Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Healthy Wealth Experience - Where Financial Success Meets Personal Wellbeing
Host Chris Hall combines 30+ years in finance with wellness expertise to help entrepreneurs and professionals build wealth without sacrificing their health. From investment strategies to money management, we offer advice to make financial success more sustainable.
New episodes every week
📈 Market Analysis with a Wellness Twist
💪 Entrepreneur Health & Wealth Stories
🎯 Practical Money + Mindset Strategies
Join 323K+ people transforming their relationship with money and health.
Why haven't we been given enough information? What are you trying to hide? What are you trying to prevent us from understanding? Why can't you give us actuals? Why are staff reports for a budget workshop one page long or, you know, one tiny little box of information and not the full report.
Tenessa Audette:I can't pass your budget if you I can't give you your loan if you haven't documented any of these things, And that's where we're at. For some reason, the rest of the council has said, no. We just trust them, and we don't need to see the documents, and it'll be fine. And I'm like, no. 100% we need to see the documents.
Chris Hall:Welcome to the Healthy Wealth podcast. I'm Chris Hall, your host, and I have the special guest today for a special meeting today. We have, Tanesa Odette. And for those of you who have been sort of following along or maybe you haven't been following along, there is a lot of questions, about the current city ready budget. And Tanesa has been sort of the lone wolf on this, trying to search and find out what is really going on behind the scenes.
Chris Hall:And it looks like she's kinda standing up there on the branch all by herself, so I wanted to give her an opportunity to make her case. And, of course, if this increases discussion level on this, that's what I'm trying to do. I am not, political in this aspect at all, but I do care about my community. And I feel like when I see someone whose voice is getting stifled, I wanna make sure I give them opportunity to to use their voice. So, Vanessa, thank you so much for being on the show.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Chris Hall:Of course. Of course. So first and foremost, this is, this has been going on for a little while now. Tell us a little bit about, like, how long you've been on city council and, like, when you first started noticing discrepancies in actuals versus, you know, potentials and things like that. Give us give us an idea on how long this has been going for you.
Tenessa Audette:So I've been on the council for about two and a half years. And in that two and a half years, I have sat with three different iterations of a council. So there really has been a lot of turnover. I came into office. We had the five, one person then quit maybe a year later.
Tenessa Audette:So we got a new person for a short amount of time, maybe five months before the election. And then that election put in an a different person. Actually, a few different people. So now this is my third iteration of a council that I've had. And so, you know, business sort of continues to go and people kind of come into the story at different times, and there really isn't much of a catch up.
Tenessa Audette:You're just kind of thrust into these situations. So there can be issues that we've been talking about for I mean, there's issues that we've been talk I've been on the council. I've had five or six meetings about, and they come in in one meeting and change everything as they can because it's a new group and whatever that majority wants to do. So when it comes to this budget, you have people that have been on for maybe two, three months when we start two months when we start doing the budget workshop. So they are fresh in.
Tenessa Audette:They're two months in. And as we did this through January, March, May, and June, which were the different meeting months that we had, I would say it was the second meeting where all the red flags went off for me. It was on March 13, which just happens to me my my birthday, so I will never forget. But we're in a budget workshop, and and previously, we had been told since because, again so I came on in December '22. So my first budget workshop began, I think, maybe February '23, and we were building this two year budget right when I came on.
Tenessa Audette:So I was in the same boat that these people were are in now. And largely, you're just being told everything because, you know, it's not like you're up there with calculators checking their you know what I mean? You just assume these people you know? I have the same thoughts that the rest of the public does. Like, why in the world would people not be totally honest and transparent about numbers you can find out?
Tenessa Audette:You could you could check that. That just seems so silly to me to think that they would be lying about it and or miscalculating or whatever. And so I was largely given that information and, you know, it's like, okay. This is what we wanna do. We're gonna do two and a half percent on whatever.
Tenessa Audette:You're like, what do you think? And you're like, well, you haven't given me any history. You haven't given me any comparables. You haven't given like, you're and I'm looking around, you know, like, are we all I I have no idea, like, if this is okay or not okay. And and so you only you don't get the full budget document.
Tenessa Audette:Like, imagine this is the this is the the binder. Right? It's 300 pages. Well, you don't get that until you're gonna vote on it. I I got that binder a week before we voted.
Tenessa Audette:I had not seen any of those numbers a week before we voted. I had not gotten any actuals. You know? So my time
Chris Hall:Have gotten actuals yet? Because I know in the last meeting that I watched, you still hadn't gotten any true actuals.
Tenessa Audette:This is the actuals for 2324. Has actuals in it. They don't have actuals in that, not the line item. So, basically, what happened I'm sorry. I'm gonna jump I'm jumping around.
Tenessa Audette:So if I have not if I go off course, it'll let me know. There's so much information up here. To land the plane of the first thing that you had said was, when did you notice something was wrong? I noticed something was wrong on March 13, and I noticed it because the narrative changed. So largely, imagine this, you're on this crazy new journey of being responsible for a city and its budgets and, you know, all the things that a city council person is now oversight over that you previously really have no idea how the inner workings are going.
Tenessa Audette:So you get there, and you're given very much an overview, not details. And so the overview is fine, but the reports that you get every quarter should give you those details so that you're tracking how far are we, like, from budget to actuals. Like, how are we doing? And if you notice in the financial documents that something is off, you could then ask the question like, hey. It looks like looks like we're at, like, 50% of budget in the first quarter on this.
Tenessa Audette:Is that because we're front like, this is how you learn, is that you you notice anomalies, and you can bring that to their to to their attention, and they can give you that information because they themselves are dealing with thousands of data points. So it's like, how do you decide which ones matter that you have to present? That allows all of us to look and to find things that maybe we don't understand, and we can ask questions. Well, that stopped happening in 2324. And I was new coming on.
Tenessa Audette:And maybe six months in, you get your September report for '23. You get the report. It has couple of pages of staff report, and then it has attachments. That first one in '23, I didn't get those attachments. They were online.
Tenessa Audette:And so I didn't have a barometer of, like, oh, this is what you should get, shouldn't get. They had already stopped attaching to the staff reports those attachments when they print them for the council to look at. Like, because I I need paper. I can look at it online, but I I need paper to flip back and forth to compare to. So when we get fast forward two years to this budget and in March, and I'm largely going off of what they've told us, And what they're telling us is not the same thing they've been telling us.
Tenessa Audette:They told us we had a $5,000,000 deficit, and the city manager says and I say, hey. We made cuts in January. We we're at our 5,000,000. Why would we be cutting more cops? Why are we cutting more budget?
Tenessa Audette:Well, I don't understand. And he's like, well, it's actually closer to 8,000,000, the deficit. And that and, you know, that is alarming. But and I I have I would have no idea to know if that's true or not true. But I wrote it down, and I was like, I need to go look at that and see what that is.
Tenessa Audette:And when I went to go look to see how in the world are we over 8,000,000, I realized I don't actually have any details in these reports. So I went to the finance director and it's like, where are you getting these numbers? Like, what what is this? Where does this come from?
Chris Hall:What's the name of the finance director?
Tenessa Audette:Greg Robinette.
Chris Hall:Okay. That's that's what I thought. And Barry Tippin is our city manager for the
Tenessa Audette:world of Yeah. So I'm looking and so, basically, long very long, lot of detail short. When I compared it to the past year's reports, I realized, oh, we've not had these reports for years. We've not been giving these reports. Then in in the conversation with finance director, he was like, things are way worse than you realize.
