Annapolis Finance Committee Meeting - July 15, 2026
Annapolis Finance Committee Meeting - July 15, 2026
The Annapolis Finance Committee met on July 15, 2026, to review budget-to-actuals reports, discuss parking contract overruns, and recommend approval of two grant resolutions. Key topics included the timing of financial reports, cultural changes for timely data entry, and new protocols for vendor reconciliation.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of Agenda: The agenda was approved with an amendment to move general discussion above supplemental appropriations. (Unanimous)
- Approval of Minutes: The minutes from the last finance committee meeting were approved. (Unanimous)
Discussion Items
- Budget-to-Actuals Report: Finance staff presented the budget-to-actuals report for the period ending March 2026. Alderman Thorpe commended the annotations and the 10% variance threshold but raised concerns about the report being presented in July for a March close. The finance director noted that cultural changes across departments are needed to meet earlier deadlines and estimated it would take a full year to implement a monthly or quarterly closing process. The fourth-quarter report is expected to be delivered in August instead of September this year.
- Parking Contract Overruns: City Manager Miss Lewis and Transportation Director Marcus Moore reported on a $573,000 overrun in the parking fund tied to an SP contract. After reconciliation, the overrun was reduced to between $200,000 and $225,000. The overrun resulted from a lack of change orders for additional work, including data processing fees linked to citation volume. New protocols will include monthly reconciliation of invoices and immediate review upon receipt. The vendor receives no incentive for writing more citations. The parking contract expires June 30, 2027, and an RFP is expected in three to five months.
- SA 127 – LED Lighting Grant: Deputy City Manager Jackie Gyle presented a $408,500 grant from the Maryland Energy Administration to replace outdoor lighting with LED fixtures and conduct an energy audit. The grant requires no match. Part of the funds ($100,000) will support a detailed street light audit to identify city-owned lights, redundant lights, and potential savings from acquiring BGE-maintained lights.
- SA 227 – Alcohol Compliance Grant: Police Administrative Manager Craig Medley presented a grant of approximately $5,000 from the Department of Health for overtime and cadet pay to conduct alcohol compliance checks. The amount slightly increased this year.
Key Outcomes
- SA 127 received a favorable recommendation (motion and second, unanimous aye).
- SA 227 received a favorable recommendation (motion and second, unanimous aye).
- The committee will continue discussions on formatting and timing of budget-to-actuals reports and consider amending the city code to align with a December audit (not close) timeline.
- The audit committee will receive a detailed audit timeline on the following Monday.
- The committee directed staff to implement monthly reconciliation of vendor invoices and require change orders for any scope changes.
Meeting Transcript
7 a.m. on July 15th. At this time, I'll enter. Oh, uh Roll Call first. Alter Roman O'Neal. President. Alderman Thorpe. And I'm here. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda with an amendment that moves our general discussion above supplemental appropriations. So the order would be uh business and miscellaneous, general discussion, then supplemental appropriations and adjournment. Is there a motion for that? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. All right. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the last finance committee meeting? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Beautiful. All right. So Ms. Jerry, would you prefer to give us the general finance department update before budget actuals? Do you have a preference which way we go? All right. Let's just uh start with the budget to actuals. So first of all, thank you so much for getting these to us to the whole team. And I will tell you just truthfully that I skimmed through it this morning. I have not had a chance to dig into it quite as much as I would have liked. But our goal here really is just to look through this and be able to ask you any questions, but also if there's anything off the bat that you think that you want to call our attention to, uh put the baton in your hands before we start peppering you. Good morning, everyone. Um course this is my first time uh actually looking at this report, and uh it's a wealth of information. Uh my only concern is um basically focusing on the material uh budgets. I think that is something that we probably can rearrange it to have those items discussed first. So rearrangement is important to me. Um in addition to that, I I really believe that we can probably come up with a way to uh present this in a different way. So I'm happy to have those discussions in the future, near future. Excellent. Yeah, we'll be interested to hear that. Thank you. Um so at this time I'll open it up to the committee to ask any questions, anything you wanted to go over anywhere. Uh I'm thinking mostly about specific things, but if you have general questions too, that's just fine. Either one of you guys want to go first. I will be honest that having received it last night, I have not had a chance to do more than a crucier over. So at this time I don't have any questions. Um thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um thank you uh for submitting it. And um and I uh Roger, your guidance there, Mr.
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