Are we good?

All right, thank you all.

Glad to see the full house tonight for the budget and finance committee.

No, well, uh, thank you all for being here.

Uh Mr.

Clerk, we have all our attendees for the budget and finance committee, myself, uh CC, uh Councilperson Gerlock and Councilperson Moda is also in attendance.

Um we can, I guess we'll get started with a quick acknowledgement.

Um in the past month, we did receive news of some very great um kind of update as far as the city's bond rating that was shared to us from the finance department.

I'd like to thank Director Patel for that.

Um it's extremely telling about the state of the city's finances, the uh administration of the city's finances that obligations to date.

Um it it really paints a very positive picture from you know the public and and private world, just the way that they see Allen Town, the way that um our finance department has gone about uh administering these funds and providing that guidance and uh you know I I hope that we can continue being uh uh an arm to all the good things that we're we're doing to continue to bolster the city's position and just reiterating that for the residents.

This is an incredible thing.

Uh it gives us the opportunity to borrow at uh lower rates, it allows us to really invest back into our community and just Director Patel.

I would I want to like thank you just for that work and for your team.

I know it's a lot of work that goes into it, so the just congratulations and then thank you for that.

Thank you, Sampongo.

It is uh collaboration, it's a team work and uh uh can't do it without my team.

So and also my colleagues, uh directors who also support when we are um um you know managing our finances and and reviewing uh our budgets and they might have to give something back, and we we work together as uh as our colleagues uh you know department heads and of course the finance team has um a lot of uh um making journal entries and making sure our our we are uh being very transparent in the work we do and uh reviewing the budget and uh uh processing um uh the information, the transfers after you have approved and adopted the budget to continue monitoring and monitoring the budget that's approved and not going above and beyond that.

We work very hard to work uh within those limits that you have approved.

So that's a result of that you are saying that number of um for number of years.

Um thank you for the acknowledgement.

We appreciate that.

Absolutely, of course.

Um we do have as far as the agenda for today for budget and finance, just a review of our budget uh recommendations and then a review of that uh process.

I guess my my question is I know I know I have some of our reports here.

Did you have anything you wanted to share or anything that was uh based off what was provided?

Just a finance report.

It's all good if you don't, but so just basically we are in a good standing and after Q1, um not too much um variance from uh previous years, uh previous few years.

Um very comfortable with where we are at with revenues and expenditures.

Um you would see the cash balance is high around this time of the year because the property tax revenues have started coming in.

So that's what you're seeing about 58 million dollars in cash because that will sustain us for the rest of the year with our operating expenditures.

Um besides that I provided all of the highlights in the memo, uh, but nothing uh outside of that.

Um just one more comment on we have been um working on our implementation of Tyler Eden to Tyler Muniz uh since November of 2023, and we did module at a time.

So we began even within finance department, we begin with purchasing module, then we went to GL and purchasing simultaneously, then we we are working on budget and um payroll and HR uh at the moment, and we hope by September uh to go live fully with all of migration from Eden to Muniz.

And we hope by September to go live fully with all of migration from Eden to Muniz.

So there was a small update.

Generally, I provide that at a quarterly meeting.

So just wanted to give you that small update that teams still working very hard, and now we have HR involved as well, where granular details on personnel forms and all that.

So a lot of personnel time is spent on fully migrating to Munis.

Absolutely.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Patel.

All right.

So as far as kind of the next item here, we uh as part of the kind of the resolution put forth by uh councilperson Binder have been undergoing um the entire review of the budget process.

That process was completed last month.

Uh and you know, we're very interested in pretty much submitting those recommendations to council.

Sorry, guys, my notes not enough person.

Um so we do have the list of uh essentially findings that were provided and were reported on at our last uh budget and finance committee.

Um of those, there are just a couple that were would be really good to touch on.

There were uh a couple of proposed updates to the rules, so kind of you know, a couple of those would be um amendment deadlines and standards.

So just kind of making sure that we have our amendment process uh put together and that when we're issuing a budget amendments as part of the budget process that we are submitting them in a timely format.

I think there's a potential suggestion to do that, say for uh the second council meeting in November.

Um then there was also the kind of question procedure.

So give me one second, I'm just kind of going through that.

Let me pull down to that.

So there is a matter of how we communicate with the finance department.

So I guess Director Patel, the there was some conversation of if there is, you know, I think there's a standard of how we request questions during budget season, but if there's any opportunity to maybe collaborate uh on some sort of collaborative document where you know, as questions arise during the budget process, maybe we populate those somewhere where we can have you know the finance department and ourselves kind of going back and forth, and those questions could maybe be reported at at a public meeting, any answers to those questions so that way everyone gets an opportunity to answer as well as we get time to ask questions, and it's not like everyone's on the spot, and we're also not maybe getting the answers we would like because it's you know in the moment.

Um, so what I would like to propose is if anyone is interested in the committee to kind of go and sit down with Director Patel and see maybe what what that could look like if that's an online Excel document or if that's some sort of you know other vehicle or whatever makes sense, um, and then we'll take that and see what we can do and and go from there.

Does anybody have any thoughts on that specific item?