Budget Breakdown: What Every Perry Resident Should Know

In today’s episode, we sit down with Finance Director Mitchell Worthington to break down Perry’s annual budget process and explain where your tax dollars go.

From property tax rates to parks, public safety, and infrastructure — we’re covering what funds the services you rely on and how the City makes strategic financial decisions each year. Whether you're a long-time resident or new to Perry, this conversation will help you better understand how the budget works and how it impacts your daily life.

Learn more about SPLOST here.

Explore budget documents and financial reports here.

If you like Inside Perry - subscribe and share the podcast with friends and family. The podcast is available on all major podcast platforms.

Visit us at perry-ga.gov.

We hope to see you around in our amazing community...Where Georgia Comes Together.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast, where you get an inside look at Perry, Georgia's local government. We're glad you chose Perry, where people make the difference. Whether you stay a few hours or a lifetime, your time in Perry will be rewarding and unforgettable. I'm Tabitha Clark, communications director for the City of Perry. Welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast. Today we are talking about kind of a hot topic, especially all around in local, state and federal governments, but especially here in the city of Perry. And we're gonna be talking about the budget and budget may be boring to some, may be completely obsessed for some others, which is great because we want to make sure that you understand how tax money is spent. So today I have with me the direct. Of finance, Mitchell Worthington. So Mitchell, welcome to the Inside Perry Podcast. Hey, Tabitha. Happy to be here. All right, awesome. All right, so let's get right into it.'cause I know a lot of people interested. You become a very popular man around this time of year, don't you? I do, I do. So let's start with the absolute basics. So tell me, what is a local government budget and why is it important for the community to know about it? Sure. So at its basics, a budget is just the annual appropriation of what the city is gonna spend. You know, think of it as the legal limit of what the city is gonna do with their dollars, kind of on a bigger picture. I like to think of it as a very important policy document. You know, it guides staff on what the priorities for the city are for the next year, and you kind of put your money where your mouth is with priorities. Right? Right. And this is what we're gonna spend our money on. These are the priorities. So what are the key components that make up the city's budget? I know it's pretty big, obviously for a local government. It is, yeah.$60 million altogether this year. Oh, okay. Cool. Um, that is a lot. Yes. So, I mean, it, it's really kind of the, the big picture is what you're thinking of. You know, you have your revenues. Then you have your expenses. And then in government we have what we call our, um, other funding sources or other funding uses. Mm-hmm. So with revenues, those are kind of budgeted by fund. So you've got your general fund and all the revenues coming in. Mm-hmm. You've got your water and sewer fund with all your revenues coming in, your gas fund, your solid waste fund. But then on the expenses, we actually don't just budget those by fund. We would budget those by department. Okay. Um, and by purpose, so you know, you've got your fire department, you've got your police department, your finance department, community development, leisure services. So there, there's not a direct tie between the revenues coming in and the expenses going out. Sure.'cause the revenues are kind of, you know, uh, it might just have one line item that says property taxes for revenue, but those property taxes actually cover, you know, several different departments. Right. Um, so kind of one stream coming in. And multiple streams going out. So yeah, we're looking at revenues that are budgeted by fund expenses, fund budgeted by department. Mm-hmm. Um, and the one thing that's also in our budget every year is it, uh, this, the budget document sets the number of employees that the city is allowed to hire. Mm, gotcha. Okay. All right. So it kind of puts guardrails in there. It does. Okay. Awesome. So I know, especially myself, like with my office with communications, it's a long process. So give us an example. And you're a small piece of it, right? I know, right? Exactly. So how long does the budget process take, and when does it start each year? Sure. So the budget process never ends. Actually, that's true. You know, because we are, you know, we live in it all year long. Uh, the budget can be amended, but, but I get what you're asking. You're asking for like, how do we pass the initial. Budget, and that really starts in January of each year. That's when finance staff really starts to take a deep dive into where we stand with our current year's budgets. Mm-hmm. Kind of what are the trends on expenditures and revenues coming in. Mm-hmm. And so we start to project out based on six months worth of data in the current year. What are we gonna bring in for revenues next year? And that's really the start of the budget process over the next couple of months. As we get all those revenues projected, we get the departments involved around, and sometime in February, um, departments have a process where they do requests and everything. And when it gets back to finance staff and the budget team. We start evaluating all that, start trying to set real hard numbers and it, the budget doesn't