the last three years, the overtime budget has uh averaged about $346,000. Um so it's actually over that 300,000 mark. Most of that has to do with um either low headcount uh for some of those years or having people off the road and having to cover the vacancies on the road. Some of those uh vacancies

uh off the road have to do with um either a medical leave, long-term injury, uh maternity leave. Uh we'd have two officers out right now on maternity leave or they have to do with discipline processes. As we've talked in the past, the discipline process um can take anywhere um up to a year, year and a half to initiate. Um luckily we currently don't have any of those going on, but we did go through a period of time there where we did. So, uh, our goal is to control that overtime, um, down to that $300,000 mark, uh, by having our staffing actually on the road operational. And again, that kind of ties to the conversation about headcount with having, uh, additional, um, training time for employees. So, our department is a little bit different than most others. Uh even when we hire somebody at uh the police officer academy level, we're still not going to have them operational for almost a year. It'll be about a nine-month process before they're actually staffing a car on the road uh on their own. Uh some of the other ones that are significant um not to bore you with each one but uh uh officer comp time buyout that is a um educated guess as well based on

historicals. U as officers acrew their comp time at the end of the year they're mandated to buy it down to 80 hours. Uh but they have the option of buying it down to zero. So it all depends on what the officer's preference is at the end of the year. Uh so we have uh over the years separated that out from overtime, created its own uh line to try to track that better. And our uh last uh four years have put us anywhere between 122 and 155. Um so that's kind of where we're at. It's been um trending towards that upper number. It was 148, 154. So we're expecting to be around that 155 number this year. Another increase is the clerical salaries. Um we have four clerk positions and one property clerk/quartermaster. So five full-time civilian positions. Uh they got a 2% cola increase. So that um results of 6.4% of the total differential in the the 2526 budget. Um, we do have one part-time uh vehicle maintenance position uh that we u use to run our vehicles to the different services. So, we're not paying patrol officers for for those uh for that time.

School crossing guards, again, there's one crossing guard location uh in town that uh is our obligation to staff. Uh over this past uh year, uh we haven't had a crossing guard, so we've been using police officers to do it. that's caused um uh some logistical issues and uh resulted in overtime. So, we're we're going back to hiring somebody for that position uh for the fall so that we can u help control the overtime cost associated with that. Um as I move down the list here, uh the ARPA bonus uh $8,500 uh that was part of the negotiation process. Um it's a contractual incentive for captain and below. Uh $2,500 uh paid in December.

That's the last year of it.

And that's Yeah.

Third and final year.

Out of computer licensing and equipment. Uh about $20,000 of that is the uh user licensing and about 16,000 is the equipment um that we for um computer upgrades and rotation. Out of capital purchase offices. Uh we have two projects uh for next year. Uh we're placing two clerk desks and uh the roll call room desk and chairs. It's part of our u planned progression to update the workspace. Um so you see a significant increase in the capital purchase miscellaneous. Uh that is for our body worn camera uh equipment. So our five-year contract for our current bodywn cameras uh expires in May. So, we're going through the testing phase right now to try to um select a new vendor. The one we have uh isn't meeting our needs. Uh so, ultimately, our goal would be to acquire a grant to pay for any um equipment costs that come along with that, but we don't know if we're going to get approved for that. So, we'd have to budget accordingly to try to um make sure we have continuity with that program. The body warn cameras are a

necessity in law enforcement these days. Let's see here. Capital purchase firearms uh two patrol rifles and the simmunitions conversion kits. Um as uh we talked about last budget cycle, we have are in the process of transitioning our duty pistols to um a new make and model with a red dot optic on it. So we're going to upgrade our uh simmunition conversion kit. So essentially those are the kits that we use for rally based training uh to make the trail the training officers go through as realistic as possible. Um it allows them to use the same style weapon holstered and all that um to make it more realistic. Uh for this budget cycle we have three uh patrol vehicles. Uh they're going to be three marked vehicles this year. Um so both the combination of the vehicle and vehicle accessory line. Uh so to set up the equipment, it's about $14,000 per vehicle, $1,000 for graphics, and about $45,000 for the actual vehicle. Uh for our fleet, we have 13 marked uh patrol cars, and we have eight unmarked SL special use vehicles. So that uh puts us on a three-year vehicle um three year uh rotation per uh for vehicles. Um let me rephrase that. three vehicle per year as part of the rotation for the 21

total vehicles. Um, capital purchase DWI, that's a radar unit, road screener, professional development is uh for the chief's conference and national academy uh membership. Um, seller telephones, that's another large expense. Uh, it's something we do differently than some of the other police departments. We issue a uh cell phone to each patrol officer, each sworn member uh to fulfill their duties. Uh it's basically a mobile office um has access to all of our um policies, procedures, uh training material and uh it's on the FirstNet network. So it uh ensures communication continuity in a critical incident. Uh the other benefit to it is it keeps officers personal devices out of any kind of discovery uh issue. if it's associated with a criminal arrest that uh that's been working out very well for us. Um okay, another large expense is service contracts. Um that's essentially software as a service. Um a lot of the things that we're using for both um management investigative u processes are contractual now. So, some of the big

ones, Lexiple, that's our policy manual. That's uh $15,859 U for uh next year. Uh we do get a $4,000 grant from Perma for having that. Um it's a well recognized uh policy manual that has some incentive to it. So, we get $4,000 back from Perma for that. Uh Provision is our body warn camera software. that's uh a $20,000 um uh annual expenditure. So that's uh last year of that contract. Uh IA pro is a $4,500 uh contract that is for our personnel management. Uh so uh for those aren't super familiar, the discovery process where we have to uh provide information to the district attorney's office as part of uh officer's performance and history. Uh that helps us track that. Um, Case Guard's a software program for the plate readers. Uh, Dagel is a I'm sorry, that was $4,800 uh, annually. Dagel um, Law Group, that's $2,700. That's uh, supervisory training for sergeant and up. Uh, provides a monthly uh, enhanced uh, training which fulfills our accreditation requirement for supervisory training and it is really good content to help raise the knowledge

