Ep #13 [Special Edition] City of Redding Budget Concerns with Tenessa Audette
In this episode of the Healthy Wealth Podcast, host Chris Hall interviews Tenessa Audette, a city council member in Redding, who discusses the ongoing budget crisis and the lack of transparency in financial reporting. Tenessa shares her experiences on the council, highlighting discrepancies in budget numbers, the challenges of obtaining accurate financial information, and the impact of budget cuts on public services. She emphasizes the need for accountability, community involvement, and a shift in priorities to better serve the citizens of Redding. The conversation also touches on pension obligations, the role of grants in city funding, and the importance of public engagement in local government decisions.
To listen to more episodes, hop over to https://reddingfinancialadvisors.com/podcast/
To find out more about Tenessa Audette and her Budget Analysis, go to https://tenessaaudette.com/
Transcription:
Chris Hall (00:01.432)
Hello and 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 Tenessa Audette And for those of you who been sort of following along, or maybe you haven’t been following along, there is a lot of questions about the current city of Reading budget. And Tenessa has been sort of the lone wolf on this, trying to search and find out what is really going on behind the scenes. And it looks like she’s
She’s kind of standing up there on the branch all by herself, so I wanted to give her an opportunity to make her case. of course, if this increases the 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 want to make sure I give them opportunity to use their voice. So, Tanesa, thank you so much for being on the show.
Tenessa Audette (00:55.142)
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Chris Hall (00:56.974)
Of course, of course. So first and foremost, this has been going on for a while now. Tell us a little bit about how long you’ve been on city council and when you first started noticing discrepancies in actuals versus potentials and things like that. Give us an idea on how long this has been going for you.
Tenessa Audette (01:18.562)
So I’ve been on the council for about two and 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. So we got a new person for a short amount of time, maybe five months before the election. And then that election put in 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. 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 taught. 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 workshops. So they are fresh in, 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. was on March 13th, which just happens to me my birthday, so I will never forget. But we’re in a budget workshop and previously we had been told since, because again, so I came on in December of 22. So my first budget workshop began I think maybe February of 23 and we were building this two year budget right when I came on. So I was in the same boat that these people are in now.
Chris Hall (02:53.582)
you
Tenessa Audette (03:14.872)
And largely, you’re just being told everything, because it’s not like you’re up there with calculators checking their, you know what mean? You just assume these people, I have the same thoughts that the rest of the public does. Why in the world would people not be totally honest and transparent about numbers? You can find out. You could check that. That just seems so silly to me to think that they would be lying about it. Or miscalculating or whatever.
I was largely given that information and you know it’s like okay this is what we want to do we’re going to do two and a half percent on whatever 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 so you only you don’t get the full budget document like imagine
This is the binder, right? It’s 300 pages. Well, you don’t get that until you’re going to vote on it. I got that binder a week before we voted. I had not seen any of those numbers a week before we voted. I had not gotten any actuals. know, so my time
Chris Hall (04:26.062)
Mmm.
Chris Hall (04:34.306)
Have you gotten actuals yet? Because I know in the last meeting that I watched, you still hadn’t gotten any true actuals.
Tenessa Audette (04:40.41)
This is the actuals for 2324. It has actuals in it. They don’t have actuals in that, not the line items. So basically what happened, I’m sorry, I’m gonna jump, I’m jumping around. So if I have not, if I go off course, they’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 13th and I noticed it because the narrative changed.
Chris Hall (04:43.436)
Okay. Okay.
Chris Hall (04:53.612)
Okay.
Tenessa Audette (05:10.128)
So largely imagine this, you’re on this crazy new journey of being responsible for a city and its budgets and 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. So you get there and you’re given very much an overview, not details. And so the overview is fine, but the…
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 is that because we’re front look like this is how you learn is that you you notice anomalies
And you can bring that 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 23, 24 and I was new coming on and maybe six months in, you get your September report.
for 23, you get the report, has a 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. 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, and when they print them for the council to look at, like, I need paper.
I can look at it online, but 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. They told us we had a $5 million deficit, and the city manager says, and I say, hey, we made cuts in January. We’re at our 5 million. Why would we be cutting more cops?
Tenessa Audette (07:29.552)
Why are we cutting more budget? I don’t understand. And he was like, well, it’s actually closer to eight million, the deficit. that is alarming. And 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. And when I went to go look to see how in the world are we over eight million, I realized I don’t actually have any details in these reports.
Chris Hall (07:46.414)
you
Tenessa Audette (07:59.12)
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? Greg Robinette.
Chris Hall (08:04.11)
Who’s the, what’s the name of the finance director? Okay, that’s, that’s what I thought. And Barry Tippett is our city manager. And for those of guys listening.