get passed until June. So we're really looking at a six month process here that starts in January. Right. So as soon as we pass one budget, we are like already ready for the next one. Exactly. Yeah. We start looking at the budget amendment, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So a point that was made at a council meeting recently that I thought was really interesting is that we budget, or y'all as the budget team in finance, actually budget on last year's. Revenue specifically for property taxes? Yes. Okay. Some of the other fees, we may look at actually projections, but property taxes. What we do is we took it, we look at what we actually brought in in the current year, so like for the FY 26 budget. Mm-hmm. We look at the property taxes that came in for FY 25. And that's the budget number we use. Mm-hmm. For FY 26, that's a very conservative approach, right. Uh, to make sure that we aren't planning on spending money, that we don't know if it's gonna come in, you know?'cause we don't get the digest until July or August most of the time, you know, that digest flows through and, uh, really determines what property taxes are available to the city. So we don't want to project that. We're gonna get, I don't know, 500,000 more in property taxes. Go ahead and start spending that money and then, and we really don't. And then the digest comes in and we don't have that money. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that that's an incredibly smart way to do it. Just like you said, very conservative. So what roles do the elected officials play in this process? The elected officials, obviously big pictures. They're the ones that approve the budget, you know? Right. They, um, yeah, it comes up to them. They're the ones that vote and say yes. But starting in April and May of each year, we start having budget hearings. Mm-hmm. And that's where department heads get to go up in front of, uh, in front of council and say, Hey, this is what we requested. This is why we think we need it. Any outside organization that's funded mm-hmm. Would come to us and say, Hey, this is the reason we're requesting these funds and this is what we're gonna do with it. And then really even bigger picture, you know, elected officials set the strategic plan. Right. And, and as I mentioned earlier, the budget is a policy document. So we have to make sure that it's all the expenditures in there are tied to that strategic plan. Mm-hmm. If they say, want, uh, elected officials say they want to get X, Y, and Z done, those dollars have to be geared towards completing X, Y, and Z. Right. Um, so that's kind of the elected of official's job is, you know, if we, we can come forward with a recommended budget, but they might say, well. You, you said you were gonna be spend $50,000 on this new project or this new program. Mm-hmm. But we'd rather spend it on this new program 'cause we think it meets more of our goals. Then we can, you know, we will obviously adjust what we recommend from there. Right. So it's definitely a working breathing document. A hundred percent. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about revenue and expenses. I know you kind of hit on those earlier. So what's the main sources of revenue for the city of Perry? So the number one biggest line item within this. City of Perry is property taxes, obviously. Mm-hmm. As I mentioned earlier, the total budget is about $60 million for the upcoming year. Of that, about 13 million is property taxes. Next is gonna come what we call fees or charges for services. That makes up a large number of different types of charges, including what you pay for your water and sewer uses, which you pay for your gas usage, what you pay for your solid waste. So a lot of is what we call enterprise funds. You know, the, the charges for actual. Services that you're getting from the city, and that makes up about 22 million altogether. But once again, those aren't single line items. Those are spread across multiple different sources. Mm-hmm. I know there's been a lot of chatter about the fees, especially here recently, and we will link it into the show notes as far as the fee increases that happen. What a lot of people don't realize is that there's a process about. Putting those short fees into the budget every year. So could you explain the philosophy behind that? The fees that we have are really, you know, we don't consider 'em taxes 'cause the fees are tied to individual services. Mm-hmm. You know, for example, the water fee we're charging you for the cost to produce water and get water to your house. And then on the sewer side, get that water away from your house. And to a sewer treatment plant, right? Mm-hmm. On the fire fee, for example, you know, what we are looking at is what is the cost of the actual fire department? And we actually split it out. It's not, you know, we have the fire department, but then we also have the EMS side of things. Mm-hmm. You know, those are the guys that are responding to wrecks and medical calls, right. And all that. So the fire feed does not cover the cost of those guys. What the fire feed covers is the cost of the actual fire apparatus. And the people that are on those fire apparatus. Mm-hmm. So what we do is we determine what's it gonna cost to run the fire department and then we try to make sure that those fees cover those costs. Exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions as far as what, especially the fire fee. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's super important to know that those enterprise funds that you talk about, water, sewer, storm water. Fire fee. What am I missing? Is that, is that all solid waste? Solid waste? Yes. And storm water, if you didn't mention that one. Yep, yep, exactly. Those, those are standalone, they're their own pots of money. Mm-hmm. You know, they, the, the general fund is, you know, general fund think of that is really mainly tax funded. Mm-hmm. You know, those, that stands in its own pot of money. Think of it as almost silos. We have multiple silos of money. Okay. Um, and they're their own, uh, own accounting books. You know, they have their own balance sheet, they have their own income statement. They only have, they have their own cash flow statement. So they're really kept up with completely separately and they legally only pay. For those fees that we've charged you, like for stormwater, we're only paying for stormwater infrastructure and stormwater maintenance out of those funds. Yes. And those permits that are required from EPA. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. All those, exactly. All those fun unfunded mandates that we like to call. Yeah. With the solid waste fund, you know? Mm-hmm. We're, we're, we're only all the money that we bring in off your city services bill that says solid waste, that's going into its own pot of money that we keep up with separately, and that's only paying for. You know, the, the truck to come around once a week and pick up your, your trash can, those knuckle boom trucks to come pick up your, uh, yard waste mm-hmm. And so forth. You know, it is not going into the general fund and just getting commingled with all these other dollars. So with it being its own fund, I know another misconception is, well, why are my property taxes not going to that well prop once again, since it's its own fund, you know, we consider those fees that are paying for a service and we can easily delineate what the cost of those services are. Mm-hmm. It doesn't take a police man to come get your trash. It takes a trash truck and a person driving that trash truck, right? So we know what that cost is, so we can de design a fee. And in our mind, that's a lot more equitable. You know, if everything was just paid for by property taxes, your value. Of your house would determine how much you pay, not what service you're using. And that makes a lot of sense. So I, I wanted to make sure that we, we talked about that. And the next question is how do property taxes, and, and you talked about that, but sales tax also impact the budget a little bit. So in, in Houston County and, and City of Perry, it's a little different. So in Houston County, we're only. We're one of a handful of counties that all of the normal lost local option sales tax, you know, that's the 6% or whatever goes to the school board. Mm-hmm. All of the local piece of that sales tax goes to the school board. The city of Perry does get some. Uh, sales tax, but that's through our SPLOST or special purpose, local option sales tax. Right. Once again, that money goes into its own little silo, like we talked about earlier. Mm-hmm. Its own pot of money and that only gets spent on capital construction projects. That extra one penny that Citizens or anybody in Houston County pays in sales tax. Does not go towards operations for the city. And those floss also link that in the show notes. But that's talking about, like you said, our major projects such as, especially with this last approved voter approved SP floss is the Commodore Drive extension. Mm-hmm. St. Patrick's Drive extension, east Perry Wastewater treatment plant. Mm-hmm. Eventual purchase of a new destination park in this bay area somewhere. Correct. Mm-hmm. So there's a lot that's going in with. That that little bit that we get there is, and it does help to offset some of the water sewer expansion that we're having to do 'cause of growth as well. Great point there. So I guess that's go going into our next question is how do capital projects fit into the budget? So everything we've really talked about so far as part of that six month budget process is really, you can really think of that as our operating budget. You know, those are the operations of the city. How are we paying our folks? How are we purchasing supplies, some of our smaller capital, what we consider like rolling stock? How are we gonna replace our vehicles, you know, as a police car gets, uh, brought outta service, how do we bring a new one in? Mm-hmm. So really large capital projects aren't part of this operating budget. Gotcha. You know, most of the time, a, a large capital project like building a new. Fire station or building a new destination park, those aren't gonna get funded out of just operating dollars. You know, it wouldn't, number one, that wouldn't be equitable 'cause we'd have to have all the cash up front. Mm-hmm. But that building is gonna be used for 50 years. Right. So why would the people who are living here right now pay for the full upfront cost, cost of that when people are gonna use it for the next 50 years? So you've got some generational equity questions there that I think are the, outta the scope of this talk, but, um Sure, sure. But, um, we really budget those on an individual basis and how that process works is generally. You know, staff will identify a need, for example, a new fire station. I'm not saying we're getting a new fire station right now, but let's, let's use that one because that's a big one. Example. It's kind of easy for everyone to understand, right? We need a new fire station. Staff would go to mayor and council and say, Hey, we believe there's a new fire station needed. Here's the backup for y. You know, we've got, we've got X number of new calls. Majority of them seem to be maybe coming from this