Hello, everybody.

We are having our last kind of pre-meeting of the budget before it is introduced on the uh October 6th City Council agenda.

Just to kind of wrap up those who are watching the kind of the purpose of this meeting, we had an initial introduction meeting and then we had two workshops for each department.

We went through each department to go through their budget.

The council gave feedback on items that they maybe would like to see adjusted or cut.

And the mayor and her team have taken that into consideration or coming back with us with a few adjustments today.

Today's meeting, the way this is going to go.

After that, the council will be able to ask questions or make comments.

And I don't anticipate this will be a meeting that will go all the way till 11 as scheduled.

But the time is there and we'll not shut off conversation.

I want to make just kind of some opening comments before I turn it off and turn it over to our mayor.

I know sometimes things kind of get uncomfortable when you're dealing with very serious topics that matter to so many people here, and we're facing a lot of challenges with Senate Enrolled Act 1, so this is uh not a fun budget season for us.

Uh, but we appreciate your willingness to consider our viewpoints.

The two biggest changes that she'll be going over.

One is experienced Carmel is no longer uh in the 2026 budget.

Um, that will be an item that we will continue to discuss in 2026, but not will not be launching on January 1st.

And then the consulting money for Indy Partnership, which is part of Indy Chamber, uh, that has been adjusted, and um there's also some money available from that too.

And Mayor Finkel will go into more detail.

Um, I really thank you for that because I vow to you that I will uh keep an open mind uh in 2026 for experienced Carmel, and we will have some robust discussions, and we won't have as much of a compressed timeline to talk about this, which will uh I think make for better discussion.

And with that, I will turn it over to Mayor Finkham.

Thank you.

Good morning, council.

Uh, you already pretty much went over the but uh uh agenda.

However, we will be also talking, updating you on the bonding capacity and just the quick next steps for your actions on the budget.

Uh so moving forward, uh, thank you for the overview.

I just cut out a couple paragraphs because I was gonna go over the process, so you took the care of that.

Uh, today we do enter a new phase of the budget preparation for 26.

Um, for those who have not been following closely since this summer, our budget or our departments have been working diligently with me and our finance team to match programmatic desires with economic realities.

And uh as you are all away here, it's a long slow work, but it's really important.

Uh as you know, Senate Enrolled Act 1 changed the landscape for Indiana cities and Carmel included.

Expectations we had this time last year evaporated as that legislation became law, and we modeled out the impacts.

Gone was the expectation of continued generous general growth fund general fund growth and available access to bond funds.

Uh notably, this took a further hit as the Hamilton County auditor recently reduced Carmel's net assessed values in response to their calculation error as they interpreted this complex new law.

Uh, my priorities throughout every main public safety infrastructure, parks, and arts, but no department achieved everything they sought.

We balanced each request against limited revenues.

Taxpayers asshared that food prices, back to school costs, and rising home costs due to a shortage of housing have hit their pocketbooks hard.

And we've listened, and this budget we delivered, does not require tax increase.

I'm also proud to say that by keeping the line on expenses, unlike many Indiana communities, our team members are getting market and cost of living adjustments this year.

Today we're here to present some updates to our proposed budget, addressing the two main concerns you shared.

For the revised proposal, we are suggesting two major changes.

As Council President Austin said, removing the experienced Carmel grant from the budget and reallocating those funds to the MAC department and reducing by 120,000 dollars funding to Department of Economic Development and allocating those dollars to MAC.

To be clear, I believe strongly in a model like Experienced Carmel, community-based with many stakeholders and a diversified revenue structure.

It's appropriate that the City of Carmel graduate into this model.

As many of you expressed worry about the timing required to receive to uh realize the fulfillment of experienced Carmel.

I'm proposing to collaborate with the council over the next 12 months to build an experienced Carmel model that meets the need of our community that we can budget for this time next year.

Well, I believe the first of the year timeline was workable.

I appreciated that the council did not.

As such, moving it out for 12 months should give everyone comfort that the that Carmel can achieve this change.

My economic development plan is rooted not only in the best that Carmel has to offer, but also the regional advantages of Central Indiana.

Indie Partnership, the 10 County Regional Economic Development Program housed within the Indy Chamber, focuses on marketing the region.

Simultaneously, we work to position Carmo for Winds.

It's a partnership, not a delegation.

Eschewing regional economic development is a throwback to a bygone era.

People and businesses are mobile.

We have to be attractive region to support future growth.

The Indy Chamber also has approximately 100 Carmel businesses that are members and also share our vision of regional cooperation.

And we'll need regional support in the coming years because it's expected that by 2030, we will need to import approximately 18,000 workers to fill Carmel jobs.

However, to make this work by keeping Mac in-house, we will scale down this involvement and ask the CRC to take on take on economic development work.

Normally their work focuses on redevelopment, so focus on proactivity will take some transition.

Finally, I would like to take a moment to talk about our city team.