Tenessa Audette (08:10.948)
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 the conversation with the finance director, he was like, things are way worse than you realize. You should go watch this September video, which was worse, because I watch it and I say, how are we paying for, they’re asking us 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 in the same breath that we are $26 million below our expenditures. So it was confusing. And in that meeting, which I have on the report, I link to that meeting, I say, how are we paying for this money that you’re asking for $5 million? How are we paying for that? And they say, I
They give me some weird answer and I say, is it reserves? Are we paying with reserves? And they’re like, no, no, no, no. That’s the answer. The answer is no, no, no, no, no. I’ll let the city manager answer. And the city manager’s answer was, well, maybe like 2 million. But that decision that day took $7.2 million out of reserves. That took us from, we’re going to end the year at 18 million in reserves to
We’re gonna end the year at 7.9 million in reserves. And that was not stated, it was not clear, and it’s not in the paperwork that they provided to us. There is a 10-year plan that’s an attachment that was not attached and that 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. And I’m in that next budget going like,
Tenessa Audette (10:14.338)
Eight million? Wait a minute, you told us, you know, I mean, the most I could get to is five because of the 3.8 we started with with this extra two. And you’re like, how are we getting there? 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 actual? Why are staff reports for a budget workshop one page long?
or one tiny little box of information and not the full report. So we’ve just not been getting the information and between March and the budget passing in June, I had just said, I I suspected a million things, but if I can’t prove them, I’m not gonna accuse them. I’m just like, hey, we need more information. We can’t make this 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 to show me the bank account. You have to show me the proof that you have a job. I need the pay stub. And if you’re like, no, no, no, 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, no, I can’t pass your budget. If you, 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 (11:42.062)
Yeah.
Chris Hall (11:46.063)
Yeah, I’m a big fan of trust but verify. I like you don’t, I mean, even if you, there’s an old saying, 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,
Tenessa Audette (11:49.593)
Of of course.
Chris Hall (12:09.164)
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. That’s what you’re actually there to do. So which actually kind of makes me wonder, again, what is the goal of city council if you can’t, A, check back against the people that are giving you this information? And B, if you don’t have any recourse to get that. So in other words, you asked for something in March.
they waited three months to give it to you and they gave it to you less than 24 hours before the vote. instead of giving you what you wanted, they gave you seven documents that you didn’t want so that they could bury you in paperwork. mean, how many pages did you get on the day before the budget meeting?
Tenessa Audette (12:47.333)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (12:53.22)
Yeah, that, so here, so on that May 6th meeting, so we had the March meeting and then they canceled the April meeting, which was crazy. Cause like I had all these questions. I was coming in there every day into the offices. Like, wait, something is wrong. Something is wrong. I, you know, I’m in, I’m in the finance director’s office. 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 we something is off here because the audit said that our police budget was fifty two million dollars my budget says it’s forty two million dollars the staff report says that it’s forty nine but we only spent forty five 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 officer and pulling audit books and budget books and I’m like, walk me through the staff report, make this make sense to me, I don’t understand. What do these things mean? And there’s just very little answer at all. be like, mean, somebody at Daquisto asked us to put that in there, 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 had to go back to old reports to make sure that it wasn’t a new request. was
No, 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 for the May 6th meeting. So I did that. And I said, can I? In an 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.
Chris Hall (14:33.038)
What’s the 9 and 12?
Chris Hall (14:39.854)
You
Tenessa Audette (14:45.722)
You don’t really need it. She’s just trying to be difficult. know, just ignore her. Just don’t go along with her. She’s trying to cause problems. okay, so 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 goes on the agenda.
Chris Hall (14:50.572)
Right.
Chris Hall (14:55.342)
For those that don’t know what is an item 12.
Tenessa Audette (15:12.582)
The mayor can ask for things to go on the agenda 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 (15:42.7)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (15:43.012)
can’t discuss it until it gets to that future agenda. So I did, I asked for an answer. I’m like, can I get these reports? And they were like, no, no, no. And the council’s like, you don’t need them, you don’t need them. And I’m like, okay, can I get one? Can I just get one report on expenditures? Like, because on the staff reports, looked like, so the budget that I passed was 108 million in expenditures. Well, it looked like the budget that I, if you looked at the staff reports, the,
it would tell us like, is how much you’ve spent summary. So it’s one number. 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, know, which part of personnel is it administration? Is it field? Like, you 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. What they give us in the staff report now is literally like one box that says police budget, you know, 49 million spent 45. And you’re like, on what? On which part and how much of that is a grant and how, you you don’t know anymore because they don’t give it to you. And so I said, can I just get the expenditures? Cause 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 item 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 and so at the May 20th meeting the night before I Got I got sent it I didn’t see it till the next day in the meeting was like a two o’clock 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
Chris Hall (17:12.259)
Thank
Tenessa Audette (17:38.79)
that our carryovers were like $31 million of carryovers. So my budget’s 108. They’re basically adding $31 million. So every time they tell me that the budget is under by 26 million, that doesn’t mean anything because that could purely be carryovers. So it was kind of, 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, which is crazy because like at any point,
Chris Hall (17:53.133)
Right.