Tenessa Audette:You should go watch, you know, this September video, which was worse because I watch it and I say, how are we paying for They're asking us to to to pay for the past years, like, to add to the budget and for the current year because we're short from our budget even though they're also telling us that in the same breath that we are $26,000,000 below our expenditures. So it was it was confusing. And in that meeting, which I have on the report, I I linked to that meeting, I say, how are we paying for this money that you're asking for $5,000,000? How are we paying for that? And they say I they give me some weird answer, and I say, is it reserves?
Tenessa Audette:Are we paying with reserves? And they're like, no. No. No. No.
Tenessa Audette:That's the answer. The answer is no. No. No. No.
Tenessa Audette:No. I'll let the city manager answer. And the city manager's answer was, well, maybe, like, 2,000,000. But that decision that day took $7,200,000 out of reserves. That took us from we're gonna end the year at 18,000,000 in reserves to we're gonna end the year at 7,900,000.0 in reserves.
Tenessa Audette:And that was not stated. It was not clear, and it's not in the paperwork that they provided to us. There is a ten year plan that was not that's an attachment that was not attached, and it was not discussed in that meeting. Like, do you understand the implications of what you're doing? They kept saying, we're gonna fix it with budget savings in the next budget in the next budget.
Tenessa Audette:And I'm in that next budget going, like, 8,000,000? Wait a minute. You told us you know? I mean, the most I could get you is 5 because of the 3.8 we started with with this extra 2. And you're like, how are we getting there?
Tenessa Audette:So, overall, the issue is we've not been given enough information. Why haven't we been given enough information? What are you trying to hide? What are you trying to prevent us from understanding? Why can't you give us actuals?
Tenessa Audette:Why are staff reports for a budget workshop one page long or, you know, one tiny little box of information and not the full report. So we've just not been getting the information and and between March and the budget passing in June. I had just said I mean, I suspected a million things. But if I can't prove them, I'm not gonna accuse them. I'm just like, hey.
Tenessa Audette:We need more information. We can't make this decision without that information. I need this information. You know what I mean? Like, if you're gonna give somebody a loan on a house, you're like, KK, I believe everything you're saying, but you actually have show me the bank account.
Tenessa Audette:You have to show me the proof that you have a job. I need the pay stub. And if they're like, no. No. No.
Tenessa Audette:You don't need that. You don't need that. You don't need that. At some point, the rubber hits the road. And you're like, no.
Tenessa Audette:No. I can't pass your budget if you I can't give you your loan if you haven't documented any of these things. And that's where we're at. For some reason, the rest of the council has said, no. We just trust them, and we don't need to see the documents, and it'll be fine.
Tenessa Audette:And I'm like, no. 100% we need to see the documents.
Chris Hall:Yeah. I'm a big fan of trust but verify.
Tenessa Audette:Of course.
Chris Hall:Mean, like, you don't you don't I mean, even if you there's an old saying, you know, like, trust your friends, but cut the deck anyway. You know, like, even if you're playing cards with your friends at home, like, you still cut the deck because you never know when you walked away to the bathroom if they stack the deck against you just for I mean, if they were doing this for fun, but, like, this idea that because, you know, these people this is their job full time, but that we don't get in the way of it. It's like, no. No. That's your mandate.
Chris Hall:That's what you're actually there to do. So which actually kinda makes me wonder, like, again, like, what is the goal of city council if you can't, a, check back against the people that are giving you this information? Like and, b, if you don't, like, have any recourse to to, like, get that. Like, so in other words, like, you asked for something in March, but they waited three months to give it to you, and they gave it to you less than twenty four hours before the vote. And they and instead of giving you what you wanted, they gave you seven documents that you didn't want
Tenessa Audette:Yeah.
Chris Hall:So that they can bury you in paperwork. I mean, you know, how many pages did you get on on the day before the budget budget meeting?
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. So that so here so on that May 6 meeting so we had the March meeting, and then they canceled the April meeting, which was crazy because, like, I had all these push I was coming in there every day into the offices like, wait. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. You know, I'm in I'm in the finance director's office.
Tenessa Audette:I'm I'm in the clerk's office printing off reports and printing reports and trying to find like, I'm there for hours every day. I'm going to different directors asking them for their budgets. Like, wait. Something is off here because the audit said that our police budget was $52,000,000. My budget says it's $42,000,000.
Tenessa Audette:The staff report says that it's 49, but we only spent 45. I'm like, these are all different numbers. Like, well, what's true? And so you're I'm trying to get answers, and and then they canceled the April budget meeting. So then you get to May, and I am you know, I'm there every day asking and asking and talking to the financial.
Tenessa Audette:I'm pulling audit books and budget books, and I'm I'm I'm like, walk me through the staff report. Make this make sense to me. I don't understand. What what do these things mean? And there's just very little answer if at all.
Tenessa Audette:It'll be like, well, I mean, somebody at Dequisto asked us to put that in there. You know, stuff like that. And you're like, well, that can't be true. This was used to be on it as well in the past, so I had to go back to old reports to make sure that it wasn't a new request. It was no.
Tenessa Audette:No. This is always on there, so it has to have a purpose. And so it was just very frustrating. And so when the what the finance director said was, well, ask me for that report in an item 12, and then I'll give it to you in the for the May 6 meeting. So I did that.
Tenessa Audette:And I said,
Chris Hall:can I
Tenessa Audette:12? And in item 12, I said, can I just get this one piece of paper? Because the rest of the council was doing what Barry told them to do, which was you have everything you need. She's making it up. You don't really need it.
Tenessa Audette:She's just trying to be difficult. You know? Just just ignore her. Just just don't go along with her. She's she's trying to cause problems.
Tenessa Audette:And For
Chris Hall:those that don't know, what is an item 12?
Tenessa Audette:An okay. So an item 12 is the opportunity for the city council to put something on the agenda. So the agenda is largely run by staff and city manager well, by the city manager. And so the city manager decide what what's goes on the agenda. The mayor can ask for things to go on the agenda.
Tenessa Audette:And and if it's legal to do that, you can. A lot of times, when I was the mayor, I was told, you can put that in an item 12 and see if the rest of the council wants to do it. And so I would have to come to the come and try to ask for that in an item 12. So the so in that item 12, I basically have to get consensus from two other council members that want to do what it is that I'm asking so that it gets put on the agenda for a future date.
Chris Hall:Right.
Tenessa Audette:Can't discuss it. You can't discuss it till it gets to that future agenda. So so I did. I asked for a nine time. I'm like, can I get these reports?
Tenessa Audette:And they were like, no. No. No. And the and the council's like, you already you don't need them. You don't need them.
Tenessa Audette:And I'm like, okay. Can I get one? Can I just get one report on expenditures? Like, because on the staff reports, it looked like so the budget that I passed was a 108,000,000 in expenditures. Well, it looks like the budget that I the if you looked at the staff reports, the it would tell us, like, this is how much you've spent summary.
Tenessa Audette:Like, so it's one number. In the in the report, it would be, like, 30 different items. And then you would know by category, like, if operations was over budget or if it's personnel that's over budget or if you know, which part of personnel? Is it administration? Is it field?
Tenessa Audette:Like, you know, you can itemize which areas and how far they are over budget. But you could also see if there's a grant involved. So are we over budget, but it's for grants? Are we over budget what we had budgeted? All of that is in those actual information.
Tenessa Audette:What they give us in the staff report now is literally, like, one box that says, police budget, you know, 49,000,000 spent 45. And you're like, on what? On on which part? And how much of that is is a grant and how you know, you don't know anymore because they don't give it to you. And so I said, can I just get the expenditures?
Tenessa Audette:Because I cannot make sense of what they're making the budget is not the budget I pass, and I don't understand. So I did that in I m 12. They agreed for one of the pages. So there's, like, four reports. They agreed to give me one of those reports, which is one page.