level of our supervisors. Uh moving down through a couple of these, there's really not much change with uh most of those. Uh gasoline is probably the next biggest expense when it comes to unknown. Um we uh budget 100,000. Uh luckily the last couple years we haven't needed to to to reach that level. Um but uh that fluctuates. The other one I just wanted to cover real quick with the vehicle uh repairs uh we have $45,000 budgeted. Um, we typically see about $16,000 reimbured from the insurance companies. A lot of those are from fleet vehicle accidents and there is some reimbursement that comes from uh other operators. When you get down to clothing expense for uh the $45,000 uniforms and vests, uh each ballistic vest has a five-year rotation uh replacement uh per manufacturer recommendation. So, we have to purchase um uh right around six or seven vests a year uh to keep up with that um requirement. The employee assistance program um that was a new initiative in 25

uh joint with the sheriff's department. They offered they opened up their services to to towns that are interested. Uh we budgeted for it, expressed interest in it, and uh it still hasn't launched. Um I was just contacted about two weeks ago that they're getting ready to launch that program. So the money budgeted for 22 I'm sorry for um for 25 to $22,000 um hasn't been expended yet. So there's probably going to be some residual from that. Uh but we're expecting that to be fully operational by um New Year's um for 26 budget. and the rest are are no increase um uh typical uh expenditures for revenue. Uh really no changes in revenue. Uh the biggest one obviously is the reimbursement from the school uh Webster Central School District for the re uh school resource officers. Um that's 75% of their total compensation or total cost. So in um the officer salary line that results in about $160,000 being reimbursed uh from that expenditure and then the rest is out of the healthcare um retirement contribution um uh aspect of their costs

for the contract. We build them twice a year

and then uh that's uh kind of covers revenue. There's not not a lot of money to be made in law enforcement. Um, do you want to run through random control too while I'm going or you want to pause? I'm gonna headshake.

No.

Okay,

I'm fine. I don't know about the rest of the members of the board.

Keep going.

Okay. Um, for animal control, uh, we run a part-time model. We don't have full-time animal control officers. So, Barb Holland leads that unit and does a fantastic job. Um, puts it puts in a lot of effort as a part-time employee. Uh and then her and Tracy and a couple others have been bringing on board uh fulfill that staffing. Um not much change there when it comes to their expenditures. Um we have to get them a new computer. Uh that's where that came from. We didn't do it in 25. Um I haven't done it in 25 with kind of the uncertainty of what's going on. Um other than that, there's really not much change to the to their budget. No real revenue to be spoken of there either. Okay. And I'm available for questions.

So, I got a couple questions. Well, I have a bunch, but I'll talk to you offline about some other issues. So, we provide resource officers to the school district. Correct.

Correct.

That we get reimbured for.

Correct.

With the exception of the summertime.

Correct. We supply crossing guards, but we don't get reimbursed for that from the school. I just don't I'm just curious as to why.

So, the crossing guard is a uh New York State town law requirement, I believe, uh that the town the municipality is actually responsible for the crossing guard, not the school district. Uh I it's been a while since I've looked it up to actually give you the number, but it's it's written into a law someplace in New York State town law that requires the municipality to do it. So, New York state law does not require us to provide school resource officers either.

Correct. That was a discussion that we started uh about 10 years ago. I think it was either 14 or 15 school year was the first year we did school resource officers. And the reason we settled on the the 7525 is because in the summer um they get assigned as traffic cars and they're not under uh any performance for the school. So, they they absorb the 75% that they're there and then we take the 25 for the summer.

Thank you. Um the only other thing I was looking at the clerical salaries dating back to 2021. Um 2021 actual was 215,580. [Music] Um and the budget for 2026 has gone up to 324,883. Um how many clerical positions have you added since 2021, would you say?

Since 21. So, uh, there's only been one edit since 21. Uh, in 21, I think actually late 20, they, uh, took one from part-time to full-time, I believe. Uh, so there was, um, two full-time, one part-time. Before I came back as chief, it went to three full-time. And then with the discovery um, uh, impact that we've had, we added a fourth clerk uh, last year.

Last year. Okay. So you have would you say you had you have five clerks total now or four?

So we we have four clerks plus one property clerk but it's a it's not a clerical it's for the uh evidence and property management not actual like paperwork that uh she manages all of the evidence that comes in and that u destruction and management process.

Okay. But you that person is classified as a clerk though, right? Uh it's not a clerk civil service title. It's a property clerk/quartermaster civil service title. Okay. That that does a different function.

Thank you.

I just have a quick question about the resource officers because it's flat year over year but but salaries go up year over year. Is is that negotiated for a certain period of time and when would it be up for renegotiation? Uh, which part are we talking about?

We just signed a new contract.

The school resource officers.

You're talking Oh, you're talking about the on the revenue side.

On the revenue side. Yes.

Yeah. So, I think the reason why it it's flat year-over-year is because it depends on which officer gets assigned. So, it's hard to say exactly this is going to be a revenue for 26 because we're uh we have to post it um actually for August 1 for a new person that may take the position in September. So in the next billing cycle, the bill is going to be based on that officer's cost, but we don't know who that officer is yet. Plus, we were short an officer in 24. We didn't have two officers for the whole year, so that really cut the revenue back. So we're conservative with the revenue.

I see.

Yeah, it'll most likely be more than that.

Okay.

Thank you, Chief.

J Well, I got to do it to you, Chief.

Yeah.

I have appreciated that when you came on board in uh I think March of 21 and within a month or so, you figured out that the 21 budget that had been done months before had some math errors and uh so that was a fun way to start. Your first budget that you actually oversaw was the 22 budget. Um if and I would you know we were talking earlier about putting the budgets versus the actuals rabbit holeless going back in time. What chief has done to the best of my knowledge is his 22 his 23 and his 24 budgets now are we have actions and he stayed under those budgets. Uh I think it went over a little bit in 24 but we talked about it at your meeting. It was something totally out of your control. Uh if I'm trying to remember, Paul, was it because

we had budgeted for the first we didn't budget any increases uh to salaries because

we didn't have a contractual contract,

the union, we did a contingency, but it ended up whatever.