Chris Hall (18:05.154)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (18:08.95)
In the March 13th meeting, the rest of the council or two more had said, no, I don’t want to lose three more cops, I never would have gone down this road because we would have saved the cops. That was the only issue that I could see is like, well, that doesn’t make sense. We cut nine. Why would we need to cut more? We cut the grant funding, is the future spending that we’re trying to avoid. But why would we cut new spending? That didn’t make sense to me because basically they had told us the deficit was if we continued 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. yeah. so, May, I get that May 20th, I get those expenditures. I’m just like, you gotta be kidding. But the other reports that were there were the audit, was from the audit. 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.
Chris Hall (19:06.766)
Hmm.
Tenessa Audette (19:07.366)
And so it was like I got one good one and then I got these other four reports that are other three reports that were just from 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, so that was very frustrating.
Chris Hall (19:34.223)
So in that meeting, it felt, and I saw your interview with Mike Mangus. I’ve known him for years. He’s a great newscaster. I saw your 12, 15 minutes with him.
And it seems like they’re just shutting you down at this point. Like when I watched the budget meeting that I watched, was like you kept asking questions and it felt like not only did they not want to talk about it, Mayor Munz was pretty clear about like, we’re moving on, hey, we’re moving on, hey, we’re moving on, hey, we’ve already voted on it, hey, we’ve already voted on it. Like he definitely didn’t want to have a discussion about it. 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? And they didn’t want you to talk.
and that was the thing that bothered me the most was like hey you know
Tenessa 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 huge salaries of this administrative building that’s going on right now. 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 if you came up to me at end of the year and you’re like, hey, listen, I need $16,000 from you, and I go, what for? And you go, for stuff.
It’s like, 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 million.
Chris Hall (20:59.532)
It’s not it’s 30 million. And to me, it’s like, I don’t understand 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 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. I mean, that’s just my opinion. But it’s a conversation that I had, which is basically like, if somebody calls you and says, hey, listen, I’m getting married tomorrow. Do you want to come to it? You were never invited to that wedding to begin with.
Tenessa Audette (21:28.728)
Right?
Chris Hall (21:29.454)
You what mean? You were an afterthought and they thought, oh, crud, I got to do something. That’s the same as giving somebody a whole bunch of stuff, including something they didn’t ask for at 4 PM the day before a vote. It’s the old lawyer trick of like, let’s give her everything and then it’ll take her 17 years to get through it. So to me, if anything else, feels like there’s definitely smoke, right? And it’s like, so where is the fire? And so I guess what I would say is you seem to be the only one
advocating for this. I have my own two cents on this and I’ll just share it. 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 is probably half now, just without, without, I mean, I have no information. 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 were
You know, now we’ve got people who are retiring at 55 and they’re living to 90. And then we’re paying them 90 % of their salary for the next 40 years. Plus we’ve got to 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 going to fail, right? 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, let’s get all the numbers aggregated so that no one wants to give up police, right? We all want our
police officers. No one wants to give up firefighters. We don’t want to do that. You know, we don’t want that as a community. So let’s aggregate it so that we can 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 denied the last couple of times by the voters. And the most vocal part of that has been we don’t want to pay for all this pension debt. You know, we don’t as a community don’t want to pay for that, especially when we’re driving around on roads that suck.
Chris Hall (23:53.679)
You know what mean? So that’s what we’re worried about. 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, we just need a little bit more money for fire and police. Well, of course, who’s going to say no to that? You know what mean? So those are my thoughts. What are your thoughts on how we can bring more light to this moving forward? What are the next steps? Because at this point, the budget’s been approved, correct?
Tenessa Audette (24:09.499)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (24:21.37)
Yeah, mean, this budget is not accurate. at its very basic, just the numbers are inaccurate. So we are way below our 10%. 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 rolled to the back of their head. And like, I’m in it all day, every day, 10 hours a day.
Chris Hall (24:44.29)
Yeah, totally.
Tenessa Audette (24:49.734)
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. But I put out 150 pages and also nobody wants to read 150 pages. Okay, so we have that going on. So I’m going to go chapter by chapter. I’ve reorganized it.
Chris Hall (25:07.47)
you
Tenessa Audette (25:19.718)
I put it out there, I got feedback. And so I’m going to, I reorganize it. I’ll put out a new version today. I’m reorganizing and then also I’m gonna start doing cliff notes on each of the chapters. So meaning like sort of just the meatiest part of it and sort of spell it out. 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, I don’t like your forecast. It’s, know, we voted on this. You did not do it the way you’re supposed to do the numbers wrong. Here’s what, if you correct that number, here’s what it is. Or we have this amount of money. You said 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 10 year plan,
we’re far below than where we’re supposed to be. 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 work agreements, all those contracts are all coming up in 25 and 26. And everybody’s saying like, well then give us a cost of living increase, you know what mean? So we have this 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
Chris Hall (27:04.91)
Yep.
Tenessa Audette (27:16.162)
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. And my position is
Chris Hall (27:24.666)
Mm-hm, I think that’s right. I think that’s actually been said out loud by numerous folks.