Tenessa Audette:And so at the May 20 meeting, the night before, I got I got sent it. I didn't see it till the next day, and the meeting was, like, at 02:00. So I didn't see it till the next day. And so I didn't have time to, like, go through the whole thing or vet it or look through it. But I did see that our carryovers were, like, $31,000,000 of carryovers.
Tenessa Audette:So my budget's $1.00 8. They're basically adding $31,000,000. So every time they tell me that the budget is under by 26,000,000, that doesn't mean anything because that could purely be carryovers. So it it was kinda it filled in a few gaps, but not enough. And the rest of the council just that didn't seem to be an issue for them.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. Which is crazy because, like, at any point, in the March 13 meeting, if they had if the rest of the council or two more had said, no. I don't wanna lose three more cops, I never would have gone down this road because we would have saved the cops. I that was the only issue that I could see is like, well, that doesn't make sense. We cut nine.
Tenessa Audette:Why would we need to cut more? We cut the grant funding, which would which is the future spending that we're trying to avoid. But why would we cut new spending? I mean, that didn't make sense to me because, basically, they had told us the deficit was if we continue the spending that we were using grants to pay for into the future, then we would have a deficit. But, of course, that wasn't true either.
Tenessa Audette:So I so yeah. Okay. So so May, I get that May 20, I get those expenditures. I'm just like, you gotta be kidding. But the other reports that were there were the was from the audit.
Tenessa Audette:It was one page of the audit which had, like, four columns. And they just separated the columns and made them into their own reports. And so it was like I got one good one, and then I got these other four reports that or other three reports that were just from the the audit, which I already had. So that was like once I had to, like, figure out what are these, like so there just wasn't enough time to really vet the one because they filled me with these other ones that I was like, what is this from, and where and what would be the value of this? You know?
Tenessa Audette:So that was very frustrating.
Chris Hall:So so in that meeting, you know, it felt, and I and I saw your interview with Mike magnet Mike Mangus. I've known him for years. He's a great newscaster. And I saw your, you know, twelve, fifteen minutes with him, and it it seems like they're just shutting you down at this point. Like, when I watched the budget meeting that I watched, it was like you kept asking questions, and it felt like not only did they not wanna talk about it, you know, mayor Munns was pretty clear about, like, hey.
Chris Hall:We're moving on. Hey. We're moving on. Hey. We're moving on.
Chris Hall:Hey. We've already voted on it. Hey. We've already voted on it. Like, he definitely didn't wanna have a discussion about it.
Chris Hall:And I get there's rules and protocols, but, like, even before you started to speak, they were trying to get a vote on it. And you were like, hey. Can I talk? You know? And and they didn't want you to talk.
Chris Hall:And that was the thing that bothered me the most was like, hey. You know, Tanesa has been voted in for this position by her people. Her people she's representing her people. She's not representing Barry Tippen. She's not representing the, you know, the huge salaries of this administrative building that's going on right now.
Chris Hall:She's representing people. She wants to know where the money's being spent. And to me, it's like, I'm a business owner. Right? And so so if if you came up to me at the end of the year and you're like, hey.
Chris Hall:Listen. I need $16,000 from you. And and I go, what for? And you go, for stuff. You know?
Chris Hall:It's like, that's the that's not right. No one would do that. No one would do that. So except the only thing is it's not 16,000. It's 16,000,000.
Chris Hall:It's not 30,000. It's it's 30,000,000. Yeah. And and, you know, to me, it's like, I don't understand how how we operate in a system where you can ask somebody for something and then they don't give it to you and they don't give it to you and they don't give it to you. And then they do give it to you, but they give it to you with such malintent in my opinion.
Chris Hall:I mean, that's that's just my opinion.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah.
Chris Hall:But, like, it it's a conversation that I had, which is basically, like, if somebody calls you and says, hey, listen. I'm I'm getting married tomorrow. Do you wanna come to it? Like, you were never invited to that wedding to begin with.
Tenessa Audette:Right. You know I mean?
Chris Hall:You were you were an afterthought and they thought, oh, crud. I gotta do something. That's the same as giving somebody a whole bunch of stuff, including something they didn't ask for Right. At 4PM the day before a vote. Yeah.
Chris Hall:But they're just gonna it's it's it's the whole lawyer trick of, like, let's give her everything, and then it'll take her seventeen years to get through it. Yeah. So to me, if anything else, it feels like there's definitely smoke. Right? And it's like, so where is the fire?
Chris Hall:And so I guess what I would say is you seem to be the only one advocating for this. I have my I have my own 2¢ on this, and I'll and I'll just share it. I I feel very confident in the fact that the reason that we're going to an aggregate number and the reason we are not getting, more detailed information is because over at the time, last time I checked, over 32% of our budget was going to funding pensions. And I feel like that number's probably half now. Just without without I mean, I have no information.
Chris Hall:I'm just saying it's probably half right now, which is why police is police, not police active and police pension. You know, fire is just fire. It's not fire active and fire pension because this is all, in my opinion, part of a way to get people's focus off of things that, you know, we really should be focusing on. We should be focusing on, like, we've got a lot of people on pension, and people are living to 90 years old. You know, pensions used to be something you retire at 62, you die to 65.
Chris Hall:You know? Now we've got people who are retiring at 55, and they're living at 90. And then we're paying them 90% of their salary for the next forty years, plus we gotta pay the person who replaces them that same amount of salary and the person who replaces them and the person who replaces them. Like, at some point, this is gonna fail. Right?
Chris Hall:We talked about it. There's a website you can go to. It's called Pension Tsunami. And so to me, I feel like this is like, hey. Let's get all the numbers aggregated so that no one wants to give up police.
Chris Hall:Right? We all want our police officers. No one wants to give up firefighters. We don't wanna do that. You know, we don't want that as a community.
Chris Hall:So let's aggregate it so that we can, you know, convince people that's what we're doing. And, oh, by the way, let's ask for a sales tax increase. So the sales tax increase has always been has been denied the last couple times by the voters, and the most vocal part of that has been, we don't wanna pay for all this pension debt. You know, we don't, as community, don't wanna pay for that, especially when we're driving around our roads that suck. You know what I mean?
Chris Hall:So that's what we're worried about. But so by aggregating it, by getting the granular data out and aggregating, I feel like that's a ploy to keep it at a 30,000 foot view where, hey. We just need a little bit more money for fire and police. Well, of course, who's gonna say no to that? Right.
Chris Hall:You know what I mean? Yeah. So those are my thoughts. What are your thoughts on, like, how how we can, you know, bring more light to this moving forward? Like, what are the next steps?
Chris Hall:Because at this point, the budget's been approved. Correct?
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. I mean, that this budget is not accurate. So at its at its very basic, just the numbers are inaccurate. So we are way below our 10%. I I have been working on this for a while and trying to explain it to people, and it's like so many numbers, people's, like, eyes roll to the back
Chris Hall:of their head. Totally.
Tenessa Audette:And, like, I'm in it all day, every day, you know, ten hours a day, checking my numbers, creating you know, like, I've been really immersed in it. And even I have a hard time articulating it in a way that I think you know, obviously. But I put out the 150 pages because if I had put out five, nobody would believe me. And but I put out a 150 pages, and, also, nobody wants to read a 150 pages. Okay.
Tenessa Audette:So so we have that going on. So I'm going to go chapter by chapter. I've reorganized it. I got feet I put it out there. I got feedback.
Tenessa Audette:And so I'm going to I reorganized it. I'll put out a new version today. I'm I I'm I'm I'm reorganizing. And then, also, I'm gonna start doing cliff notes on on each of the chapters. So meaning, like, sort of just the meatiest part of it and and sort of spell it out.