And I want to thank you for that because I got to tell you, I mean, obviously everybody knows it. It it is it is an expensive dollar-wise venture to have a municipal town police department. I think it's been proven in the town of Webster that the the costbenefit analysis is irrefutable. The town loves their police department. Me, I love accounting and I love things that aren't surprises. And I didn't like the first two years that um I hear that the and I saw it myself. The police budget seem to go two $300,000 over. The actuals were two or $300,000 over. a lot of it was Paul uh not Paul um overtime versus holiday pay at the end and those banks and we just didn't have a good handle on it and it was always a surprise and it was a it was a negative um thing across the board. I remember some department heads would say to me six months a year into being supervisor, I'm busting my hump to try

to keep my budget where my actuals are lower and then every year the police basically we have to subsidize 200 $300,000 of how they go over their budget by that. You have gotten that under control. That does not happen. And that to me has major value as a supervisor that has an accounting background. So I want to thank you for that.

Try to do it again.

Thanks.

Well, next up and with six minutes ahead of time, Chris, uh, parks and wreck. Chris Bo. Okay. Uh so for 26 uh just a couple notes before I get in and go through some of the highlights and some of these lines. Um revenue for all three departments uh is again for parks and wreck. There is a uh there is a senior line, there's a recck line and there's a park line. So between the three for revenue lines our 2026 totals uh 1.3 1,338,100 uh which is a departmentwide increase of about about 10% from 25 to 26 for revenue. From an expense standpoint for all three departments 2026 our total is uh 2 mill 2,913836 which is an increase from 25 of about 4%. So revenue is up about 10% uh

expenses up about 4%. Which is kind of how we like to to operate. Um 2026 budget does not include any new full-time staff. So we are operating with the same staff level um that we are in in 2025. Uh and then another highlight that I just want to mention as I go through this is uh in 2026 uh the department will continue to utilize from an expense standpoint uh for senior programming and as well as youth programming um the Monroe County ARPA funds that were made available this past year as that carries over into the 2026 uh purchase year. So uh we'll take advantage of that. So we've been able to u take advantage of it from a budget standpoint on the expense side. So first department up 6772 which is our um program for the aging or senior line. Uh that that department consists of one full-time person uh our coordinator and then one 20our part-time employee who is a uh who is our nutrition uh nutrition aid works in the kitchen prepares and gets things ready for our senior lunch program. Um no real change to that as you look at that from an expense standpoint. Uh really the only change that we had uh from a reduction uh that

was significant for this year is se the other couple other department heads have mentioned 200011 computer licensing and equipment uh that's reduced down now that all of our computers in the department are uh are up to date for Windows 11. So we're able to reduce that expense. Um, other than that, we kind of expect everything else slight increase like we ever do every year for our provisions, which is uh the senior lunch program. Um, and again, supplies and miscellaneous to see a slight reduction there as well as up above just above where Paul's got it highlighted. Now, capital purchases, that's because we plan to take advantage of that uh that county ARPA money. Uh, we can use that for programming. Again, from a senior standpoint, it's utilized specifically for that program area. So not much change there from a an expense standpoint on the seniors. Revenue is I think underneath this. Yeah. So we did increase uh we do have a an emphasis coming this year. Last year when we uh we added a full-time staff person to the department, we were able to restructure our our our programmers uh and that allowed us to have our

senior coordinator Daphne really sort of have an emphasis on senior programming. So, we're expecting to see an increase in that senior recreation line uh this coming year because that is for programs not related to the to the senior lunch program. So, that's why we see that increase there. um senior that's the nutrition revenue line that is for the senior lunch program and then that's the county reimbursement. Uh very difficult to to judge. Uh we try to use actuals at the end of the year but it it's all based on participation and how many lunches are served. We try to keep our lunch count as close to our actual numbers as we possibly can. Our lunch count average right now is around 18 per day. We do see some days where we're up into the mid30s and we do see some days when we're down into the lower teens. So that takes care of 6772. We can go on to the rec side. Um so 7020 consists of uh obviously we have a recreation director, we have one office manager, we have one finance clerk, and then we have four and a half uh positions for programming. Um within the expense side under under w 87 is our administrative support. That's obviously our front office staff. Um

just so from a point of clarity, the rec center is open about 150 hours per week. Um and that while that building is open, that does require staffing. And as we go through and have um part-time staff, obviously with the minimum wage continuing to increase, that affects our bottom line. So to cover those 115 hours, it does have an impact on our expense line. Uh one93, which is strength staff, that is an increase as well. Um that's tied back to our revenue though from a membership standpoint. That is specifically tied to fitness programs that that we provide. So as we continue to increase our membership level, we try to increase uh our fitness programs as well. um 1093 which is a increase in fitness instruction. Again, same thing. It's it's all based off from um based off from our membership base and what programs are being offered. computer equipment similar like I just set up above. Last year was a we able to cut that about in half. Last year was significant just because of the number of computers that we needed to replace. Um, so now this is just for licensing and for uh a couple of monitors that

need to be replaced. 40067, that's one of our big ones. Um, that is our that is our uh our cloud-based uh storage system for our recre, which obviously takes care of all of our registration. there's an increase in there because this in 26 we'll have a full year of our um our cell app which will become live hopefully early this fall uh where we'll be able to actually have registration people be able to do registration straight from their phone. Uh so that will be an increase to our uh our current Recrack offering 40218 membership training. That's another one I'll highlight. Uh that that line is where we have all of our memberships to any of the services that we provide for the department. Things like constant contact which uh we do our monthly e-news. Uh that's where we have our sling which is the front office scheduling system that's taken from there. We have a new software that allows us to manage our our leagues and athletic programs. It's called team snap. So that uh that cost is baked into there. and all those are annual costs that uh that just be able to uh allow us to be able to perform our duties. rest of the uh the expense lines that

are are pretty similar um you know from year to year. Not a lot of not a lot of change program independent contractors again uh that's all based on revenue as you see revenue go up that obviously has a direct tie straight back to our contractors from a lineto line item standpoint. rest of this rest of the items are pretty standard and straightforward. Uh from a revenue standpoint, a couple of changes just to highlight uh that very first line 20002. Um this year we are changing it. That's why you can see in 25 has a revenue had a revenue expectation of 3500 and this year it's 420,000. Uh basically what we're doing is we're recategorizing how we collect or where we uh place our revenue. Uh the reason we're doing that, it'll give us an easier way to be able to track all of our camps. So from a camp standpoint, we'll be able to make sure that uh that all of our camps are under one line rather than being lumped in with other programs. So obviously from a camp camp standpoint, we have preschool, K5, playground, trip camp, plus during the school year, we have conference day uh day camp. So this will make it easier for us just to be able to monitor those.