Tenessa Audette (27:30.414)
Right. And so my position is that 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, it’s $30 million. That’s what we’re paying in pension obligations this year. It’s 30 million. And so we had to write that check. We prepay it and we pay back ourselves, but our, you couldn’t even afford to do the whole amount.
we had to split it up. 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 (28:10.674)
When you say pension obligations, you’re talking about current obligations, not what the city funds in past obligations. In other words, you’re talking about what it takes to fund a working person’s pension for him or her this year. You’re not talking about all the people that have been retired.
Tenessa Audette (28:24.794)
The, well, we have to, I think it’s both. I can all find out the answer to that, but we have a payment that we have to make for pensions. I’m assuming that’s everything, is the payment we make to CalPERS, and then it will, 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 (28:39.182)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Hall (28:54.136)
Yeah. Right.
Tenessa Audette (28:54.214)
with about $30 million. 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 the full unfunded pension liability is. And I know that since 2021, that amount has gone up $36 million. Since 2021, it dipped in 2022, but that’s because they had like a good return that year. the cities didn’t have to pay as much, but it was just an anomaly. It’s back.
it bounced right back right after. So I’m kind of taking that number out and just going from 21 to now. So yeah, those obligations are gonna continue, but I’m pretty sure that that payment would be everything. I don’t know why it would be separate. think 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. I can sell those.
I can sell those assets to make up some, you know what mean, some of my losses. 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 going to be very difficult to ever claw back. I mean, it’s not the staff’s fault. You’re not going to turn down a raise. That’s management’s fault for promising something.
Chris Hall (29:53.294)
Thank
Chris Hall (30:02.829)
Right.
Chris Hall (30:17.933)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (30:20.966)
that we couldn’t afford. I mean, they took a huge gamble and it didn’t pay off. Like the revenues didn’t come in to fill that void.
Chris Hall (30:31.81)
And again, like, so why, you know, I’m in the private sector and, know, I work off, you know, basically I work off, 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 make less money if the market’s going poorly and I make more money if the market’s going better, you know what mean? Like, I’m aligned with them.
with these kinds of like public sector things, like 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 overspending during the whole COVID thing. We got this crazy inflationary thing. The private sector did not go up 30 to 40%. Like, you know what mean? Like if you were making 20 bucks an hour, you are not making $26 an hour now. You are making $20 an hour if you’re lucky.
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? mean, REU is asking us for, you know, they’ve already been taking increases, right? They’ve already been taking increases. And now they’re saying, hey, we want five more years of increases, right?
So these are bananas numbers, yet they have four assistant directors that are making over $400,000. They have a director that makes almost a half a million dollars. You’ve got Barry Tippen making almost a half a million dollars. They’ve got these absorbent salaries. And again, it’s not their fault. Shoot, you call me up today and tell me you’re going to offer me 500 grand, I’ll take it. I’m not going to be like, well, I don’t know. Is that what’s best for everybody? No, of course not.
a guy like Barry Tippen get off in giving these kind of raises out without any check back from anybody else. Where’s the checks and balances in this? is these, because it’s not even about the obligation itself, which is exorbing it. I mean, those are huge raises, right? It’s not about that. It’s the obligation future, 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 into PERS and STERS, the pensions are great for them, but for people who have to pay them.
Tenessa Audette (32:52.262)
them. It’s a defined benefit.
Chris Hall (32:54.592)
It’s terrible. Like it’s terrible to have a guy who’s in his 50s who will live 40 years and have to pay him 90 % of his or her salary. Like those are obligated. So every time you give a raise, you’re not just giving a raise, you’re giving a raise forever.
Tenessa Audette (32:55.878)
correct.
Tenessa Audette (33:09.254)
correct. Yeah, it’s very different. But a couple things. One, Barry’s salary is $336,000. It’s not $500,000. So it’s the all in, right? So it’s the benefits package and
Chris Hall (33:16.096)
Mm-hmm. Well, all in. He’s got, so all in, he’s got. Right. And his, like his pension obligation alone is like $75,000. Like that’s how much goes into his pension every year. He’s doing okay. Very soon, okay.
Tenessa Audette (33:26.766)
easily. So, so I just, 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 300s, 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 just putting in the, into a spreadsheet, which is not how it’s presented to
Chris Hall (33:39.287)
good. That’s fair.
Tenessa Audette (33:56.294)
the council, which I will then now require, like whenever we’re talking about, like I, I, I, now I need to see it. Um, 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. So, I mean, this is the reason why it is illegal as of 2016, 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. have to have an impartial negotiator that does it. And he violated that because he negotiated with us in closed session for his last pay raise. so there’s a reason why that law is now on the books because it shouldn’t be that way. Okay, so.
The, I have said this many, many times. So what is said to me sometimes is, 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, well, one, the executive management is from the general fund for some of those things.
And so it does hit us at some point that we have to pay for that. Now, are there currently programs and the ways things are that a lot of that is covered? Yes, but all enterprise funds mostly are rate payers. That’s still us. 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.