Tenessa Audette:And so the budget one should be up today, and people can look at sort of, and I'll probably post it online too. Just sort of look at why are the numbers wrong. Like, it's not, oh, I don't like your forecast. It's, you know, we voted on this. You did not do it the way you're supposed to do the numbers wrong.
Tenessa Audette:Here's what if you correct that number, here's what it is. Or or we have this amount of money. You you said in the in this book, on this page, you said this much is there. But when you look at the aggregate on this page, it's not the same amount. And so if you correct the ten year plan, we're far below than where we're supposed to be.
Tenessa Audette:And I think the purpose of that so I would be doing this no matter what. I don't care if there's a sales tax or no sales tax. The fact is is my job is to hold them accountable, to know what's going on financially, and to be able to properly forecast and to like, if you think that people are not still asking for raises, you would be wrong. That is still going on. People are still in a good and all those MOUs, all those those those work agreements, all those contracts are all coming up in '25 and '26.
Tenessa Audette:And everybody's saying, like, well, then give us a cost of living increase. Give us you know what I mean? So we have these these massive increase of raises, and they're continuing to ask for them, asking for more. So it matters that the council knows, like, the exact financial position that we're in. But I believe that the reason that they're not sounding the alarm is because I think that they feel like if the public thinks they haven't managed their money well, they won't give them the sales tax.
Chris Hall:Mhmm.
Tenessa Audette:And That's right. I think that's position is
Chris Hall:actually been said out loud by numerous folks.
Tenessa Audette:Right. And so my position is house give the public some respect and just tell them what it is so that they at least understand and can, eyes wide open, make that decision. You know? So it's like if you if so pension obligation this year is $30,000,000. That's what we're paying in pension obligations this year.
Tenessa Audette:It's 30,000,000. And so we had to write that check. We prepay it and then we pay back ourselves. But REU couldn't even afford to do the whole amount. We had to split it up.
Tenessa Audette:So the utilities are also prepaying that as well as our use. We've had to split it up because it's just such a huge amount.
Chris Hall:When when you say pension obligations, you're talking about current obligations, not what the city funds in past obligations. In other words, like, you're talking about what it takes to fund, like, a working person's pension for him this him or her this year.
Tenessa Audette:The You're not talking about you're not talking about, like,
Chris Hall:all the people who have been retired.
Tenessa Audette:You can I can I'll find out the answer to that, but we have a payment that we have to make for pensions? I'm include I'm assuming it's that's everything. It's the payment we make to CalPERS, and then it will it we prepay it so that we pay the interest to ourselves, not to the state. And so we prepay that. So I'm just saying that the payment this year
Chris Hall:Yeah.
Tenessa Audette:Is about $30,000,000. That's what that's the payment for this year. Now if you go into the budget books, it'll show you, like, what you pay what what what the full unfunded pension liability is. And I know that since 2021, that amount has gone up $36,000,000 Mhmm. Since 2021.
Tenessa Audette:It dipped in 2022, but that's because they had, like, a good return that year. So the cities didn't have to pay as much, but it was just an anomaly. It's back it it bounced right back right after. So I'm I'm kinda taking that number out and just going from '21 to to now. So, yeah, those obligations are gonna continue, but I'm pretty sure that that payment would would be everything.
Tenessa Audette:I don't know why it would be separate. I think it's that's just the obligation of the city to pay. And you're exactly right. Like, people say I've heard so many people complain about Mike Warren because he built all this stuff when he was the city manager. But those are assets.
Tenessa Audette:I can sell those. I can sell those assets to make up some, you know what I mean, some of my losses. But but pension obligations, we'll be paying for this for decades. This is an albatross around our necks. Those decisions that happened in January to just leap forward all of these salaries that is gonna be very difficult to ever claw back.
Tenessa Audette:I mean, it's not the staff's fault. You're not gonna turn down a raise. That's management's fault for promising something that we couldn't afford. I mean, they took a huge gamble, and it's it didn't pay off. Like, the revenues didn't come in to fill that void.
Chris Hall:And, again, like so why it it you know, I'm in the private sector.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah.
Chris Hall:And, you know, I work off you know, basically, I work off of, like you know, I work with my clients. I get paid a percentage, you know, that kind of things. But we're aligned. Right? So, like, in other words, I I make less money if if if the market's going poorly, and I make more money if the market's going better.
Chris Hall:You know what mean? Like, I'm aligned with them. With with these kinds of, like, public sector things, like, where where is the alignment? Because what I guess I'm trying to say is, like, we just went through, like, some of the craziest inflationary period that was caused, you know, by over spending during the whole COVID thing. But we're we got this crazy inflationary thing.
Chris Hall:The private sector did not go up 30 to 40%. No. You know what I mean? Like, if you were making $20 an hour, you are not making $26 an hour now. You are making $20 an hour if if you're lucky.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah.
Chris Hall:You know what I mean? You might you might have even lost your job during that moment, and now you're making $19.50. But you're certainly not getting a 30% raise. Why are so many people in the city even like, why is it even written in to our doctrine that we can allow 30% raises, 18% raises, 17% raises? I mean, are you is asking us for you know, they've already been taking increases.
Chris Hall:Right? They've already been taking increases. And now they're saying, hey. We want five more years of increases. Right?
Chris Hall:Yep. So it's it's these are bananas numbers, but they yet they have four assistant directors that are making over $400,000. They have a they have a a a a director that makes almost a half a million dollars. They've got Barry Tippin making almost a half a million dollars. Like, they've got these absorbent salaries.
Chris Hall:And again, like, it's not their fault. Like, shoot. If you're gonna you call me up today and tell me you're gonna offer me $500. Like, I'll take it. Like, I'm not gonna be like, well, I don't know.
Chris Hall:Is that what's best for everybody? Like, no. Of course not. But, like but where does Barry where does a guy like Barry Tippin get off in giving these kind of raises out without any check back from anybody else? Where's the checks and balances in this?
Chris Hall:This is these they can because it's not even about the obligation itself, which is exorbitant. I mean, those are huge raises. Right? It's not about that. It's the obligation future.
Chris Hall:Because, like, not only do we have to pay all those folks, but we have to pay them pensions. And if you've ever dug in in dug into PERS and STIRS, the pensions are great for them
Tenessa Audette:For them.
Chris Hall:For people
Tenessa Audette:to pay them.
Chris Hall:It's terrible. Like, it's terrible. Like, have a guy who's in his fifties who will live forty years and have to pay him 90% of his or her salary. Yeah. Like, those are obligate so every time you give a raise, you're not just giving a raise.
Chris Hall:You're giving a raise forever.
Tenessa Audette:Correct. Yeah. It's very different. But a couple things. One, Barry's salary is 336,000.
Tenessa Audette:It's not 500,000.
Chris Hall:We're all in. He's got
Tenessa Audette:So it's the all in. Right? So it's the benefits package and
Chris Hall:Right. And his like, his pension obligation alone is, like, $75,000. Easy. Like, that's how much goes into his pension every year.
Tenessa Audette:So It's good. Okay.
Chris Hall:I It's good. Okay.
Tenessa Audette:Just to be clear, like, the salary those are all those are total total compensation. It's not salary. So the salary is, like, in the 3 hundreds.
Chris Hall:That's fair.
Tenessa Audette:Which which is it's it is yeah. It's a it's wild. I would say what was the most alarming to me when I was plugging in the numbers, like, putting in the into a spreadsheet, which is not how it's presented to the council, which I will then now require, like, whenever we're talking about like, I I I and now I need to see it because I can't just trust what what I'm being given and and nor just it's it's given to you so piecemeal. And so it's just you don't see the full picture or the past negotiation. So if they had just gotten a raise or what the implications are.