And then that's why 20003 goes from 400,000 down to 23. So WPRD programs will basically now be any non-contract program that we offer. So if we offer some a program that's uh that's taught by a staff person, revenues collected in this line. The next line is where the revenue comes in in regards to the uh the uh the independent contractor. So these are contract lines. So any program that we offer that is managed or taught by an outside contractor and we have a contract in in place with them, this is where the revenues revenues captured for that. So just a little I'll say clerical change in how we do it will make uh tracking easier for staff and uh just be able to monitor those revenues throughout the year. Um 2011 uh that actually uh we will be renaming that to insurance based um So again, we continue to see a a nice increase in 25. We had a revenue expectation of around 62,000. We bumped that to a uh 80 for next year. Uh we continue to see our um our insurance based members increase. So that's a real good thing

for us. And we're at record highs with the the number of seniors that are in the building uh as part of an insurancebased program. fitness classes 2035 fitness classes. Last year, if you recall, what we did is we pulled out um premier memberships used to be baked into that line, we pulled that out. So now that 2035 is basically anything that somebody comes in and is not a current member and has to pay for a class, it's a drop in or if it's a one-time thing, that's where that revenue is captured. Um, we made that decision last year uh to categorize 2045 for strictly membership. So, all of our fitness memberships, whether it's a premiere or a family or a senior membership, whatever it is, a paid membership goes into that line and able to see continued steady increase. You know, we we track this obviously on a monthly basis. The number of households that we build continues to climb. Uh, we have not changed our fee structure in several years. Uh, benchmark every year we feel like the services that we're providing is again as a community facility is right where it should be. So um we've been fortunate that our

membership base continues to climb. Therefore our revenue shows that on that end uh sale of equipment 2665 that is we'll be selling off uh one truck from our parks department along with some other equipment that's slated to go to auction in 26. Um and then obviously That's the concession stand sale. So, our concession stand is for over here at Miracle Field. That concession stand is open for any or for all Miracle Field activities plus some other special events and some other activities that go on. So, we do have revenue that is generated now. It's has its own revenue line rather than again being locked into our WPRD program line. So again, our our revenue is tracking up, which is good thing. Parks department. Um, so make sure the right notes here. I'm not supposed to. All right. So 200059 capital improvement line. Uh, continue. Oh, before I start, so 7110 parks, obviously, we have one parks director. Uh, we have one and a half facilities person. So that's you know full-time and then a 20our week person. Then we have four parks go which are

park laborers. So that's the structure within our our parks department. 200059 capital improvement line. Uh this is uh to continue uh with updating of the uh the parking lot program that we started a few years ago. We've been able to update the parking lot in the entrance to first responders two years ago and then this past year or this year we've been able to update the parking lot at the Arboritum. Uh two very necessary projects that we're very pleased with. So we're going to continue with that effort um slightly less than this past year uh as we look to focus at Kent Park and also the parks barn. I'm not sure if anybody has ever pulled into the parks barn or not, but it is severely u needs needs to be paved and redone. So, we're adding that to our list, which will obviously make the wear and tear on vehicles and trailers, etc. a lot less. So, those are our two big items for 26 as we go in from a from a project standpoint. Capital purchase for equipment 200063. uh we are putting in for what is called a ventrak mower. Um that mower will allow us uh to be able to get to locations in the spring when we have a

wet spring we are not able to have our mowing contractors get into because they don't have the proper equipment. Uh this piece of equipment we'll be able to will be able to keep up with that mowing service in the early spring. This past year was a perfect example for we couldn't touch the outfields of Kent Park. um until almost June with our commercial mowers, but the Ventrak mower would allow us to be able to do it. We actually demoed it this year um a day after one of our commercial mowers that stuck. We were able to mow the outfield with a vent track mower. So, we're looking to put in we're looking to purchase that machine that'll give us not only the ability to mow those locations, those wet lake locations around town, but also have a boom mower, which will be able to help with areas around parking lots that we have for like several of our trail heads because those aren't part of our mowing maintenance program. Those are actually mowed by the park staff with our current zero turn. So, this machine will actually help with that that process as well. uh capital purchase park improvement fund. That is basically the fund that we use to fix, repair, update and um make any changes that we need to in any of

the parks. That generally is a uh is a fund that we go to that is beyond our what I'll say as a normal operating dayto-day type of expense. So that's where we'll pull those funds from. uh 40101 the uh the vehicle lease. Uh as I mentioned, we're going to have a revenue for selling off a truck. So, we're actually looking to replace one truck. We're replacing looking to replace a 2016 Chevy 2500. That vehicle is reaching its end of life very quickly. So, we've been pleased with the new vehicles that part of the enterprise program that we've had. So, we're looking to replace it with a Chevy 2500, which will put our lease count at facilities van and then three parks trucks. Then 40248 lawn service that is our that is our other big expense um that we have. Obviously that is a contract. Uh so that's built-in cost. We're able to keep that cost under control. This year's been a little more challenging than some in the past just because of the growing season that we had especially early on but we've been able to sort of I'll say catch up a little bit here late as things started to dry out and we haven't As part of that service, we have the

ability to cancel mow jobs or or weekly mowing, which can help sort of keep our expense in check. The revenue line that's tied to parks is obviously our lodge rental sort of a again a fixed number kind of consistent from year to year. We do have some um say group rentals or usage of parks that do does get built into this as well. So, we did estimate a slight increase for for 26. It takes care of our part. So it takes care of all three departments. Questions?

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you. I don't have any questions. I like the work you're doing to separate the line items so you can see what's happening in specific programs. I think that'll help over time.

Thank you. Um, wow. Uh, are both, uh, judges going to present?

