Maybe the finance planning committee is called the order at 8 46 a.m.

on April 23rd.

I hope everyone had a nice earth day yesterday.

Um start off roll call Otter Roman O'Neill.

Are you with us?

Present.

We can hear Alderman Thorpe.

Present.

Alderman Huntley's here.

We also are joined today by Otto Roman Conti.

And uh is there a motion to approve the agenda as written?

So move.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes from yesterday's meeting?

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Mr.

Pellico, floor is yours.

We'll put 15 minutes on the clock.

You could just swap the mics, they move.

It might be easier to move the mics to move yourself.

Okay.

So don't count this on his time, Kaylin.

All right, good morning.

Um just wanted to quickly highlight Sean Doyle and Karen Ajay, who's sitting back behind me in uh support of the finance department, but I will uh get going through the presentation here.

Um, oh, and Darren, who's our wonderful budget analyst.

Uh and so want to just jump in, start with our fiscal year 26 accomplishments, a lot to be proud of here.

Uh we were able to get a clean audit opinion on both the ACFAR and the single audits.

We completed the fiscal year 2025 audits with within the extension timelines, uh despite multiple staff vacancies, as has been communicated.

Uh we delivered the 2027 proposed budget on time to the city council on April 13th.

Uh, and then while also maintaining and uh enhancing core delivery across the accounting team, payroll budgeting and treasury operations.

Uh we have since we arrived, also provided and worked with the team on building 50 standy 50 plus standard operating procedures for the finance department to start building that durability and resilience in the department going forward.

And uh we are really highly focused on the Annapolis Works initiative and uh increasing our customer service levels by staffing vacant positions to support residents and internal stakeholders.

Uh our team has been heavily involved in this budgeting process as we've discussed around some of this uh changes in centralization for ITS and central services, and so working closely with those teams and other departments to make that shift.

And then in preparation of our move to the Shaw Street office, we've uh really taken significant efforts in cleaning the office vault and moving out physical paperwork in accordance with regulations.

And so there's been a lot going on in these last few months and really proud of everything the team's been doing to uh move the needle forward.

Uh speaking to our performance measures, uh, these are performance measures that have been historically included with the budget process.

We submitted the same ones uh as last year to keep a consistent flow.

Uh won't necessarily go through all of them unless if you'd like me to, but they are here, they listen in the budget book, but really focused on a lot of transactional activity and just ensuring that the team is operating at a high level of issue efficiency with regards to processing transactions, uh evaluating spending, and then also um making sure that we're working towards a better future with electronic uh type payments versus physical payments.

Um budget enhancements, we really had only one significant one.

Uh as you all are aware, we've been making a transition here within our payroll process and HRS system from using the standard MUNIS payroll system to a NeoGov system.

And in doing that, we wanted to enhance our payroll centralization.

And so uh we've recently had brought on a uh employee in a contractor capacity.

Uh and we do feel it is very critical for the city of Annapolis to make that person a full-time employee as they are touching significant information for the city of Annapolis.

And so converting our existing contractor to a certified payroll manager to handle payroll compliance, support grant funded project reporting and reduced burden on the existing accounting staff.

Uh we actually did not add anything from personnel, non-personal enhancements.

Actually, we've been we were really focused in the process of uh achieving some of the reduction requi uh uh asks from the mayor's office, and we were able to successfully implement that into our budget.

In terms of budget trends, you're going to see that this salary and benefits line has increased over time.

Majority of that is tied to uh the payroll manager as well as just the pay and comp plan studies having uh right size some of the staffing uh expenses as well as just a large uh portion being tied to benefits having increased, people's elections changing and just increased um costs there in terms of contractual services.

Uh we are keeping a similar line item continuing to ensure that the finance department has the tools that it needs to uh continue moving forward and executing on the development in terms of supplies and other we've decreased uh we have a larger amount in the fiscal year 26 projected, but for proposed, we've been uh uh bringing it back down in line as we think that we can manage with uh the team and and identifying things such as free training and other types of opportunities.

And then this question will actually go back for capital outlay.

We'll actually go back to what Alderman O'Neil um had been asking about yesterday with the ITS move, but all 118,000 of what we had expensive, what we're expecting to spend in 2026 are all related to software such as like OpenGov and also some other capital outlays around laptop refreshments and everything else, which have now been centralized into ITS, and so that number uh shifts to zero on our side and can then be part of the increase on the ITS side.

Um in terms of additional information as we look forward into fiscal year 27.