Tenessa Audette:So, I mean, this is the reason why 16, it is illegal for your city manager to negotiate with you in closed session directly because it is so misleading how all these things work. You have to have an impartial negotiator that does it.
Chris Hall:Mhmm.
Tenessa Audette:And he violated that because he negotiated with us in closed session for his last pay raise. And so the the and there's a reason why that law is now on the books because it shouldn't be that way. Mhmm. Okay. So the I have said this many, many times.
Tenessa Audette:So what what what what what is said to me sometimes is, oh, no. You know, that's the utilities. That's the enterprise fund. That's not general fund. The problem with that logic of we can just give all the raises we want to people in the public utilities or REU is that it well, one, that the the executive management is is from the general fund for some of those things.
Tenessa Audette:And so it does hit us at some point that we have to pay for that. Now are there currently programs in the ways things are that that a lot of that is covered? Yes. But all enterprise funds mostly are rate payers. That's still us.
Tenessa Audette:This idea that government is not paid for by the people is insane. Whether it's my state tax dollars or my local tax dollars or my user fees or my rates, it's all our money. Every dime of it is our money. And just because you're taking it from over here and not over here doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for it. But there's just this reckless attitude of, like, well, if it's not the general fund, we can just spend all we want.
Tenessa Audette:Because every single one of those rate pay rate payers, they're all asking for increases. They're all coming back to us. They all told us in the May 20 report, are you gonna be asking for rate increases? Public works is gonna be asking for rate increases. That's four different places on your bill where you're gonna have rate increases next year.
Tenessa Audette:If if the if the council passes those things. Right. So there's still time to close that.
Chris Hall:Do you find that this is basically a workaround for the city? So in other words, what they've done is they said, listen. We can't get a sales tax increase. We can't generate more revenue. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to REU.
Chris Hall:We're gonna get these constant rate raises, and then we're gonna put pile some of that money back into the general fund. Or do you do you think do you believe that all of the money that's going to REU is staying within REU?
Tenessa Audette:So two things. One, I don't think that it's a workaround as much as it's just a consequence to not being fiscally responsible. Having this strange attitude that we can give all the raises we we want to enterprise group, to the utilities, to r u because just remember that that the city manager said, oh, you know what I want? Like, in the September that I when he got the raise when I was there, the last one that he got, he said, I just wanna be paid two and a half percent more than the RU director. Okay.
Tenessa Audette:Like, that seems fair. You wanna be the highest paid person. Like, that's that he's under you. That that seems reasonable. Not knowing exactly that at the same time, he also gave the REU director a raise.
Tenessa Audette:Like, that I didn't understand that was happening either because the the the the sheet they had just gotten a raise. They had just gotten a raise in July. So I would try we were not I was not aware of at the time. And so because I hadn't been there, you know, the whole thing. So it's like, it's just this perfect storm of not of just giving enough information to where it makes sense, but not all the information so you can push back.
Tenessa Audette:And so Right.
Chris Hall:So he pushed the floor up he pushed the floor up by himself
Tenessa Audette:Yes.
Chris Hall:And then asked and then asked this very magnanimous, I just want a slight raise over the floor. Yeah. Just just raise the floor before you had it.
Tenessa Audette:I was unaware that that decision was also going to lift that as well. I mean, you have to understand that between 2021 and 2024, there have been seven raises for executive management. Wow. Or since 2020. I'm sorry.
Tenessa Audette:Since 2020. So many numbers. 2020 to 2024, seven raises for executive management. Seven. Sometimes they would go years with nothing.
Tenessa Audette:And then all of a sudden in a short amount of time. And so there's just there's a there just seems to be this momentum to giving raises and adding personnel into the utilities. And the consequence of that is that you have to pay more for rates because the cost of doing business goes up When you add personnel, when you keep giving them raises, and that's what happens. And I understand the argument as well. We have to get people.
Tenessa Audette:It's like, we have more people than we've had in decades.
Chris Hall:So
Tenessa Audette:we're hiring plenty of people. What you're doing by adding by by by raising, you know, what you're paying them to attract new people, you still can't attract those people because it's California, and we have a hiring shortage. But now you're just paying people more that are already here, and we can't afford it. And so now all the rates have to go up.
Chris Hall:Right. Well and then I noticed it was like this was, like, ten years ago, maybe longer when they were gonna do this first series of let's let hey. We're the we're the cheapest utility in California. We're the best. We're already super low, but we wanna make these substantial, you know, increases to your rates because, you know, we need to hire talented people.
Chris Hall:And I heard that word in the last budget meeting I was watching too. You know, we're trying to attract talented people. Does the city ever weigh out like, I know that they look at, like, hey. This is how we're doing versus Roseville. Right?
Chris Hall:That was a one of those mentioned. I know how we're doing versus Roseville. Okay. Cool. But how are we doing versus how much it costs to live in Roseville?
Chris Hall:Like, in other words, like, we paying the people in Reading the same amount of money as they're paying them in Roseville? Or are we paying them more? Because I can tell you right now, it's a lot cheaper to live in Reading than it is Roseville.
Tenessa Audette:Absolutely. No. I I
Chris Hall:where are we not gonna
Tenessa Audette:be able do
Chris Hall:what I'm saying?
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. I'm fundamentally against this idea of market rate pay. I think it's insane. Because the fact is is that the the public the the private market does not have a guaranteed pension at all. So if you you can't that's the trade off.
Tenessa Audette:Right? Everything's a trade off. If you wanna work in the public sector, right, you're not it's it's not for the super ambitious because, you know, there's you may or may not continue to climb. But the fact is is that it's a steady job. It's not gonna go down, and you have a guaranteed pension.
Tenessa Audette:So Right. Your time works out in the long run. So the idea that we're gonna pay people with the private market and by the way, in in Reading, it's like, we're way above, you know, what executives are making in the private sector in Reading. I mean, it's it's kind of crazy to me because that decision in January '22, it wasn't just a 20 per so think of your pay scale. So for your upper management, for your directors, the the pay scale is, like, let's say it was 95,000 to, like, a 140,000.
Tenessa Audette:So the most you can make as a director is a 140 k with a guaranteed pension.
Chris Hall:Right.
Tenessa Audette:This January 2022 took that 90 to one forty and now made the minimum one fifty. It went up 40%. And then over over the when then they got the next one, and then it went up above. So it's like that in that one fell swoop while they got 18 or 20% increases to the top to the maximum that they could be paid, the bottom went up 40%.
Chris Hall:Yeah.
Tenessa Audette:So now that's a guaranteed raise. So if you were brand new, if you were new director, you got yourself a six you know, within two years, you got yourself a $60,000 raise for doing nothing but being new.
Chris Hall:Right. Right. Right. So how do we how do we I mean, we've we clearly know that there's a problem. Right?
Chris Hall:And whether that means that Barry Tippin, you know, needs to be more forthright with the information or that means that maybe he needs to be held accountable for his actions. What what are the steps next steps for someone like myself who has no idea, like, where to go from here? Like, how do we get this solved so he doesn't continue to do what he's doing? And the city doesn't continue to do what they're doing because they're spend they're gonna spend us into oblivion.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. No. It's
Chris Hall:They're gonna spend us into oblivion, and they're just gonna keep going out. We need more money. We need more money. No. We need you to stop giving 40% raises to people in pensions.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. I think we have a fundamental discrepancy with what the people want as a priority and what city hall thinks is a priority. And there's just a huge disconnect. Yeah. And the way that they get back on track is that your city council says, no.
Tenessa Audette:Here's the boundary lines. No more raises. No more going after more things. You gotta take care of what you have. Because what this what the people in the city are not asking for, they're not asking for roundabouts.