Well, I don't know if we have name tags for both of them, but Chris is just, is there switch? And I just got to say that, you know, when you came on board back in 20, uh, I remember talking about, and this is oversimplifying it, but at your position in Penfield, you had 700 programs for the recreation department. You had a 4,000 square foot facility at that time. 2019 pre previous to co the town of Webster had about 250 programs on a third of Penfields but had a 40,000 foot facility. So you just and you said I think there's a lot of potential to grow the recreation department. And um I remember saying to you at that time I said you know you got your expenses the recreation department then you got the revenues from these programs and and the revenues you know are were a lot less than the expenses. All right but we're not a for-profit business so that's fine. I said do you ever think we'd get to the point where our revenues would exceed the expenses and you said no that's you know then we're a YMCA or we're a Midtown or whatever. But with that being said, in 2024, I'm sorry, 2021, your expenses actual for the recreation

department were $57,000 more than the revenue you brought in. Four years later, in 2024, your expenses were $443,000 more than revenue. you actually closed that gap. Now the revenue increased, so did the expenses, but the net the delta between them got less and less, which means that's a great benefit for the town taxpayers. We have more programs. You're running a business over there where you're making sure the program has enough people participating and you're making it cost effective. The more you do that, the less we have to citizens and it's great. I appreciate that.

Thanks. But and I will say, you know, I appreciate that and thank you. Obviously, this is, you know, this is we have a great staff team that's over there that does that between Katie and the rec staff and and Glenn and the park staff that, you know, help maintain the expense and then the rec side, you know, increasing that revenue. They they work well together and, you know, they're creative and they they just do a great job. So yeah,

they're they're really the reason that that would stay in that path. So

thanks Chris.

I don't know if we have name tags for the judges. They probably over at their place, but but everybody knows the judges. So I don't know if they need I guess you'll figure out if there's but come on up. Good afternoon everyone.

Hi judges.

You're on.

You're on. Okay. So, we're going through the the list here and uh looks like the justice salaries are up 2% the clerical salaries are up about 5%. And I assume that's part of the white collar union uh contract

step increases. Uh part-time uh personnel went down about $6,500 and change down about 12%. uh over time went down $500. Uh computer equipment uh down $7,400. We're getting all brand new computers from the uh state of New York, the Unified Court system. So that uh that expense is no longer an expense of the town of Webster. So that's a that's a good thing. Okay. I'm told they've been delivered somewhere around here and they're supposed to be installed by our IT people. So, that's that's a good thing. Uh conference expense remains the same, about $3,500. That's to send myself and Judge Sepler to the magistrate's uh convention and any other training sessions that that come up. That's a pretty static number. Uh one of the major changes over the years is the uh court security. Uh that there was a time when that line item was zero. We had the special police uh providing uh security and uh prior to that we had no security. I I started as

a judge in 2001. I would venture, the time seems to be uh all blending together, but I would venture to say that over the six or eight years when I first started, there was no security whatsoever. We just uh trusted the goodwill of the people of Webster apparently. And uh even on days when the sheriff came in without people handcuffed together, uh that was the only security we had. So the special police was a was a big change. Uh and that no longer being the case. Uh, court security is is a major expense. And I think that's true of courts all across the county, local and otherwise. And that's up going to be up $1,000 from last year. Um, what else? Uh, supplies, $5,700. That's of course uh paper, envelopes, files, that type of thing is a pre-static expense. computer software, I'm sorry, copy and software maintenance, that's down to zero. Um, and u so total um

total expenses are are are down about $5,300 um about 2%. Uh the the the problem of course is is is revenue. And I always preface by myself, Judge Sepler, speak for Judge Cor was a judge for here for 35 years. We certainly never set fines for the purpose of balancing our our budget. Uh we we set fines based on the severity of the situation, the person's record, and and many times their ability to pay the fine. Um but there's been a number of factors, many of which are out of our control, where uh very few much there's much less in terms of tickets that have been issued by the various police authorities. Um that's true of the troopers, Webster police, M County Sheriff. It just the body was simply not there for for a number of reasons. Um certainly there was a time when the New York State troopers parked themselves in tickets. that but that's not the case. The other the other problem and this

comes from Albany certainly is you may recall in June of 2023 uh the state of New York passed a law that forbid us to scoff anybody's license who didn't pay their their fine. You may find that to be counterintuitive but that is the that is the law. And so as a as a result regardless of the that's set and again certainly many times you set the fine knowing trying to find out the ability person to paid the fine in the first place high fine person can't pay it but taking all those factors into account it was a major certain a major hook to be able to scoff someone's license so the pay the fine and certainly they can pay them on installments and our clerks have always been very, you know, very compassionate with people to allow them time to pay the fines, but the state of New York uh simply took that away from us. So, as a result, in order to close the file, we we prepare civil judgments and those judgments are turned over to the M County District Attorney's Office and they file those with the uh county clerk. Certainly on

some days you look in the daily record and there's lists of all the fines that all the civil judgments filed by all the courts uh city, town, village courts that those all represent unpaid unpaid clients. Every once in a while, somebody shows up at the window to pay off their civil judgment when they've applied for a credit card or or a lease or their their their house went up for sale, that type of thing. But that's certainly the uh the exception, not not the rule. So that that's that's the issue here. So it looks like uh in terms of amount to be raised by taxes about 18,000 and change more from the year before and most of that is I guess is large part of it is at the clerk's expenses and yeah we had to reduce fines substantially from 98 to 80,000 just as Tom says that's been the trend. And there was certain there was a time there was a time in years past where um our revenue exceeded our expenses and again that was simply uh because of the fact of where we were situated with Route 104 running through the town of

Webster. But again it was never a situation where the judges are setting fines with the idea want to balance our our budget. It was just it was a sheer numbers that uh resulted in the revenue collected. So, that's where we are. Has anything to add?

I think all the high points there's changes in legislation and trends in law enforcement policies. Those are beyond our control. But the things that are within our control, such as the expenses that we were able to address by the court looking into resources that are available through the state and bringing in state technology into the courtroom into our offices. That that has been an area where we've been able to save some money overall in the budget. So, we're really pleased with that always to see whether resources are available through the office administration,

right? We're able to take advantage of various grants that the state every year. One of our clerks, Maryland, is very expertise at filling out the uh the grand form. So, we've been able to cut some of our expenses for capital purchases, especially uh by applying for grants to the private court system.

Excellent.

Hopefully, fingers crossed, we're going to get some restroom facility upgrades from these grants.

We've applied for for grants to and certainly those restrooms are used vast majority of the people come to the court.

Right. So, and there's some there's some other furniture needs that we have. Some of the furniture that we have uh we obtained from the unified court system downtown. It was secondhand furniture that we sent our highway department out to uh to pick up a ring to it. But they're they're reaching the end of their useful life, too.

