And we're looking forward to hearing uh what you have to present, Mr.

Manager.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

And as always, I'll be joined by our budget director, uh Jonathan Hobbs.

Uh he and his team have done an excellent job presenting and preparing uh this this year's budget.

And so what we'd like to do is uh go through talking a little bit about how we come to uh make the choices that that we're recommending uh during the budget process.

We'll talk a little bit about the process itself.

Um ultimately, as we say every year, the purpose of the budget is to achieve um uh council's desired outcomes.

We'll go through the numbers a little bit, some of the things we've done to right size the budget, and uh this is a continuation of things we've started several years ago, some of the options and and uh for council's consideration um and then and then go through next steps.

One thing I want to reiterate, I'll say it now, but I'll reiterate hopefully later in the presentation is this is an early step in in what's a long process that will play out over the next um the next month or so.

So we're gonna present a lot of information tonight.

Um and to some extent I know it can be an overwhelming amount of information, but we want to make sure we're also being transparent.

So, in so much as people really want to dig through the numbers, we want to make sure that we're straddling that line of providing you with all the information you need to help set the stage um to make choices and and also um not overwhelming you with too much information.

Um as the mayor alluded to, very uh difficult choices this year, because one of the things we're talking about is enhanced public safety.

We're a very, very safe community today, as council um um heard in your retreat and at your work session last week.

We have some critical unmet um needs in public safety.

So we really want to talk to you about the budget itself, talk to you a little bit about those needs, and then today we'll leave you with some options for consideration.

Um, but at the next work session, we really want to roll up our sleeves and go through priority list of some of those unfunded needs and then some of the council's revenue options or c cost cutting options to give you opportunities to be able to address those needs in a variety of different ways.

So as always, we start with this the city's vision.

I won't read this slide.

Um but it's all about uh making Chesapeake an exceptional uh place to live, learn work, farm, and play, and and how every year, how do we make progress um towards that goal?

Um from a decision-making criteria, you've seen this a lot.

We have three basic principles that we as staff make all of our decisions based on.

Everything we do is designed to help make Chesapeake an exceptional place to live, learn work, farm and play, provide outstanding service to council, our community, our customers, and each other, and ultimately being fiscally responsible and sustainable.

So uh we'll talk a little bit as we always do about our budget guiding principles.

Those are really unique factors that Chesapeake City Council has identified to make sure that we stay a really fiscally strong um organization and a fiscally strong community.

As you'll recall at your retreat in January, we had an opportunity for um to revisit these, council reaffirmed these as our desired outcomes, but you did ask us to to make some tweaks to the objectives that we're trying to achieve.

Council reaffirmed these as our desired outcomes, but you did ask us to make some tweaks to the objectives that we're trying to achieve.

And so I'm going to quickly highlight some of these because they drive some of the recommendations in the budget.

Council asked us to not just maintain but also enhance the city's open for business philosophy.

And this really goes to making sure that we're strong in job growth, strong in wave wage growth, strong in tax-based uh growth and job creation.

Dr.

King brought up the notion we we've had for several years the notion of reducing gun violence in the community, uh, but we also want to pay attention to our overall crime rates.

We've actually had some uptick in in property crimes, and so we want to make sure that we're taking a look at the global overall crime rate.

Um and then Councilmember Ritters and others have talked about partnering with other organizations.

This isn't just the city government, it's not just the police department, it's partnering with the faith-based community and other organizations to make sure that the entire city and all of our partners are aligned to achieve these outcomes.

Uh protecting enhancing our water resources and public utility infrastructure.

Um, as we were having that retreat in January, council will recall that the city of Richmond was dealing with catastrophic water issues, largely due to their aging water infrastructure.

And we have some of those similar challenges here within the city of Chesapeake.

So during this budget process, um, you'll get some information about where we are today on our our our utility infrastructure and where we need to be in the future.

And then finally, the notion of improving the city's overall environmental health.

So we talked about our conservation programs, our preservation programs, but also some things that haven't historically been included as metrics in the budget, like animal welfare.

And so you're gonna see some things, particularly with the with the um with our animal shelter, um, things to to really improve the uh animal welfare uh within the community.

This is just a graphic that we use to keep our entire team uh and the community aligned about what it is we're trying to achieve and how it all works together.

Um so I want to get a little bit into the budget framework.

I mentioned this a little bit last week, but I just want to be clear for council and for the community.

We have delivered a core budget at our existing tax rate that can accomplish and maintain our existing services that that we're providing today and address some of the public safety needs that including the number one public safety need, which is getting our um fire apparatus um adequately staffed, right?

So the core budget and our budget director uh Jonathan Hobbs coined the term continue operations, right size everything.

That's really been our practice for a few years, but we really leaned into it every year because I always want to give you an option at our existing uh with our existing revenues, how can how can we make that budget happen?

But as council has seen both at the retreat and at your work session last week, there's very, very significant public safety needs in the community that are way beyond our capacity to address within our existing resources.

And so that will either require some additional revenue or cuts to programs and services or some combination of the two.

And and so we'll walk you through some of the choices that we'll be considering during the budget process.

Um I want to start here with council's budget guiding principles.

So generally speaking, um city managers in Virginia are free to propose a budget and any tax rate or any resource rate that's necessary to accomplish the things that are contained within that budget.

Here in Chesapeake, council has adopted budget guiding principles, which are sort of the guardrails around that that policy flexibility.

And so those guiding principles, number one, we have no increase in the real estate tax rate.

And as I mentioned, the core budget maintains the current tax rate of $1.1 uh per $100 of a value uh assessed valuation.

Budget guiding principle two is do not add new fees.

There are no new fees included in this budget.