Tenessa Audette:Listen. I love roundabouts. I love them. People don't die in intersections when you have a roundabout. Okay?
Tenessa Audette:Traffic moves faster. But the but the city's like, no. No. No. We want you to fill potholes.
Tenessa Audette:But the city says, yeah. But we want this big project. We wanna do this thing. And so they say they bank their streets money so that they could do matching grants, so they could do big projects. And so they're not doing the everyday pot hole street overlays, that kind of I mean, the gas tax gives us $10,000,000 every year for streets.
Tenessa Audette:We are not utilizing all of that. We are not spending that all. We're sometimes we're banking it. We're keeping it. We're we're we're saving it for this big project or that big project.
Tenessa Audette:But the but the public has said, no. No. No. Fix it right now. But we haven't done that.
Tenessa Audette:So there's a disconnect. So it's like when when they tell me, okay. Well, we're gonna have 30,000,000 or I'm sorry, 30%, which is $9,000,000 more every year. It's like, you're not even spending the 10,000,000 on street overlay. So what that tells me is the city says, we wanna do it our way.
Tenessa Audette:And then if you give us more money, we'll do it your way as well. And I just think that that's ridiculous. We can fix that if the rest of if two more people on the council said, no. You're gonna prioritize what the people say that matters. And your big projects as much as you want them, you those are gonna have to wait until our streets and the potholes are filled.
Tenessa Audette:And once those are filled, then we'll go for these grants for these big things. Right. You can go line by line in the the new order, but but, really, what the public is saying is we want you to prioritize these things, and they're saying, well, we have different ideas of how the government
Chris Hall:We might go
Tenessa Audette:for different ideas of the best way to do that. Because if we go for this grant, then we can pay for this, you know, this administration, and that gives us more money for this. And it's it's very frustrating. I get that the public wants extra. The problem is is that I think we're so upside down because of personnel costs.
Tenessa Audette:You know, they've gone up 35% in the last four or five years. It's out of control what we're paying people and how many people we have. So that to me is, again, the priority of city hall versus the priorities of the people. In my opinion, if I think a better argument is okay, public, because really what drives a lot of this is grants. The the city hall says, but we can get this grant, but we can get that grant.
Tenessa Audette:So I think a better conversation would be, what if we said no more grants for all this new stuff the state wants you to do and all these new priorities that they want you to have and all the injustices that they want you to solve? What if we said Right. No grants? We're just not gonna take your $50.30, $5,060,000,000 dollars in grants every year. We don't want It's
Chris Hall:example, the grants is this is this, like, bike lane thing. Right? Where every everybody's getting a bike lane. The only things that are getting repaid are the ones that have bike lanes.
Tenessa Audette:100%. So if we said, you know what, state? We don't want your grants. City of Reading, you know what we want? We want $60,000,000 to prioritize what you say that you want.
Tenessa Audette:Put a 2% sales tax on there. That's a negotiation with the people treating them like they're as smart as they actually are. Treating them with the respect that they deserve to say, the reason you don't get the priorities, the reason you don't get to decide what happens in your own city with the money that comes is because we largely rely on grants from the state telling us what our priorities need to be. And we're trying to play nice with them so we get those extra things so that we can do a little bit of improvements here in your city. But if the city says, we don't want the we don't want the state to prioritize our values.
Tenessa Audette:We don't want the state to prioritize what it is that we build or where we build and when we build. We wanna do it ourselves. Then you could come to the people and say, well, then we would need this much money to do those priorities. And then you have a real conversation of where that goes and what what those allocations are, and then you you do that. And you do it for five years with a sunset clause that if they're doing it right and this experiment works, we'll do it again.
Tenessa Audette:And if it isn't, then we'll go back to the old system or we'll create a new one. But you have to start respecting the people, and that does not happen at all. They are prioritizing, and they are doing business the way they need to do it with the state and with what they know to be true and what they need to cover and the stuff that they're doing. That is incongruent with what the people have said matters to them. And that would be a way, because I think to solve that.
Chris Hall:Why do you why do you suppose that the they're sort of the lone wolf on this case then? I mean, you know, the rest of these folks on city council, you know, I'm not gonna say they have ill intentions because I I know they don't. Otherwise, I don't think you'd run for this office. It's certainly not for pay scale. You know?
Chris Hall:But, like, why why are you fighting so hard and you're getting deaf ears from the other four people?
Tenessa Audette:Oh my gosh. I mean, I only could speculate based on the things that they have said, but I don't I just don't care. I I don't care. I mean, whatever is gonna get them to to come alongside the people, which is ultimately what they want to do, they're gonna need to do that. And I think that I don't know why.
Tenessa Audette:I honestly don't know why. I I think if they read the report, I think if they dug in, I think that they asked for these things, I think they'd come up with similar conclusions or at least be able to discuss these things, but not to just say, no. Everything's fine. No. No.
Tenessa Audette:No. Everything is great. We haven't hired that many people, and you're like, well, that's not what the data says. Because my report does not tell you what I think. It uses their data.
Tenessa Audette:They say they say this. Does the data match that? Okay. It doesn't. Let me show you where the data doesn't match what they're telling us.
Tenessa Audette:And then their response is, go listen to more of what they say. It's like, well, I know what they say. We all know what they're saying. But does the data back up their words? And the fact is is that it doesn't.
Tenessa Audette:They're saying the the budget is balanced. If you go crunch the numbers, it doesn't. I don't know what makes somebody want to believe and trust what they're being told versus what they can find out for themselves. I can just tell you, like, if you lied to me once, you tell me that we haven't hired anybody since 2004 except in these categories, and then I find out that that's not true, I'm gonna go hunt down reality. Like, you can you can tell me horrible things, horrible news, and here's your your budget is this and your budget is that, and I'll deal with it.
Tenessa Audette:But if you don't tell me something that's accurate, I'm gonna hunt down the truth. And that's just my personality. So plus it's what I was this is my job. Like, I've been saying and and I I guess people just didn't understand, like, I'm going to raise your expectations of what representation is supposed to look like. This is what a representative looks like.
Tenessa Audette:So either everybody steps up and we raise the bar we go back to the status quo, what we've always done, and we get the same result we always get. And people hate government, and they don't know why. And they think it's terrible, but they don't know why. And we don't know how to solve it. We don't know how to solve for it in the future.
Tenessa Audette:But that's what I sought to do is to at least educate. Hey. If you hear modifications coming after the budget is done, if you look at it, if you hear there's raises coming, any type of raise, and you don't see that detailed information, and it's not its own separate item. Red flag, red flag.
Chris Hall:Mhmm. So, like so, again, like, for you, obviously, you've you've really got a a passion for this. And I I talked to somebody else on council, and, know, they basically kinda feel like this this stuff's been asked and answered. Right? That's their their status is this has been asked and answered that, you know, you're just, you know, you're just, like, on a, I guess, a wild goose chase or, you know, manhunt or whatever.
Chris Hall:But I guess my point is, like, how can't like, you're bringing up such good points. Like like, we should be our government should be transparent with us. We should know exactly what they're spending the money on. We should know exactly when people are getting raises. We should know all these things.
Chris Hall:You know, from our standpoint, we should know, like, what's going on with the world and and that we live in. And it feels like everybody's just like, don't worry about it. We got it. So how do we move away from this don't worry about it's very placating, by the way. How do we move away from this very much like, hey.
Chris Hall:We got it. You guys just sit back and relax. How do we move away from that to where, you know, the council gets more involved? Do the citizens need to get more involved? Do we need to show up to these meetings?
Tenessa Audette:Yes.
Chris Hall:Do we need to make a big deal? Do we need to vote people out who are just sitting there going, everything is fine. The vote moves on?
