TRNSF-2024-4 : Election department transfer of funds $6,728 (Six Thousand, Seven Hundred Twenty-Eight Dollars) from salary and wages 011611-511000 to printing 011622-521000 for the payment of election day expenses.

Transcript (~4 min @ 4:43)

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▶ 4:30 Robb Stewart: Thank you, Mr. Clark. Without objection, then I'll close public comment. Public comment is now closed. We have one item on the agenda this evening. We have transfer 2024 dash four, the election department transfer of funds of $6,728 from salary and wages 0 1 1 6 1 1 dash five to printing 0 1 1 6 2 2 dash five 20 for the payment of election day expenses. And I believe that we have, uh, Madam Clerk to come forward. Uh, and without objection, I'll suspend rule, uh, 37 B, uh, since, since there is no objection, 37 B is suspended. Madam Clerk, please come forward.

▶ 5:20 Speaker 5: Good evening. Thank you. Thank You.

▶ 5:23 Speaker 5: If it please the council, I have some additional details I thought may be helpful to share in some visuals, if that's helpful. Great. So the election day expenses specifically are coding the 35 ballots ovals on each of the party, uh, democratic and, um, Republican party selections on the presidential primary. It happens every four years. It's atypical just because it happens every four years. So I went back and pulled the 2020 election day expense just to see where we were. 'cause we thought it was a little high. And in 2020 we spent pulled the actual warrant, $4,588. So we did go back and kind of said to the vendor, what's kind of going on here? It's this year, it's 6,728. And he said, we haven't gone up in coding expenses in a really long time in four years. So what they mean by coding is the little SD cards, just as a little primer, the little SD cards that go into the ballot tabulate or the machinery that then this gets fed in. And it codes all of these. They're called tick marks, it codes them, and appropriately accounts for the balloting is what they call coding. So it's one of these for each ballot for each type of ballot, absentee, early in person day of, and then it's by wooden precinct. So there's 21 of those, and that's what they consider coding expenses. So I was, the money was already appropriated in 24. It's, uh, salary, wages, money from an, uh, employee that transferred out. And so I had some left over money 'cause of that. So I'm not able looking for any kind of free cash money. It's already been appropriated by council in 24.

▶ 7:01 Speaker 4: Alright, thank you Madam Clerk.

▶ 7:03 Robb Stewart: Um, any questions from the council? Council Romanul?

▶ 7:06 Devin Romanul: Um, thanks so much for that super useful information. I just wanted to ask if as we think about appropriating money for future budget cycles, does this cost increase something you'd like us to incorporate, um, moving forward where you might not have that, you know, um, unused FTE line items available? Wonderful

▶ 7:20 Speaker 5: Question. So we did ask him what we should be looking at. He said, looking at this is the vendor, he looking at similar elections. He said, adding 10% ish should get you close to the ballpark for budgeting. So we are taking that in consideration and kind of looking at maybe 10% might be a little high for us. Maybe we might look seven or eight. So we're working with him on that and reducing expenses.

▶ 7:40 Speaker 2: Excellent. Thank you very much. Sure.

▶ 7:45 Speaker 4: Any other questions? What is the will of the committee

▶ 7:48 Speaker 2: Motion to recommend? Second,

▶ 7:49 Robb Stewart: We have a motion to recommend by Council Romanul seconded by Council Williams under discussion.

▶ 7:56 Speaker 4: All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay.

▶ 8:00 Robb Stewart: This will be sent to the full committee. Um, you, you will be there. So you'll get to listen to it.

▶ 8:07 Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Okay.

▶ 8:08 Robb Stewart: That, that is, uh, the one and only item that we have. Um, for the record, uh, we also have non-voting members councils, Hamilton and Occhio.