The Finance Committee held a special budget hearing on April 22, 2026, at 8:31 AM, called to order by Alderman Huntley. Members present: Alderman Huntley, Alderwoman O'Neill, Alderman Thorp. The committee reviewed the Mayor's Office and Integrated Technology Services (ITS) budgets for FY27, approved a supplemental appropriation and fund transfer, and recommended fee waivers for city-supported special events with an amendment.
The meeting recessed from 9:31 to 9:39 AM and adjourned at 10:50 AM.
Two minutes until we're going. Something meeting of the finance standing committee is called the order at 8 31 a.m. on April 22nd. Happy Earth Day, everybody. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to a or sorry, first uh I gotta do a roll call. Auto Roman O'Neill, you're here. Yeah, oh, we can't hear you, but I could tell you were saying present. Uh Alderman Thorpe, you're here. All right, I'm here. Uh is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. All right. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And Kayla, we have notes from yesterday, right? Yes. Okay. So uh is there a motion to approve the minutes from yesterday's meeting? So maybe second. Aye. All right. Uh Miss Gardy, floor is yours. We uh way we normally do this is you got 15 minutes for your presentation. We'll try to interrupt you as little as possible. Might just ask some little questions for clarity, and then we'll go through and each one of us have questions. We'll start with Alder Woman O'Neill, Altoman Thorpe, me, anybody else in the room who needs to ask a question, any questions that I've been emailed from other council members. And we'll try and be wrapped up on time. So uh Kayleigh, can you put 15 minutes on the timer? Yep. Thank you very much. You're up. All right, good morning. Hi, my name is Neely Gardy. I am the chief of staff for the mayor's office. Um I'm just gonna go over our top three accomplishments um to date for fiscal year 26. Um, number one is just the increased uh mayor's community engagement. Um, and this is the first four months of um since the mayor has been put into office. Um we've done events such as town halls, ward walks, and office hours reaching over 500 residents. Um we've also conducted staff round tables and two all staff meetings um to interact and hear from the staff, um, touching over 350 staff members. Um, constituent services. Um, we have a full-time constituent services person um who started in March. Um, and you can just I'm not gonna go over all these stats, but she's been hard at work. Um accomplishments, just strengthening and expanding the mayor's communications. Um, not gonna go over all these stats. We have obviously a presence on social media, put out a lot of press releases, do broadcasts almost daily, um, ceremonial things. We've been pushing out uh weekly newsletters from the mayor's office. Um we do anywhere from five to you know a ton of speeches every week, um, a lot of graphic design, and then also just responding to media inquiries. Um, just our direct impact in the community. Um I'm just gonna kind of briefly just talk about our outreach teams.