Tenessa Audette:Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tenessa Audette:Yes. Yes. Because the that's the thing. It's like, we work for you. So, you know, the the the more that you're out in the community, the more that you're asking for feedback that, like, listen.
Tenessa Audette:I put a 150 pages out, and I am open for scrutiny. Tell me where I'm wrong. I I got a call that said, hey. This percentage is off by whatever. And I was I went and looked.
Tenessa Audette:I was like, oh, yeah. I I copy and pasted the wrong thing. So I fixed it. You know? Put now a new version today.
Tenessa Audette:Like, I am open for feedback. Correct me. Like, let's crowdsource this information. So if it's wrong, we can get on the right track. Like, I am I am proof I wish I was wrong.
Tenessa Audette:I wish it was all wrong. But the fact is is that we're in a real financial hurt, and their all of their actions are not transparent. We're not. I'm not saying, oh my gosh. Something is wrong, and they're giving me more information to figure it out.
Tenessa Audette:No. No. It's less information. And I'm saying, wait. We're not getting what we need, and then we get even less information.
Tenessa Audette:I need more actuals. We got even less actuals. Like like, the response to, oh my gosh. Something is wrong has been to tighten and tighten and tighten. And their argument is, I'm just I have some ulterior motive.
Tenessa Audette:You're like, well, what is it? What what's the ulterior motive? Like, what's the I just don't like Barry Tippin? It's like, Barry Tippin spoke in my class for five years, every year. Like, I I've never had a problem with him.
Tenessa Audette:But if you tell me something that's not that I don't believe is true, and I go find out the truth, And you don't have an answer for me, and I go to meet with you, and, you know, basically, I say, what do you want to take accountability for? Your past counsel and your current counsel aren't aware of the deficit that they're in. That this ten year piece of paper tells us that somehow we haven't seen it. Somehow you haven't brought it to our attention. Somehow we're just not aware that we spent $13,000,000 in the last two years when we were planning to spend 3.8.
Tenessa Audette:That's a 240% difference, and nobody knows. They don't know. They're not aware of it. How is that possible? Like, what responsibility do you actually want to take?
Tenessa Audette:And the response is he can talk to all of those individual council members and just basically said, I'm crazy. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm on a wild goose chase. All of this is acid answered. It's just not true.
Tenessa Audette:It's just not true. And there's been no hey. Well, she says that this the numbers for the internal service payment is less than what you guys added up. No response. Yeah.
Tenessa Audette:Like, go I'm detailed. Go find out.
Chris Hall:What what if I mean, you've got a bunch of information on your website now. People can go check that out. What information do you need right now that you think everybody needs to see that you have got that you have not gotten yet?
Tenessa Audette:Oh, I I have not had any actuals for twenty twenty four, twenty five. I've not seen any of those reports. We've been promised that we're gonna get them in September. But remember, q '3 was supposed to come out in May, which in q three, it had that our general fund reserves were at negative 500,000. We didn't get those in May during the budget.
Tenessa Audette:Council policy says that you have to report those findings. You have to make them aware of your cash reserves during the budget process. So they knew that our reserves were low, lower than what we anticipated them to be. I could not go back and find a q three that had a negative cash balance. So I know that this is not normal because, you know, you get your your big big ones are property taxes, which come in January and in May.
Tenessa Audette:And so that would have had those January returns would have been included in those cash reserves. So for it to be negative is terrible. Now that doesn't mean we're gonna end it a negative. It just means that the forecast, which which for the end of the year is supposed to be 7,900,000.0, means that you start where you end. And they're telling us that we're gonna start at 9,000,000.
Tenessa Audette:That puts the whole general reserve down over a million dollars just at the just at the beginning. It's off. Our budget is off. So what I wish that people knew is or or what we still haven't gotten is any of the actuals for 2425. So I don't know what the carryovers were for 2420 I know what the budget is that we passed, but I don't know what the carryovers are.
Tenessa Audette:I don't know if we are hitting our budget goals. I have no idea because I don't know what that total number is for the budget because I haven't seen it. I don't know how the revenues are coming in quarter after quarter by detail. I don't know if we're up in sales tax down. I don't know if we how much we've gotten in grants and and don't have.
Tenessa Audette:I don't know how much we've collected in our fines because a lot of times, they'll give us the total of what we should have collected, but then we have to do bad debt for, like, cannabis fines. We don't actually make we don't we don't collect on those. And so I don't know because they haven't reported them to us. So I don't even know exactly how our budget's gonna end. So I know what they're projecting for for cash.
Tenessa Audette:But, like, as you know, the q three the previous year said we had 20,000,000, and then by the time you get to the first quarter, we're down to 4.
Chris Hall:Right. How do we how do we how do we again, you know, you've got a great system in place now for, like, these checks and balances. You're not gonna be quiet. You've already proven to everybody that this is not going away for you Right. Which I think is wonderful.
Chris Hall:So how do do at some point, can we can the city council work on behalf of the citizens of Reading to rectify the situation the way you found it? Is it something that can be fixed, or does does there does there need to be true leadership change not only within the council, but within but within the management system?
Tenessa Audette:100%. There's just no way to move forward if if because of the efforts to conceal this information and just the lack of responsibility to really disclose our really where we are. And I don't I just don't think you can. I don't think that people will trust it. I mean, for all the people that want a sales tax, keeping management in there is the last thing that they should want.
Tenessa Audette:Because there's no way that anybody is gonna trust that anything will be different with who's currently there in management. Right. And so number one, I would say, I don't expect like, as a human being, I just don't expect that these other leaders on the council are just gonna do what I say. I I don't expect that. If they if they had any respect for what I was trying to find out or the information we were trying to get, they would have just said, yeah.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. Let's get that information.
Chris Hall:Get her what she needs.
Tenessa Audette:But for whatever reason
Chris Hall:Get her what she needs.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. But for whatever reason, they've they've chosen to stick with Barry's narrative, and they went in that direction. But now I think I've given an alternative theory. And so I think there should be an ad hoc committee that like, you know, we can call it a oversight or audit or whatever you wanna call it to go through the data and to say, this was accurate. This wasn't accurate.
Tenessa Audette:This is what we found. This is what and then say, here's what we recommend to the council Yeah. And to do that quickly.
Chris Hall:Can we get that? Can we how do we get that on the board? That sounds like
Tenessa Audette:a review. That'll be an item 12. I'll present this. I'm supposed
Chris Hall:to do an ad meeting
Tenessa Audette:to look at findings. And then I do. I I and and maybe that ad hoc can say if they think that that malfeasance or nonfeasance, that those thresholds were met when it comes to our management, and then
Chris Hall:It is
Tenessa Audette:a violation of contract.
Chris Hall:And the people for in the ad hoc committee, those would be regular citizens?
Tenessa Audette:I think there should be I think, Nola Short at the county who does this, I think we need to have a CPA. It would be great if we had someone that has a familiarity with municipal audits. And then definitely citizens from the community. I, myself, would wanna be on it. I know all the doc you know, I have all that information, and I know what we need to be looking for and where the discrepancies are.
Tenessa Audette:And then another one of the council members that wanted to be be involved.
Chris Hall:Okay. Alright. So that's what we're asking right now is we're asking for we spent basically an hour talking about this, and all we're asking city council to do is help us find the truth.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. Exactly.
Chris Hall:If you're you're if you're an elected official and you're hearing my voice right now, your citizens demand from you that you find out transparency. Tanesa's leading the way. We need two more council members to say, you know what? She's brought up enough points that we need to investigate this. Right?
Chris Hall:We're not saying she's right.
Tenessa Audette:Not she's you're Prove me wrong.
Chris Hall:Perfect. Yeah.