Chris Hall (35:45.454)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (35:47.512)
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. Because every single one of those rate payers, they’re all asking for increases. They’re all coming back to us. They all told us in the May 20th report, RU is going to be asking for rate increases. Public Works is going to be asking for rate increases. That’s four different places on your bill.
Chris Hall (35:57.944)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (36:15.674)
where you’re going to have rate increases next year if the council passes those things. So there’s still time to close that.
Chris Hall (36:16.012)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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 going to do is we’re going to go to REU. We’re going to get these constant rate raises. And then we’re going to pile some of that money back into the general fund. do you believe that all of the money that’s going to REU is staying within REU?
Tenessa Audette (36:48.24)
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 want to enterprise group, to the utilities, to RU, because just remember that the city manager said, 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 want to be paid two and a half percent more than the
Chris Hall (36:56.419)
Mm-hmm.
Tenessa Audette (37:17.99)
RU director. Okay, like that seems fair. You want to 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 RU director a raise like that I didn’t understand that was happening either because the the the the she 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 just giving enough information to where it makes sense, but not all the information so you can push back.
Chris Hall (37:54.831)
Right, so he pushed the floor up, he pushed the floor up by himself and then asked this very magnanimous, I just want a slight raise over the floor. Yeah, but you raised the floor before you had enough.
Tenessa Audette (37:58.319)
Yes.
Tenessa Audette (38:02.854)
Yeah, just just just yeah, no, 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 or since 2020. I’m sorry, since 2020. So many numbers. 2020 to 2024, seven raises for executive management, seven. Sometimes they would go years with nothing. 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 is, we have to get people. It’s like, we have more people than we’ve had in decades. So we’re hiring plenty of people. What you’re doing by adding, by raising,
Chris Hall (38:54.114)
Well, it.
Tenessa Audette (38:59.802)
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 (39:13.582)
Well, and then I noticed this was like 10 years ago, maybe longer, when they were going to do this first series of, hey, we’re the cheapest utility in California, we’re the best, we’re already super low, but we want to make these substantial increases to your rates because…
You know, we need to hire talented people. 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? That was one of the most 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? Like in other words, like are we paying the people and renting the same amount of money as they’re paying them in Roseville?
Or we paint them more because I can tell you right now it’s a lot cheaper to live in Reading than it is Roseville. So why are we not manufacturing that in as one thing?
Tenessa Audette (40:02.598)
Absolutely. No, am fundamentally against this idea of market rate pay. I think it’s insane because the fact is that the public, the private market does not have a guaranteed pension at all. if you can’t, that’s the trade off, right? Everything’s a trade off. If you want to work in the public sector, right, you’re not, it’s…
Chris Hall (40:10.924)
Yeah, same.
Chris Hall (40:20.526)
you
Tenessa Audette (40:29.336)
It’s not for the super ambitious because you there’s you may or may not continue to climb. But the fact is, is that it’s a steady job. It’s not going to go down and you have a guaranteed pension. So your time works out in the long run. So the idea that we’re going to pay people what 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.
Chris Hall (40:47.779)
Right.
Chris Hall (40:58.04)
Mm. Right.
Tenessa Audette (40:59.206)
in Reading. I mean it’s kind of crazy to me because that decision in January of 22, it wasn’t just a 20 % so think of your pay scale so for your upper management for your directors the pay scale is like let’s say it was 95,000 to like 140,000 so the most you can make as a director is 140k with a guaranteed pension.
Chris Hall (41:25.784)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (41:26.694)
This January, 2022 took that 90 to 140 and now made the minimum 150. It went up 40%. And then over time, 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%. So now that’s a guaranteed raise.
Chris Hall (41:34.851)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Hall (41:51.564)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (41:54.576)
So if you were brand new, if you were a new director, you got yourself a six, you know, within two years, you’ve got yourself a $60,000 raise for doing nothing but being new.
Chris Hall (41:54.85)
Right.
Chris Hall (42:03.47)
Right, right, right. So how do we, how do we, I mean, we’ve, clearly know that there’s a problem, right? And whether that means that Barry Tippen, 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 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 what they’re doing because they’re to spend us into oblivion. They’re going to spend us into oblivion and they’re just going to keep going at, we need more money, we need more money. No, we need to stop giving 40 % raises to people on pensions.
Tenessa Audette (42:33.018)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (42:45.866)
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. And the way that they get back on track is that your city council says, no, here’s the boundary lines. No more raises, no more going after more things. You’ve got to take care of what you have because…
Chris Hall (42:59.427)
Yeah.
Chris Hall (43:11.246)
Mm-hmm.
Tenessa Audette (43:12.134)
What the people in the city are not asking for, they’re not asking for roundabouts. Listen, I love roundabouts. I love them. People don’t die in intersections when you have a roundabout. Okay? Traffic moves faster. But the city’s like, no, no, no, we want you to fill potholes. But the city says, yeah, but we want this big project, we want to do this thing. And so they bank their streets money so that they could do matching grants, so they could do big projects.