area where we're seeing a lot of growth. Mm-hmm. So we need a new fire station counsel. Will we agree? Cool. Go plan that new fire station. From there, we would hire a designer maybe, uh, to design that project and we'd bid it out. Once we have a, a good cost or even design it and just get a cost estimate, we'd go to council and say, okay, we want to build a new fire station. It's gonna cost $10 million. Are you guys good with it? Assuming they are, we, oh, as part of that, we'd also say, and the funding source is going to be X, Y, Z. We're gonna borrow the money from GFA, or we're gonna borrow the money. You know, through a bond, which would then be paid back through the fire fee, through the general fund fee, maybe through SPLOST is gonna pay for a portion of that. Mm-hmm. Um, and once we have that number, we bring it back to council and say, here's the final dollar, it's gonna be $10 million. They adopt that as the budget, and they also approve construction. So you can think of them as a, the budgets are improved individually one by one. Mm-hmm. And then the budget isn't necessarily an annual budget. It's a project budget, so it might take, you know, multiple fiscal years to build it, but you're not adopting, you know, 5 million this year. 5 million next year, right? You're adopting a $10 million budget for the project. So let's talk about transparency and community input. So how can residents get involved or provide feedback during the budget process? Sure. So number one, the recommended budget is always published around late April every year. We put that on our website. We. Do a couple ads in the paper. There's always by law and just 'cause it's a good idea. Mm-hmm. We have paper versions here at, at the admin building and at city hall. Um, anybody can come review those if they want to. We have one public hearing by law to adopt the budget. Mm-hmm. And that's normally in June. However, we have multiple public hearings as part of our department, head and outside agency feedbacks. And those normally happen in April and May of each year. Mm-hmm. We encourage the public to come participate, you know. Once you get your hands on that document, that budget document, come to those meetings and say, Hey, you guys want to explain to me why you're. Adding a new firefighter or a new police officer, why are you adding a new firefighter and not a new police officer? Mm-hmm. You know, things like that. Mm-hmm. I would like to say this year there are new, are no new positions in the budget. Mm-hmm. Like I said, that was just an example. Yeah. Sure. Um, and then finally, I mean, obviously you can always contact your council member, you know, that's, they're the ones that are ultimately gonna approve the budget. If you see anything going on out in the community or you see a need. If you don't tell them or tell stuff they don't know, they don't know. Mm-hmm. You know, so that, that's, that's the biggest way I would say, to get a, you know, get concern raised for something that the city needs. Mm-hmm. You know, if you, if your neighborhood has a lot of folks who are walking in the middle of the street, let council members know, because at that point they would know, Hey, maybe we need to look at it sidewalk over there. Exactly. That's what I always say. If. You don't tell us. Sometimes we don't know, you know, and that's when we try to fix it and find a, find a solution for it. Exactly. 25,000 folks. There's only 200 city staff members, you know. We can't be in every neighborhood all the time to see everything. Exactly. So you talked a little bit about, you know, the, the tools and reports that we do. So what other things do we provide that make the budget more accessible? So number one, I think your department actually does, has a little bit more involvement than I do. We do the citizens financial report every year. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, that's, that's sort of in layman's terms, what we're spending our money on every year. Mm-hmm. I think that's a really good one for the citizens. The budget book that we already mentioned. Mm-hmm. That's gonna be, mm-hmm. You know, roughly 20 pages. It's gonna show what we're spending gonna definitely go over any increases and why they're needed in that budget book. Mm-hmm. Both of those documents are put on the website. The most comprehensive guy thing that we do every year is we go through the whole audit process, right. And we produce what's called an fer, an annual certified financial report. That bad boy can be 200 pages. Sometimes it's a little light reading. Yes. Uh, but, uh, but you know, we, we hire someone who comes in and that's about another six month process. It actually starts July one. So as soon as the budget passes June 30, I switch gears and start looking at the previous year to get the audit done. But by December 30th, each of each year, we, we publish that act for, uh, 200 pages. It goes through all the details on exactly what we spent. Exactly what the city's debt level are. You know, some projections on what's gonna happen in the future. Mm-hmm. As far as, you know, debt levels and all that kind of good stuff. But that's posted on our website as well. I'm happy to talk to anyone through that one. You know? Yeah. Like I said, it's just like reading, right? Yeah. You have an accounting degree or you might understand maybe, so, and that, that's a really good point that you, you make that I didn't think about is so. What we put out as the communications office is that Citizens Financial Report. That's super high level stuff. So if you really wanna get down into the, the deep and light reading and we talk about, that's