So, we're we're applying for grants to replace that furniture as well. I just have one question.

Sure.

The computer software and maintenance, it's very small. Went from 400 to nothing. Are you still using that? And do you have to pay for supplies, ink, some something there?

I think we found that it was actually being charged to office supplies the 40140.

Okay.

So, we decided to leave it there.

Got it. I believe as far as software and maintenance is concerned now that we're transitioning to state devices that those expenses are also going to be covered by the state as well as

what was the question again

the transition from the town computer equipment and technological equipment to state equipment also the added benefit of state software and support. So that should also be reflected in some savings for the town.

True. Another example stuff we got from our um our nice TV we have in the court that we we use for trials with district attorney or the defense council puts up videos or body camera footage that's that's we had maybe two or three years now that

it gets a lot of use.

It gets a lot of use and again paid for by the unified court system, the grants that you apply for. So,

thank you. It's very, very good that you look into grants to help, you know, obsessed our taxpayer money. That's wonderful thing.

And judge touched on it. We have a really amazing staff. They are truly experts in the grant application process. We can't thank them enough for the hard work that they do to help bring these grants to the system and really the administration of justice. They're not here. But thank you.

And to your point, Judge Salvo, with respect to not using the court system to generate revenue, um you're 100% right. I had two opportunities two years ago um to see that in effect. Um, my son got his speeding ticket on 104 a couple couple years ago and I I was I don't want to say surprised. It was very nice to see the professionalism and the leniency um afforded to people that were in court by the judge. So I you're 100% right. Appreciate that. We always tell especially the young DAs and public defenders they come in that the justice court is probably the first and maybe only time someone will see the inside of a courtroom. So it's very important to be very very professional and I remind them that this is not town court the proper term this is justice court to do justice this is justice court

you truly exercise that so thank you so much

thank you

thanks

I want to thank Paul for his help because

it's a daunting process Even though we don't have as big a budget some of the other departments, it's still if you're not doing on a regular basis, it's a daunting process.

Thanks, Tommy. Good seeing you guys. Have a good night.

Bridget, two minutes ahead.

Told you you'd have extra time. All right. Well, before I jump right into the budget, um I believe you have some extra pages in your folder from my department. Um being that the communications department is fairly new um within the past five years, I wanted to update the board on some of the major accomplishments and some of the objectives um I have for this department going forward. Um I won't run through every single bullet point, but um I did want to touch on some of these um highlights. Um, so to start that off, both the creation and implementation of the organizationwide style guide as well as the strategic communications plan. Um, I will focus on the strategic communications plan for a second. Um,

that has really laid the groundwork for what this department will be.

Is there any way we can get it on the screen for people at home or

for the the

the director of communication uh points? I

no not the not the budget the uh the book but I will I will upload it to

I'll upload it to the website.

Cool. Very cool.

Um so the strategic communications plan um as you saw toward the end of 2024 really builds the foundation for what this department will be. Um right now we are looking forward to beginning to implement all the facets of that to really um optimize how we're reaching our audiences. Um so I am looking forward to that. Um another major accomplishment we've seen is the re-imagine town e newsletter um which was launched a year ago tomorrow. Um we have sub s sustained an open rate of 72.67% which is above the industry standard of 41% for government communicators. Um and we have a sustained click rate of 11.42% 42% which is above the standard um government email communications rate of 2%. Um I have um worked on developing a post and pre-RO worksheet which helps in the creation of um communications plan for major projects and initiatives. Um and um we have um just to pull another thing out of um our accomplishments,

we've had um major events uh including the highway ribbon cutting um last week's um revaluation kickoff meeting um and we are growing our earned media coverage substantially. Where I'm hoping to go in the next year and beyond is expansion of our digital reach through growth of um photographic and video captures. Um I think we can all agree that we're reaching a more digital landscape and um we need to be um keeping ahead of what these trends are so we can make sure to reach as many people as possible. Um but with that being said, we also can't be leaving any of our audiences behind. So there will be another um component of that which is um continuing to expand our um other opportunities for community outreach. Um where we've seen that most successfully recently is visiting um 55 55 plus um living communities. Um and um also in our relationship with the school district growing um we certainly are going to um need to be all um hands- on duck and um uh foot on the gas pedal

with our major projects like the comprehensive plan and the 2027 townwide reevaluation. Um and um another uh major objective I'd like to see is um updates to the website that will make it more user friendly and accessible for all of our users. Um so jumping into the budget and where all of that connects um is that you will see that um relative to the size of the communications department budget there is um a a quite an increase um over last year. Um and I'd love to talk you through some of those things. Um so starting off with administrative salaries, you'll see that jumped from being budgeted at $40,000 last year to 62,000 this year. Um, so I'd love to talk you through the um history of this position. Um, the position was initially added in the 2023 cable budget at $45,000. Um, last year it was approved in the communications budget um for 2025 um in and um at that time we were waiting on the civil service test results which were released in April of this year. Um and then there from there

we went on with the hiring process. Um a note on that is that the money for that position was um placeholder funding. In talking to um the personnel department um in looking through the union pay scale um we have to compare um compare the the position to jobs of similar scopes um duty and necessary qualifications to other positions. Um so it is paid equitably to other similar roles. Um and that's why you'll observe the the change from what was budgeted last year to um what the actuals were this year. Um uh we do have someone coming on board. His start date is this coming um Monday, August 4th. And we're very excited to dive into some of these opportunities as um especially as we're seeing some of these major projects like the revaluation, like the comprehensive plan um and like major capital projects like we're seeing down at the sewer. Um part-time personnel, you'll see that there's a slight decrease from last year. Um the reason for that is um uh to

pair up with what actuals are so far this year, but also because that um full-time communications assistant will also be playing a substantial role in taking on um uh shifts for producing um board meeting um videos and audio. Um for several other lines we are relatively um stable. Seminars and conferences you'll see has gone up from last year. Um this year I attended the National Association of Government Communicators um conference which I found to be extremely helpful meeting with several other um director level um government communicators from throughout the country. I was able to bring back several um talking points and um ideas that we've already started implementing. Um office supplies is slightly up um based on another person but also based on um seeing that um we do have the capacity to take on creating some of our own um in-house materials. So, a couple of examples of that are um the highway department um ribbon cutting, the invitation to that event, and the

postcards that have been advertising um the revaluation events like the one we had on July 22nd, and also the one advertising um what is coming up on September 25th for the um exemption workshop. We are creating those inhouse to save on printing costs. Um but you will see a slightly higher office supply line. Um and then the last line there you'll see is website design and maintenance. Um that was budgeted for 2025 based on um what was budgeted in the cable department for 2024. Um and we just rightsize that based on what actuals were from this year. And I am happy to take any questions. Well, I don't have a question, but I like the um outline of the accomplishments because there's there's more going on in communications than than folks realize. And I do like the idea of expanding reach through um photos and videos because there's so many great things that happen in the town and people don't know or if they see an event and they don't know what it