Chris Hall (43:18.222)
Thank
Tenessa Audette (43:39.108)
And so they’re not doing the everyday pothole, street overlays, that kind I mean, the gas tax gives us $10 million every year for streets. We are not utilizing all of that. We are not spending that all. Sometimes we’re banking it, we’re keeping it, we’re saving it for this big project or that big project, but the public has said, no, no, fix it right now. But we haven’t done that. So there’s a disconnect. So it’s like when they tell me, okay, well, we’re gonna have 30 million, or I’m sorry.
30%, which is $9 million more every year. It’s like, you’re not even spending the 10 million on street overlay. So what that tells me is the city says, we want to do it our way. And then if you give us more money, we’ll do it your way as well. And I just think that that’s ridiculous. And we can fix that if the rest of the two more people on the council said, no, you’re going to prioritize what the people say that matters and your big projects as much as you want them. Those are going to have to wait until our streets and the potholes are filled. And once those are filled,
Chris Hall (44:21.378)
Right. Agreed.
Tenessa Audette (44:36.986)
then we’ll go for these grants for these big things. You can go line by line in the new order, 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 works. have different ideas of the best way to do that. Because if we go for this grant, then we could pay for this administration, and that gives us more money for this. it’s very frustrating. So I get that the public wants extra.
Chris Hall (44:39.714)
Right.
Chris Hall (44:55.054)
You’re not going to do that. Yeah. Right.
Tenessa Audette (45:07.43)
The problem is that I think we’re so upside down because of personnel costs. 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, public.
because really what drives a lot of this is grants. The city hall says, but we can get this grant, but we can get that grant. 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, no grants, we’re just not going to take your 50, 30, 50, $60 million in grants every year. We don’t want them. Instead,
Chris Hall (45:49.56)
Right.
Really?
Chris Hall (46:00.505)
Well, know, for example, the grants is this is this like bike lane thing, right? Where every where he’s getting a bike. The only streets that are getting repaved are the ones that bike lanes.
Tenessa Audette (46:04.934)
Yes. 100%. So if we said, you know what, state, we don’t want your grinnits. City of Reading, you know what we want? We want $60 million to prioritize what you say that you want. Put a 2 % sales tax on them. 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, don’t want the state to prioritize our values, we don’t want the state to prioritize what it is that we build or where we build and when we build. We want to do it ourselves.
Then you can 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 those allocations are. And then 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. 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.
Chris Hall (47:19.342)
Mm-hmm.
Tenessa Audette (47:29.39)
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 the salt
Chris Hall (47:48.801)
Why do you suppose that they’re sort of the lone wolf on this case then? I mean, the rest of these folks on city council, I’m not gonna say they have ill intentions, because I know they don’t. Otherwise, I don’t think you’d run for this office. It’s certainly not for pay scale. But why are you fighting so hard and you’re getting deaf ears from the other four people?
Tenessa Audette (48:12.698)
my gosh, I mean, I only could speculate based on the things that they have said. But I just don’t care. I don’t care. mean, whatever is going to get them to come alongside the people, which is ultimately what they want to do, they’re going to need to do that. And I think that I don’t know why. 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, no, everything is great. We haven’t hired that many people. And you’re like, well, that’s not what the data says. Cause my report does not tell you what I think. It uses their data. 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.
Chris Hall (48:56.035)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (49:04.422)
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 that it doesn’t. They’re saying 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 lie to me once, you tell me that we haven’t hired anybody since 2004 except in these
Chris Hall (49:10.84)
Mm-hmm.
Tenessa Audette (49:33.51)
categories and then I find out that that’s not true, I’m gonna go hunt down reality. Like you can tell me horrible things, horrible news and here’s your budget is this and your budget is that and I’ll deal with it. 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 I guess people just didn’t understand like I’m going to raise your expectations of what representation is supposed to look like.
Chris Hall (49:38.978)
Yeah.
Chris Hall (49:55.779)
Yeah.
Tenessa Audette (50:03.834)
This is what a representative looks like. So either everybody steps up and we raise the bar or we go back to the status quo, but 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. But that’s what I sought to do was to at least educate. Hey, if you hear modifications coming after the budget is done, you should look at it. If you hear there’s raises coming, any type of raisin, you don’t see that detailed information and it’s not its own separate item.
Chris Hall (50:06.115)
I like it.
Tenessa Audette (50:33.668)
Red flag, red flag.
Chris Hall (50:35.502)
So like so again like for you obviously you’ve you’ve really got a passion for this and I Talked to somebody else on council and you know, they basically kind of feel like these 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 a manhunt or whatever 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. You know, from our standpoint, we should know.
like what’s going on with the world 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. It’s very placating by the way. How do we move away from this very much like, Hey, 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? Do we need to a big deal? Do we need to vote people out who are just sitting there going to everything’s fine. The vote moves on.