when they look at the audit. Correct. Exactly. And I'd like to point out, you know, that. City staff does not prepare that audit. We hire someone else and you know, an accounting team that we are not connected to are the ones that do that. So it's not our opinion. It's theirs. It's theirs on what's going on. And that's super important. It's so, so let's get back to the other question. It's one of my favorites is are there any misconceptions people have about where their tax dollars go? Not necessarily just on where their tax dollars go. Mm-hmm. But the big one. That I love is that water bill that you get every month. It's not necessarily a water bill that, that's right. Um, it's a city services bill. You know, there's, there's six or seven charges on there, and only a small portion. Well, could be a large portion if you're watering your grass, but mm-hmm. Um, only a portion of that goes to the water fund. Each of the charges on that bill go into their own pot of money that have to be legally spent. On what we're telling you, they're being spent on. So the water and sewer is paying for getting water to your house and getting sewer treated and back out into the, out into the environment. Right. Your fire fee is funding the fire department. Your storm water fee is paying for our inspectors. It's paying for maintenance on those sewer ponds. It's paying for infrastructure upgrades so that storm water isn't going into your yard or your neighbor's yard. It's getting into those ditches and ultimately down into those creeks and rivers. Mm-hmm. And we really do pay for those. Or pay for those expenses out of those pots of money. We're not co-mingling any of those dollars. Right.'cause we can't. Even if we wanted to. Exactly. We, yeah. And once I, and like I said, once a year we have an auditor come and look at exactly what we spend it on, and they're gonna tell us if we didn't do that. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna tell the public if we didn't do that, that's right. It's, it's right there for everybody to see is it's so what? Especially for you as finance director, what's some of the biggest challenges you face when trying to make sure the city budget is balanced? I would say the biggest thing is, is that, you know, all of our departments put in those needs and I, I truly think they're all legitimate needs. Our department heads are great about asking for what they need and not what. They would want. Mm-hmm. I mean, they might tell us what they want, but they'll, most of the time they'll tell us that, Hey, this is a great idea. We're looking at it, it might be something that becomes necessary in the future. Mm-hmm. But in general, their requests are what they need. And I really wish I could fund every request, but, you know, there's just limited revenues, you know, that, that there's no appetite for, you know, having a millage rate that's double or triple or even just a couple points higher than what it is right now. Mm-hmm. So it, it's really figuring out. What we're gonna fund based off of those requests that are all legitimate. And there, there's a lot of us. So is it, there are, you know, well a any given year departments will submit four to $5 million worth of new programmatic requests. Mm-hmm. Every single one of those requests. Like I said, if you look at 'em in on an individual basis, wow, the city needs to be doing this. Mm-hmm. Wow. That'd be great if the city could do that. But then you look at it and you're like, oh, well property tax increases are only gonna go up 500,000, so we've got 500,000 new dollars. 5 million worth of new requests. Right. Oh, and also we probably need to give our staff a pay raise just to stay competitive, you know? And, and electricity costs 12% more than it did a year ago. That's, that's right. Everything's going up. Everything costs more dollars. Um, construction is. Astronomical compared to what it was two or three years ago. All of those are all pressures on a very limited amount of dollars. Speaking of that, so how does the city plan for unexpected cost or emergencies?'cause they're gonna come up. They do. Yeah. So number one, I think we talked about this earlier, is that we're very conservative in our revenues. Mm-hmm. Generally, at the end of the year, when we do an end of year budget amendment, our revenues are higher than what we budgeted. It's not because we charged more, increased a fee. Right. Because we can say to, it's just because we budgeted. Conservatively, we didn't say we were gonna get half, you know, a million and a half dollars worth of building fees and only getting a hundred, you know, 900,000. So we're having to make that up somewhere. Mm-hmm. Um, but number two is in our strategic plan actually calls this a goal is we maintain reserves or fund balances and each of our funds of at least three months of operating expenses. Oh, okay. Number one, that just gives us a, a cushion, you know, if something unexpected happens, there's money there. But then also, you know, our fiscal year starts July one. We generally don't start collecting property taxes until October, November of each year. Mm. So there's a, um, so there's a little cushion there. Yeah. Where we don't have a lot of money coming in. Mm-hmm. But we still have the cash balances. To pay our folks and continue operations. Right. And that's important. I don't think you, and I'd be sitting here if not for No, we would not. No, we would not. So we do appreciate that. So a couple more questions. So you talked about how, you know, when we as department heads submit things and how are the priorities weighed, like public safety, infrastructure, economic development? I know you talked about this a little bit more, but can you expand a little bit more about how they're weighed? Sure. So the number one thing we do is. We asked them, give us any kind of hard data that shows you need it. You know, let's go back to, we talked about it at a fire station. Hey, we need a new fire station. Why do you need a new fire station? Mm-hmm. Um, well, our calls have increased 20% over the last year. You know, here's the hard data that shows the number of calls we got. Oh, and also here's the district that those calls were in showing that maybe this side of Perry, it has a longer call. Time than this side. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well that's hard data that shows we need it. Mm-hmm. Well, next thing we do is we look at our strategic plan. Hey, does by funding this, are we meeting any of the goals of that strategic plan? Or even better, are we meeting multiple goals of that strategic plan? Yes, that would be nice. Yeah. So we look at that. Um, I mean, and sometimes it boils down to dollars. You know, if you want a new fire station that's gonna cost $10 million. We're gonna have to talk about that. We're gonna figure out something. Mm-hmm. You know, if you need, um, a new police dog that's gonna be $5,000, that might be a little easier to fund. Right. Um, so it, it, it's, it's sort of like juggling at times, you know? Oh yeah. You're looking at priorities, you're looking at dollars coming in, you're looking at hard data and plus you're just looking at, is this really efficient? Way that we need to do it. Mm-hmm. And I like how you brought up the hard data, because that's what we are kind of charged to do as department heads and heads over the operations, is we need to make sure that we can justify what we're asking for. A hundred percent. We ask for that justification. You know, when, when department heads submit those requests, there's a form they fill out that says, mm-hmm. This is what we want, this is how much we think it's gonna cost, and here's the justification on why we want it, why we say we need it. Mm-hmm. Whether that's phone calls coming in for, for the fire department, you know, on the accounting side it's, we know the budget was $20 million 10 years ago. Now it's 60 million, so. Right. I might need a new accountant'cause we're keeping up with triple the amount of dollars. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and you're the, the service to citizens really could go down if we're not keeping up with that. So. Exactly. Oh, and we ask them too every time is. Um, hey, you're saying you want a new person. Have you looked at other things first? Have you looked at, can you implement technology first? Mm-hmm. That's gonna increase this. Can you change your processes first? So we make sure that people have really exhausted everything before the answer is go spend more money. Exactly. Yep. I, I absolutely love that you brought that up, because that's, 'cause we always talk about technology too, is, you know. How can that help be more efficient in all of that? So, excellent point there. Okay, so last question before I let you get back to doing your finance stuff, uh, your real job, instead of talking with me on a podcast, Hey, you're the last thing that stands between me and going to the beach this weekend. Well, perfect, perfect. Okay. All right, so we're gonna make this quick. So last question for you. So, what's one thing you wish more residents knew about the budget process? There's probably more than one, but, yeah, I was gonna say, I struggle with this and I can get it down to two. I think, um, number one is gonna be that we really have limited resources as a city. We don't wanna raise taxes. Politically or just in general as a, you know, as a rule, we don't wanna raise taxes. We're citizens too. We don't wanna necessarily pay more just for the sake of paying more. And there's 25,000 folks in the city of Perry. So while each individual may have an issue and may have. Things that they want to see done. You know, we have to look at what's the greater good for the city of a whole. Right? And number two is gonna be, like I said about those pots and silos of money. You know, everything's not a tax. Those fees that we get, they go into little silos, pots of money, some sometimes big silos and pots of money. Yes. But they only pay for what we've told the citizens we're gonna pay for. You know, the fire fee is paying for the fire department. Solid waste fee is paying for those trucks to come pick up trash in your yard. Stormwater is paying for those inspectors and paying for maintenance on stormwater ponds. It's not paying the mayor a lot of money. It's not paying the city manager's salary. You know, that's all coming out. You know, that stuff's coming outta the general fund, so, excellent. Well, Mitchell. I admire you for many things, but especially all of your work with the city because as a communications person, I don't like numbers at all. I don't wanna deal with them. And I'm glad we have people like you who love it and are passionate about it and making sure that we're doing the absolute best. Well, I'm just happy you're here to help me talk to folks.'cause you know, if it was up to me, I'd be in a spreadsheet right now. That's right. That's right. We love the spreadsheets. Thanks for listening to the Inside Perry podcast. Your inside look at Perry's local government. Take a look at the show notes for more information about today's episode. If you like inside Perry, we encourage you to subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you around in our amazing community where Georgia comes together.