If there's some visuals and some clips and things that um engage the residents of Webster, it'll drive more participation to some of the many many great events that are offered through town. I know parks and recreations, the big summer celebration that just grows every single year. That's a fabulous event. And there's more that's going to happen. I know very important with the revaluation project and the first community event was a real success. We have a couple years and a lot more educating to do. So those things are going to be very important.

Absolutely. Thank you, Councilwoman. Right.

So we we hire an outside entity to do our website design and maintenance. I I thought we were doing that inhouse. We do the maintenance of it inhouse but um to host the site that's what the cost the con contractual cost is um we are

says maintenance here.

Yeah. So that is like super backend maintenance. So I we meet with like a client um success manager several times a year um and that's part of our um our redesign costs. and and this is just um paying for that redesign that we had.

So is this an annual cost I take it for website design and maintenance or is it just when they do something different we pay them.

So it is a and correct me if I'm wrong Paul but I it is a fiveyear cost that's split among five years.

I think that's correct. So, our redesign was done in 2023 and um that redesign covers five years.

Okay. And your administrative salaries for 2025 was 40,000. Then it jumped to 62,000 for 2026. And that was where you were saying.

Yes. So, what was put in there last year was a placeholder that was determined um between the supervisor's office, myself, and um personnel. Um that test was administered back in November of 2024. Um test results did not come back until April. And in that time um we were working on um with New York State determining where this job compares as far as duties, scope, and qualifications to other similar jobs. Um and that's where the pay scale was determined from there based on civil service.

So that's a full-time position, I say.

That's a full-time position. Yes, it's a communications assistant position.

And it's a civil service,

correct?

Okay. And we approved for the civil service position. So what the process was was that the test was administered in November of last year. We received the list in April of this year. Um Brighten Canvas the list of qual reachable um uh exam takers. Um we received that back only received interest from two people based on civil service law. Um being that um neither of those applicants stood out as the correct fit for us, um we we canvased um or we put out the position provisionally. We received back several applications, held um interviews, and ultimately determined or ultimately chose um the our candidate who starts on Monday. What what's the uh the civil service test the title for that test?

Uh communications assistant.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you.

Just one question. Um anyway, I wanted to thank you. I know you do a wonderful job and everything, but to have have we well we already passed the thing, but this is maybe a redundant like having a freelance or a contractor to or something like that because I know that we cut down the personnel I mean the part-time personnel which is great but we add on this posision which is going to be you know um pensions and everything else and stuff like that. So it's going to add on more for the you know the the rep the the expense

certainly and and this is not a new position. And it was in the communications budget last year, certainly at a lower amount. And it was also budgeted and approved in 2023 in the cable budget because I know like out of town they only have like one, you know, person to do the position. And I know this is a lot. It come from a marketing p perspective. I I got it. I understand. And you have to promote our town, which

I I appreciate that very much. Actually, several um towns do have a communications assistant. The town of Arandoquite does, the town of Parenton does, um the town of Penfield has similar roles that that um perform similar functions, and I believe the town of Greece also does. So, towns of the scale of our size do have

have two or more um folks.

Are they all full-time positions, the assistants?

Yes. We're running into some benchmarking problems right now because I should have had the foresight to do this on this presentation that you really got to look at the cable department uh that was here or what was called the cable department um for 2021 22 all the way across and because you got communications here on the actuals of Z00 whatever because we didn't have a

Yeah, it was $17,000 in 2020 for communications or the cable access was.

Yeah. And I would imagine we'd have to go back in time to look at the previous ones because there was actual in communications of 77,000. Was there actual in cable as you're saying?

No.

Cable

communications actual in 2024 was 77,000.

Right. cable access in 2024 was 107,000.

Okay, I'll take your word for it that so we had whatever. How many positions were in cable and then authorized to be increased in cable for full-time and part-time then as you had this kind of cable and communications that was approved in the 24 budget um which was done in mid 23 and then all of a sudden at the end of 23 when you were hired and we started staffing communications and we had a cable department within a week or two of that our cable director um had a opportunity to to leave and we decided not to replace with that full-time equivalent cable director and started to migrate everything over to communications. And I don't know if this tells the story because it it it you can sit here and say, geez, it looks like we're increasing our full-time equivalent and all that. I don't know really if we are uh compared to what was lobbyed and approved back in 22 and 23 by the cable

director for what essentially is and and another benchmark marking problem is that Penfield has a cable person who is doing communications this and that. So, it's it's it's kind of a semantic issue like how do you compare towns our size for what are they investing in communications and define communications? Well, this person handles the website. Well, I think that's communications. Well, we have that in it, which we found out from a couple people at the March 27th symposium. If that's what they want to do, that's what they want to do. I don't think a website is it. I think that should be communications, but my town. So, we we have had challenges on comparing apples to oranges uh or apples to apples on our communications department. I do know this uh and Luke, hey, I hope he's watching. He starts on on uh on Monday, right? We're pretty high on this guy. Um comes very highly recommended. Um has done this for the county. Uh we think we have just stockpiled talent on that. But I think that uh you were surprised as was Brighton

that once you got the test results back and you saw all this and when you started to really look at what that position pays we had as a placeholder for the 25 budget which we were doing in mid 24. We were off on that. There's no other way to explain that. Now the good news is is that uh in 25 we had it as uh 40 grand. We haven't spent a dime in 25. So I guess look at the bright side of that. Luke is starting with five months left. So we'll stay under that budget. If you want to say from a financial standpoint, the bad news is we're we're up in next year's uh by 22,000 over what we budgeted. I would like to think that based on how these projects and what we want to do and man, we're like Luke can't get here fast enough. This is a $ 51 million organization that's got 400 employees and 45,000 customers. And I got to tell you something, I don't think it's possible to to appropriately handle communications and maximize that with one person. That's just my opinion. And and how you then do it with outsourced firms and this and that. Yeah, that's that's a whole another kettle of fish. uh as far as I'm

concerned on how to do that. So um but anyway and um I do want to just tie into something that in as we tie up today's meeting um certainly if anybody has more questions or comments for uh um Bridget I want them to have them. But something you said Jenny about well you know it's all I I forget what you said but it's already approved and whatever. I want to make sure I go back to my preamble. Nothing's approved.