Tenessa Audette (51:39.27)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tenessa Audette (51:46.16)
Yes,
Chris Hall (52:05.582)
you
Tenessa Audette (52:15.064)
I am open for feedback. Correct me. Like, let’s crowd source this information so if it’s wrong, we can get on the right track. Like, I am, am, I wish I was wrong. I wish it was all wrong. But the fact is, is that we’re in a real financial hurt. And they’re, all of their actions are not transparent. We’re not, I’m not saying, my gosh, something is wrong. And they’re giving me more information to figure it out. No, no, it’s less information. And I’m saying, wait, we’re not getting what we need. And then we get.
Chris Hall (52:21.944)
Hmm.
Chris Hall (52:39.384)
Right.
Tenessa Audette (52:41.868)
even less information. I need more actuals we got, even less actuals. Like the response to, 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. You’re like, well, what is it? What’s the ulterior motive? Like what’s the, I just don’t like Barry Tippen. It’s like Barry Tippen spoke in my class for five years, every year. Like I’ve never had a problem with him. But if you tell me something 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 council and your current council aren’t aware of the deficit that they’re in. That this 10 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 million in the last two years when we were planning to spend 3.8.
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? 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 asked and answered. It’s just not true. It’s just not true. And there’s been no hey, well, she says that this the numbers for the internal service payments is
Chris Hall (53:44.654)
All
Right. Right.
Tenessa Audette (54:11.308)
less than what you guys added up. No response. Like go, I’m detailed. Go find out.
Chris Hall (54:13.484)
Yeah. What would it?
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 not gotten yet?
Tenessa Audette (54:31.686)
Oh, I have not had any actuals for 2024, 25. I’ve not seen any of those reports. We’ve been promised that we’re going to get them in September. But remember Q3 was supposed to come out in May, which in Q3 it had that our general fund reserves were at negative 500,000. We didn’t get those in May during the budget. 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.
Chris Hall (54:36.494)
Okay.
Tenessa Audette (55:01.73)
lower than what we anticipated them to be. I could not go back and find a Q3 that had a negative cash balance. So I know that this is not normal because you know get your your big big ones are property taxes which come in January and in May 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 going to end at a negative it just means that the forecast which
which for the end of the year is supposed to be 7.9 million, means that you start where you end. And they’re telling us that we’re going to start at 9 million. That puts the whole general reserve down over a million dollars just at the beginning. It’s off. Our budget is off. what I wish that people knew is, or what we still haven’t gotten is any of the actuals for 24-25. So I don’t know what the carryovers were for 24-25. I know what the budget is that we passed, but I don’t know what the carryovers are.
I don’t know if we are hitting our budget goals. 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 how much we’ve gotten in grants and don’t have. 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. don’t actually make, 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 cash, but like as we know, the Q3, the previous year said we had 20 million and then by the time you get to the first quarter, we’re down to four.
Chris Hall (56:41.73)
So, break.
Chris Hall (56:50.05)
Right, how do we, you’ve got a great system in place now for like this checks and balances, you’re not gonna be quiet, you’ve already proven to everybody that this is not going away for you, which I think is wonderful. So how do, at some point, can the city council work on behalf of the citizens of Redding to rectify the situation the way that you found it?
Is it something that can be fixed or does there need to be true leadership change not only within the council but within the management system?
Tenessa Audette (57:24.582)
100%. There’s just no way to move forward. Because of the efforts to conceal this information and just the lack of responsibility to really disclose our really where we are. And I just don’t think you can. 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 because there’s no way that anybody is going to trust that anything will be different with who’s currently there in management.
And so number one, 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 don’t expect that. 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, yeah, let’s get that information. But for whatever reason, yeah, but for whatever reason, they’ve chosen to stick with Barry’s narrative and they went in that direction.
Chris Hall (57:55.47)
What the hell,
Chris Hall (58:14.702)
Get her what she needs. That’s what I would say, get her what she needs.
Tenessa Audette (58:22.852)
But now I think I’ve given an alternative theory. And so I think there should be an ad hoc committee that like, you we can call it a oversight or audit or whatever you want to call it to go through the data and to say, this was accurate. This wasn’t accurate. This is what we found. And then say, here’s what we recommend to the council and to do that quickly.
Chris Hall (58:44.792)
Can we get that? How do we get that on the board? That sounds like a great idea. do we that on board?
Tenessa Audette (58:47.65)
will be an item 12. That’ll be an item 12. I’ll present it as an item 12 to do an ad hoc committee to look at the findings. And then I do. And maybe that ad hoc can say if they think that malfeasance or nonfeasance, that those thresholds were met when it comes to our management, and then which is a violation of a contract.
Chris Hall (59:05.352)
And
Chris Hall (59:09.366)
And the people in the ad hoc committee, those would be regular citizens.
Tenessa Audette (59:15.172)
I think there should be, I think Noel DeShort 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 want to be on it. I know all the documents, you know, I have all that information and I know what we need to be looking for and where the discrepancies are. And then another one of the council members that wanted to be involved.
