Welcome everybody to the special budget meeting of the Metropolitan Council this Tuesday, December 9th, 2025.

We'll call the meeting order.

Ashley, do we have a quorum?

We have a quorum.

All right, everybody, please sign the approof of notice that should be coming around of the meeting.

Item number one amending preliminary current expense budget and capital budget of the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge for year 2026 submitted by the Mayor President and adopting final current expense budget and capital budget of the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge for the year 2026 by the Mayor President deferred on November 12, 2025.

Anyone wishing to speak on this item?

I have a Robert Joyner.

6037 Hickory Ridge.

Mr.

John Thank you, sir.

Robert Joyner, 6037 Hickory Ridge Boulevard.

I'm a resident of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Uh a couple things that I would like some clarification on with the adoption of this budget.

First, uh there's been a lot of talk in these budget meetings about changes to some of the proposals for the budget, specifically the constable that was asked to be cut, a lot of promises, decisions were be made.

I just want to make sure that the actual budget that's being voted on today is what was previously put in the public notice over a month ago.

My second item is there was a uh at the end of last year, entergy review renewed their franchise agreement uh with city parish, which generated an additional 1.2 million dollars in revenue for the city parish.

Uh that revenue has been allocated as of earlier this year to all of the city council's operations budget.

It's about a hundred thousand dollars for each council member's operation budget additional.

Uh it's about a 74% increase in the council's budget for 2026.

Um I would ask for justification on each of those operation budgets of why they're putting put to the operations of the city council while we're talking about cutting the public works department's uh ability to provide the services that are needed by the by the residents.

Um as of January of this year to October of this year, the butt the council has approved contracts for up to one 195 million dollars with private consultants and contractors and another four million dollars in settlements for medical bills and recs.

Um I would like some some confidence that all of those contracts have been looked through to see that they are all essential to be cutting the city parish employees positions filled or non-filled.

These is we used to have about two times as many public works employees, you know, 10-15 years ago now as we do.

We over a thousand public works employees that used to be permanent employees of the city parish.

That's almost half.

The Department of Maintenance used to have over 400 employees, now they have 196 with the proposed 2026 budget.

Um all this does this the services we need are not going away.

The uh the services that need to be provided by the permanent employees are not going away.

All this leads to is, and we're getting more and more infrastructure to take care of every year.

All this leads to is more and more contracts for services for staff augmentations of permanent contractors that are put in place while city parish employees are being cut.

I would like to know that all of those contracts that are put in place every year and and new contracts that are put in place are seen as necessary to the operations of the public works department before any public works employees get cut.

At least to your disenfranchising basically the the city parish civil servants that come here and work for less money than they could get in a private firm.

You're putting money into the pockets of these contract company owners that pay their employees employees still a little bit amount of money.

It's not right in my opinion for the working class people that make this parish 10th round.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak on this item?

See, now we'll go to council.

Councilman Hudson.

Excuse me.

Council members, you should have received one email comment in opposition to item one.

Motion to approve uh the budget as uh proposed.

Second.

We have a motion to approve the budget uh as presented, second by council councilman Hudson, second by councilwoman Coleman.

Councilwoman Adams.

I have a substitute motion.

Um I'd like to make a motion that we approve the budget as written with the following amendments.

Um and just a moment of privilege.

I just want to say thank you to everyone who participated in the council budget hearings.

We had a tremendous um uh amount of engagement, um, attendance.

Um it was it was great to see this community come together um to to dig into the current challenges that we are facing.

I'd like to offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to all of my colleagues as well.

I think we've always known our budget books, but this year we know them even better, right?

We can recite in verse and page.

So these amendments have been gathered together in collaboration with the mayor's office and council members.

So these this is a collaborative amendment to the 2026 East Baton Rouge Parish, City of Baton Rouge consolidated government budget.

Council District one is trans asking to transfer $10,000 to juvenile court and $12,500 to the parish attorney's office.

Council District Number 2 is asking to transfer $5,000 to the public defender's office.

Council District 3 is asking to transfer $19,323.98 to the district court.