We approved the 40,000 like you said.

We did approve the 40,000 for

Yeah. But we did not

for the 62,000.

Yeah. The 5,000 on the part-time personnel I don't want to Let's put it this way. Uh on on November 1st, 2024, that young lady over there all of a sudden I had to go and say, "Hey, remember that job we hired you for three days ago? Hate to tell you this, but you now have to do these three closeouts of the cable department. You have to close out that building that's 2100 square feet over there on Picture Parkway. That was not under your uh job duties when we hired you. You have to figure out this uh system within the boardroom uh as far as uh microphones and cameras and YouTube and all that. And uh the third one is um cable 1303. Those things were all set up when we got a communications director to be in the cable department. Um, they were not to be in the communications department. So, um, I could make an argument that really for almost a year, almost more than a year, you were you were performing cable department uh, closeout things and I

appreciate that. Um, but it's now time for us to really ramp up this communication department and uh and do what I know it can do. And I've already seen some of the results. And I think that one that you described, the monthly newsletter, we can sit there and say, "I don't like the content. I like the old one that was weekly. It was better. It had more things." We That's subjective. That's subjective. And I'll and I'll open my mind to any subjective opinions because that's what it is. But what is irrefutably objective is that the people that were getting that weekly newsletter uh prior to 25 uh prior to 20 in in 24 and beyond. The people that were opening that and hitting the links were very minor. Very minor. It was almost as though a tree was falling in the woods and nobody was there to hear it. Her keeping track of the 7 2% open rate because we do it through constant contact so we can see who opens it and then we can see who hits the links because the way it's formatted it's just got a brief description but if you're like oh I'm interested in that story

then you hit the link and as she said earlier I've been thrilled that we have been able to maintain those type of high numbers that blow away by double what governments uh usually get to open their emails and hit their links. We didn't have that kind of granularity back when we sent out weekly newsletters. That's just a fact. There's no subjectivity to that. That's an objective fact. And now what she didn't tell you is that I had said at the beginning of this year, oh great, you're achieving these results with,200 email addresses from our citizens. Now we know there's 15,000 houses. 1,200 houses are represented. How do we by the end of the year get that up to 2,000 houses. And so we came up with a plan where Kim Doyle, myself, and Bridget, we would come through with the 100 new email addresses a month and we would drop them in. You're about to drop another 100 into August, right? Which will get you to around 1600 email addresses where we started the year at around 11 or,200. And what we assumed was going to happen was that because these people didn't sign up for the newsletter, these are ones that based on our interaction with them over the last

week or month and we got their email address. Put them in there. Let's see what happens. There's a part at the bottom that says unsubscribe. We assume those new ones over the last couple months would be less likely to open it or hit the links and it's been the exact opposite. Is that correct?

Yeah. I mean, I think in general, not to refute what you're saying, open rates among those new ads because we're able to segment those results is slightly lower, but overall we're maintaining that high open rate. Um, I will also add that we've reached quite a bit of organic um sign up through landing pages and through our website signup page. So, um, in the past month, I think we've seen a growth about nearly a hundred people have signed up on their own.

And I will say this, and all right, and we're, you can tell I love communications. Um, the town board will get my weekly update tomorrow. I've already got the uh, comp plan done uh, on it. As far as I think everybody knows that back on June 12th, Kers and our planning department had the steering committee second meeting I think here in this room. Correct.

And at that time they reported that the Webster 2040.com website where we were getting surveys and also interactive people putting a dot and giving a narrative of what they wanted on that uh website. We had 219 surveys filled out on June 12th and we had 173 people that put a dot with a narrative. And the plan was that we were going to have that open from April 22nd, which is when we had our first public engagement meeting over at the rec center to June 15th. But I think everybody said that's not enough. That's not enough public engagement to really gauge what this town wants. So we sat down with Collers. Bridget was very much involved this and we said look we want you to keep that open past June 15th. We want it to July 31st, July 30th. Now, if that 45day extension is going to cause a problem with your schedule of this year and a half uh uh you know, updating the comprehensive plan, let's get that out right now because I would rather us throw everything but the kitchen sink at trying to get people to fill out these surveys. Now, at that time, Kers

basically looked and said, "Well, this is what we do. This is what you do." Bridget said, "You know what? This is what we can do. We can do this this this this from our communication department. It's closed out yesterday. Yesterday was the last day. We had 219 surveys on June 12th. We ended with 837 surveys. We quadrupled it in the last 45 days. And nothing against CERS, but that was the effort of the town communication and the Chris Bo and the library and all everybody that jumped in. On June 12th, we had 173 dots on the map on Webster 2040. 173 with a narrative written in what they want. We ended yesterday with 683. We quadrupled the surveys and quadrupled the narratives in 45 days. Collars even said, "We didn't think we thought you were kind of crazy, Tom, that you wanted to keep this open for 45 days." In their response, they said, "This is unbelievable. We have never had this kind of participation leading in uh to a comprehensive plan update." Now, they're going to have their next steering committee update meeting sometime in late August or early September. And Jennifer, you're on that steering

committee. They will have a lot more to show you than they did on June 12th because that's a lot more people. And I want to say this again, this is no disrespect to Collars. there was the scope of what they do. They didn't do anything outside of that scope, which they shouldn't. Our communications department and other departments here jumped in and that's how we got those results. I'm going to tell you, communications is uber uber important. Lips flap. How do we reconcile lips flapping about it being important with the actions and investment we take in communications going into the future? So, I will get off my soap box. Any other questions or comments for Bridget?

No.

All right. Well, gang, thank you. That concludes our first

town board budget workshop for the 2026 proposed budget. Have a good night everybody.