Chris Hall (59:43.279)
All right, so that’s what we’re asking right now is we’re asking for, we’ve spent basically an hour talking about this and all we’re asking city council to do is help us find the truth. So if you’re elected official and you’re hearing my voice right now, your citizens demand from you that you find out transparency.
Tenessa Audette (59:52.57)
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Hall (01:00:03.308)
Tinesse is 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? We’re not saying she’s right. We’re not saying that you’re right. Perfect. I love that.
Tenessa Audette (01:00:12.464)
Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. Yeah, go ahead. Go for it. I mean, that would be wonderful. I mean, the fact is, you know, 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. 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 money issues, and I think we can address that.
Chris Hall (01:00:47.534)
Well, do you know anything about this? My last this is my last question. This is just my personal question that is related slash unrelated to what we’re talking about. Obviously, you’re never going to get pension and fire off of or you never get 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 their less pension and they’re more like 401K 457 oriented.
What would it take for our city to start moving these executive people that are not policing fire? What it would take to move them off of pensions and into a traditional retirement savings account? How hard would that be? Is that something that’s just never going to happen? Or can we take the upcoming tidal wave of pensions and go, hey guys, this is only going to get worse. We need to solve it now.
Tenessa Audette (01:01:40.998)
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 supplemented. 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. 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 401k that I don’t know. I would want, but I would want to know. I’d want to find out. I want to hear what the other options are, what other cities are possibly doing. I know that that’s something that DeQuesto, when I met him before I got on the council, that was something that he wanted to do, wanted to pursue. And so 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. mean that’s the deal. 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 on what side and what’s possible. Because if it’s not possible, they’re going to want to know why.
Chris Hall (01:03:08.216)
Right.
Right, everybody in the private sector for the most part has moved away from pensions. Like almost every single category. I worked for a pharmaceutical company for 10 years, they had pensions, they don’t have pensions anymore.
You know, anywhere you see a pension, it’s only a government employee. And it’s 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. That’s why the only pensions that exist now are in the public sector, because any time they get into a problem, they go, just raise taxes. So if it doesn’t work for private, it doesn’t work for public.
But we’re still going to keep doing it because we can just raise taxes. That just seems like the worst logical argument I’ve ever heard.
Tenessa Audette (01:03:57.688)
It’s very frustrating. again, I think it comes down to what are the priorities of the people? You know, I hear it over and over that, you know, police and fire 80%. You’re like, well, they’re two thirds of the entire budget. So of course they are. We’ve got parks, police and fire. That’s, are you saying that you want parks to be more? You want them to be 20, 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. So it’s like, what are you saying? Are you saying you don’t want police and fire? I this is what we do. This is what government does. It does your public safety and infrastructure. 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 somewhere around there. So it’s like 24 % more for police and fire and 18 % more for parks. Is that what we say that we want? So I mean, if it is, I get it. But you’re still taking… Right, so as citizens, like, of course we want beautiful things, but I guarantee you,
Chris Hall (01:05:11.342)
Is that a priority for us? Is that a priority for us as citizens?
Tenessa Audette (01:05:20.866)
if I said, 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 going to 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. So it’s, it’s, I just wish that the, 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 I’ll be fine with it. I’m okay. I have so many friends that I disagree with. It is not a contingency of being friends with me is agreeing with me. I don’t take it personal if you don’t like my ideas. I am going to hunt for truth. I am going to get as much information as I can and then I’m going to trust the public to be able to make the decision that they think is best for them and I’m not going to be upset about it. I’m just going to figure out how to make it work or have a better argument next time.
Chris Hall (01:06:04.366)
break.
Chris Hall (01:06:18.744)
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. So for me, I’m very excited. Is there anything that you want to kind of like say before we end this podcast that, you know, maybe we didn’t cover it or maybe you just want to like, you know, lay down the last point like real hard? You know, the floor is yours.
Tenessa Audette (01:06:48.442)
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 want to have an idea of what’s going on, I would say read it. And if you don’t want to read it, I would look at the Cliff Notes, but follow me at atvote.tinesa. I’m going to 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 somebody wants to do a town hall, I am more than happy to show up. I will debate anybody. 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 (01:07:41.369)
Nice. Well said. We can’t do any better than that.
Tenessa Audette (01:07:44.942)
You
Chris Hall (01:07:45.485)
Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. really appreciate it. I think we got a lot of good information. And again, I think you just really summarized that we just want transparency. We want to know what’s going on. We want to know the truth and then we can make steps based on that. But we don’t want to 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 council. And then I watch what you guys go through. And I think, don’t know if I have the capacity for that.
So thank you for having the capacity for that. All right, 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. All right, 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 maybe you have some insight on things that you want to be part of in this community as we move forward. So all right, thank you very much. You guys have a good day.
Tenessa Audette (01:08:18.724)
My pleasure.
Tenessa Audette (01:08:26.982)
Thank you.