Tenessa Audette:Go ahead. I I go for it. I mean, that would be wonderful. I mean, the fact is is, you know, I I know I know parts of these things, and I've done my due diligence, but I am perfectly willing to be wrong and to figure out what's right. I'm in pursuit of the truth, not in being right.
Tenessa Audette:And so I think that the public also wants that, especially when the government is asking for more. As a solution to our problems, I think we should correctly identify what the problem is because I think we have priority issues, not not money issues, and I think we can address that. So
Chris Hall:Do you know anything about this is my last this is my last question, and this is just my personal question that is related slash unrelated to what we're talking about. Obviously, you're never gonna get pension and fire off of or you're gonna fire and police off of pensions. That's just part of that's just baked into the deal. But there are some municipalities that are starting to take their newer employees and they're less pension, and they're more like four zero one k four fifty seven oriented. What would it take for our city to start moving these executive people that are not police and fire?
Chris Hall:What would it take to move them off of pensions and into a traditional retirement savings account? How how hard would that be? Is that something that's just never gonna happen, or can we can we take the upcoming tidal wave of pensions and go, hey, guys. This is only gonna get worse. We need to solve it now.
Tenessa Audette:I mean, I think that that definitely deserves some study, and I think there could be a committee to be searching out those things and to be exploring it and looking at what the options are even if it just supplement. And I know that there's been some changes of when people can retire and how much they can contribute towards it. There's a cap for some of the positions in government where they can't add to their pension beyond a certain amount of money. It's still pretty high. I think it's, like, 180,000.
Tenessa Audette:It's still very high. But but still, it's like there is a cap now. So there are some things as far as it being separate like a four zero one k that I don't know. I I would want but I would wanna know. I'd wanna find out.
Tenessa Audette:I'd wanna hear what the other options are, what other cities could pop are are possibly doing. I know that that's something that DeCuisto, when I met him before I got on the council, that was something that he wanted to do, wanted to pursue. And so I I definitely think that there has been appetite for that in the past. But, you know, we could put a committee together to look into that. I mean, that's the deal.
Tenessa Audette:The fact is is that we've got if that is the problem, the pensions and the pay and all that kind of stuff is a problem, then we're gonna have to tackle that. And it's gonna have to be thoughtful. It's gonna have to include citizens. It's gonna have to include the business community. It's gonna have to include people that can weigh in on this and so that we have a balanced approach and that we can present it to the public in a way that that they know that it was fully vetted and how and and on what side and and what's possible.
Tenessa Audette:Because if it's not possible, they're gonna wanna know why.
Chris Hall:Right. Everybody in the private sector for the most part has moved away from pensions. Like, almost every single almost every single category. I worked for a pharmaceutical company for ten years. They had pensions.
Chris Hall:They don't have pensions anymore. You know, there's anywhere you see a pension, it's only a government employee.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah.
Chris Hall:And it's because because privately, they're held to such high standards of making sure that they fund that pension that all the private sector companies said, we cannot afford this.
Tenessa Audette:Right.
Chris Hall:That's why the only pensions that exist now are in the, the public sector because anytime they get into a problem, they go, we'll just raise taxes. So so if it doesn't work for private, it doesn't work for public. Right. But we're still gonna keep doing it because we can just raise taxes. That just seems like the worst logical argument I've ever heard.
Tenessa Audette:It's very frustrating. And I, again, I think it comes down to what are the priorities of the people. You know, I I hear it over and over that, you know, police and fire, 80%. You're like, well, they're two two thirds of the entire budget. So, of course, they are.
Tenessa Audette:We've got parks, police, and fire. That's are you saying that you want parks to be more? You want them to be 30%? Like, that's your alternative because the rest of government, all of the bureaucrats and stuff, they split their payments between the general fund and the enterprise funds, like, because everybody utilizes them because they're over the whole government. They're the administration for the government.
Tenessa Audette:So it's like, what are you saying? Are you saying you don't want police not firing? This is what we do. This is what government does. It does it does your public safety and infrastructure.
Tenessa Audette:And so public safety is largely general fund. The extra bonus on top of that, the other 20% is covering some of the bureaucracy and our parks and rec. That's why in this new sales tax, they're increasing the parks and rec by 18% of that new tax. 18% is for parks and 12 for fire and 12 for police around somewhere around there. So it's, like, 24% more for police and fire and 18% more for parks.
Tenessa Audette:Is that what we say that we want? So Right.
Chris Hall:That a priority? Is that a us? Right.
Tenessa Audette:You're still for
Chris Hall:us as citizens.
Tenessa Audette:Right. So as citizens, it's like, of course, we want beautiful things. But I guarantee you, if I said, do you want all of your parks that currently exist to be in perfect shape and to have great facilities and maybe we add on to the ones that we have? Or do you want brand new ones and we're gonna continue to not maintain our old you know what I mean? It's like, you have to you have to discuss that with them and ask them and figure that out.
Tenessa Audette:So it's it's I just wish that the I don't I don't have a point of view. My personality is not to, like, tell you what I think you should do. My personality is let me go find out all the information, lay out all the information, and then you make the best choice that you think, and and I'll be fine with it. I'm okay. I have so many friends that I disagree with.
Tenessa Audette:I that it is not a contingency of on being friends with me is agreeing with me. I don't I don't take it personal if you don't like my ideas. I am gonna hunt for truth. I am going to get as much information as I can, and then I'm gonna trust the public be able to make the decision that they think is best for them. And I'm not gonna be upset about it.
Tenessa Audette:I'm just gonna figure out how to make it work or have a better argument next time.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Wonderful. Well, I am very excited that we had this time. I am looking forward to getting it all up on the air. We'll cut it in little bits so that people can see snapshots of it as well.
Chris Hall:So for me, I'm very excited. Is there anything that you wanna kinda, like, say before we end this podcast that, you know, maybe we didn't cover it or maybe you just wanna, like, you know, lay down the last point, like, real hard? You know, the floor is yours.
Tenessa Audette:Yeah. I would just say the public largely deserves to know what's going on. And I have an alternative theory to what's happening financially. It doesn't make me guaranteed right, but it is an alternative theory. And so if you wanna have an idea of what's going on, I would say read it.
Tenessa Audette:And if you don't wanna read it, I would look at the cliff notes. But follow me at at vote tenessa. I'm gonna be putting up all my stuff on my professional pages for people to be able to look at it and judge it and ask me the questions. And if if somebody wants to do a town hall, I am more than happy to show up. I will debate anybody.
Tenessa Audette:I will talk to anybody. I will answer all the questions. I'm after all the information that helps you feel that you are informed and that you are in control because this is your government. We work for you.
Chris Hall:Nice. Alright. Well said. I can't we do any better than that. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Chris Hall:I really appreciate it. I think we got a lot of good information. And, again, I think you just really summarized it. We just want transparency. We wanna know what's going on.
Chris Hall:We wanna know the truth, and then we can make steps based on that. But we don't wanna be told it's one thing and then find out it's another. So excellent job. Thank you so much for what you do. I I told you before we started the podcast that sometimes I've thought about, you know, trying to run for counsel, and then I watch what you guys go through, and I think I don't know if I have the capacity for that.
Chris Hall:So thank you for having the capacity for that.
Tenessa Audette:My pleasure.
Chris Hall:Alright. You have a good day, and I'll get this up as soon as I possibly can. And I'll put the links to all your socials and stuff in the descriptions.
Tenessa Audette:Thank you.
Chris Hall:Alright. Thank you all for listening. Please feel free to add some comments, so we can, see maybe something we didn't cover, something we should have talked about, or, you know, maybe you have, some insight on the things that you wanna be part of in this community as we move forward. So alright. Thank you very much.
Chris Hall:You guys have a good day.