Yeah, we're doing that.

Yeah, it's now the right.

So now we need to start like one wall.

So let me back up.

I did most of the works.

Good evening.

I will call the March 10th, 2026 budget committee meeting to order.

All members are present.

Please stand again for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

This begins our FY27 budget discussions.

I'll turn it over to the city manager for our overview.

And then we have a whole host of budget committee meetings coming up over the next couple months, uh beginning with some department head overviews, we'll hear from social and municipal services, and then a handful of meetings for deliberations as well.

Um so I'll turn it over to the city manager.

Thank

you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, and good evening, Council.

Interestingly.

I think I want council to be able to see it as well.

So

let me

just

connect and let me try again.

Oh, here we go.

All right.

And it is coming

up.

Here we go.

So um

thank you again for this opportunity to present our the deferred fiscal year twenty-seven preliminary budget summary.

Um as you can see, we have uh our leadership staff here today to answer any questions that you might have.

Uh I do want to take uh a few minutes to just thank our finance team, Jerry Methurn and Nate Colpitz, um, who assisted with this Herculean endeavor.

Uh so what we have for you today, I will just be going through an overview.

Sorry, let me put this in um presentation mode for you here.

There we go.

So

we'll go through a general summary of the uh preliminary budget.

We'll do some budget highlights.

I want to run through what our assumptions are for the numbers that we uh present to you today and some outstanding topics uh to discuss at a later date.

So just to level set, the preliminary overview um that you'll receive today on this proposed budget really is early, early projections on a revenue and estimated expenditures.

There's uh a number of things that we need to factor into the overall budget including the school budget which we don't have yet that will be presented to you on the 17th.

So just keep in mind that this is just a rough overview.

There has been, as you know, significant turnover in both our finance department and in management and administration.

Given that between the fiscal year 26 preparation and this year's fiscal year 27 budget preparation there has been a lot of change in how we're doing the work, how we're looking at those numbers, how we're pulling those numbers, I think that's all going to factor in and for you to just keep in the back of your heads as we go through these numbers.

That's why we're asking for some additional time to verify the numbers that exist in our MUNIS system and you know cross-reference it with what has been proposed to the previous council in fiscal year 26.

So we need that time to verify and we will get full budget workbooks out to everybody as soon as they're available and we're hoping to have those too by next week definitely in advance of the department head presentations that you'll see on the 24th and the 26th.

So a note about that previously for those of you who were on the council before you might notice a different format for for the way you're receiving the budget and looking at the budget workbook and the worksheets.

Previously the administration was using some manual spreadsheets with a lot of tabs at the bottom we made a decision this year to move this into Munis and use MUNIS as our system of record to export the the data that's in there, the budget that's in there and so you might find if you looked at old spreadsheets versus new spreadsheets there's some discrepancies there.

So I just wanted to notate that just to again level set.

We're doing the transition over to MUNIS just because again it is our financial system of record I think it will provide better transparency and better accuracy when you're not relying on you know um human calculations as opposed to software calculations of the numbers now in preparing this budget we we started off you know when I came on board in in the fall we did um some retreats with department heads we also had subsequent strategic planning sessions to talk through all the challenges all the gaps that we had as a city and they've continued to be our conversations moving forward into this budget preparation.

I think what was noted to the staff was we understand that we need to tighten our belts this year.

I uh we understand that there was a significant increase in in the tax rate and property tax bills for individuals many of you came to this council on the platform of trying not to increase those taxes and so I think this is part of the discussion we'll have as we go through this budget session, budget preparation and look at those numbers.

So we told staff really we need to limit any new programs, anything beyond base budget.

And so what you'll see is just very limited in terms of any proposals of a new program but we really had to focus on true up some of the base budget numbers that we had, making sure that what had been budgeted or what had been approved in the previous year was in fact in the system that we're trueing up those numbers.

Past budgets don't reflect the full scope of the needs in areas like legal review, auditing services as you know, consulting services so you'll see some year over year increases that are abnormally large and that's because they weren't in the posted budget at the time back in you know May of 2025 those things hadn't been realized yet and we're comparing to those numbers that were presented at that time as opposed to the adjusted budget.

So like I said the full review of the fiscal year budget will be provided at the earliest opportunity.

Now you have in front of you the budget presentation I know it's a little bit hard to read the screens when we're um we're talking about a lot of numbers but we we prepared this for you tonight just so that you can see the full budget in all its glory with all of the the the new staff the one new program that we're proposing and the additional staffing that we're proposing so that you can get an idea of what that number looks like.

We're talking about a 12.5% preliminary increase in our general fund expenditures.

Are we are we taking any input during the presentation or we wait until the end?