The Finance Committee, chaired by Council President Griffin, convened on February 26, 2026, to review and discuss the 2026 appropriations for the Department of Finance and related divisions. Director Paul C. Barrett and division heads presented budgets, fielded questions on vacancies, procurement costs, and operational efficiency. The hearing concluded with plans for reconciliation and a final vote by March 23, 2026.
Director Barrett highlighted achievements: contract digitalization via DocuSign (turnaround reduced from 6 weeks to 8 days), renewal of Gordon Square and downtown SIDs adding ~$6 million in revenue, 40 years of clean annual financial reports, new grants management software (Amplifund), outsourced EMS billing recovering $31–32 million, and a new debt program saving $68 million in liabilities. He outlined 2026 initiatives including travel policy updates, vendor self-service, electronic payments, debt management software, and a strategic finance unit for grants.
Manager Natasha Brandt said the budget increase (from $604,000 to $1.4 million) was due to passing through costs for external audits and SOC reports, which are later reallocated. Two new auditors were added.
Budget Administrator Nicole Gallagher introduced staff and noted two new positions for a grants strategic business unit. Councilman Slife praised the new budget book software.
Controller Leslie Camargo highlighted her team's work on the annual financial report. Councilman Harsh requested a future appendix listing all city grants.
We'll resume finance committee once again. This is ordinance number one seventeen as 2026 by Councilmember Griffin by Departmental Request and Emergency Ordinance to make appropriations that provide current expenses for the daily operation of all municipal departments of the city of Cleveland for the fiscal year from January 1, 2026 until December 31, 2026. And what I believe I would like to do, can we do about uh read about three departments at a time so that we can try to move into this or three other divisions at a time? So we'll start off with administration accounts and assessments and licenses. Page one hundred forty-two finance administration, Director Paul C. Barrett. Page one hundred forty-three, twenty twenty-five unaudited total salaries, one million one hundred and sixty-five thousand two hundred and sixty-five. Twenty twenty five an audited total expenditures, one million seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand six hundred and forty-five. Page one hundred forty-four, twenty twenty-five staffing level, ten, twenty twenty-six budgeted, eleven. Page one hundred forty-five division of accounts, Commissioner Lonia Mosswalker. Page one hundred forty-six, twenty twenty-five unaudited total salaries, one million three hundred and nineteen thousand nine hundred and four. Twenty twenty-six budgeted, one million eight hundred and forty-two thousand four hundred and forty-eight. Twenty twenty-five unaudited total expenditures, two million six hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and forty-five. Page one forty-seven, twenty twenty-five staffing level nineteen, twenty twenty-six budgeted twenty-two. Page one hundred forty-nine, twenty twenty-five unaudited total salaries, one million five hundred and nineteen thousand eight hundred and sixty-six. Budgeted thirty-five, Sir Chairman. Thank you, Director. Yeah, through the chair to the uh committee, we just have a real quick presentation that I'll do for all of finance. Um then we'll we have all the commissioners behind me for the different divisions, so we'll bring them up as needed to answer any questions. Um just a little background of what finance encompasses. So um typically, you know, you've had a lot of divisions up here that make widgets and uh provide certain services like sweets uh street sweeping, snow plowing, that sort of thing. Well, finance is responsible for uh financing everything across the city. Um, obviously. Uh the only real division that I believe has any kind of widgets would be the printing and reproduction shop. Uh the rest of it is either related to insurance with risk management, uh sinking fund is is debt management, OBM, um, you know, with the the budget creation, CCA income tax administration, and and so on and so forth. So um our budgets tend to be pretty straightforward because we don't create those widgets. Um and head count tends to stay relatively stable. So uh compared to the other budgets you've seen tend to be somewhat boring. Uh so here is our org chart. So again, the different we've got 12 different divisions here. Um, you know, that that fall under the director of finance, including finance and admin, which does a lot of the administrative uh management type functions for all of finance. Head count. So just to give you an idea of how big uh finance is, it's about 258 employees, about 174 vacancies. Many of these are actually in CCA. So when we do get the CCA, you'll see there's some challenges with civil service requirements and that sort of thing, keeping them staffed, and they are a bigger division in finance, so that's where a big big bulk of these are. We also have a few challenges and assessments and licenses, things that we're working on, positions we're trying to fill. Uh just wanted to highlight uh a few things that we got done this year. So contract digitalization. I know accounts had a big hand in that, but specifically look shout out to Ann Tilly. She really took the ball with this and um you know, changed the way we did contracting. Again, over 300 contracts executed using DocuSign uh with a turnaround time of of eight days, about eight days when previously we were doing, I would say it was even more than three to four weeks, it was six weeks. And again, that's after a law has created the contract, so I just want to be clear on that. Um another thing, and thank you to council for having a special session last year. Um I know assessments and licenses and commissioner Stevens specifically worked incredibly hard to get the Gordon Square and downtown SIDS uh renewed. Um so that was completed in 4.4 months. Usually it takes twice the amount of time. They worked late nights and really worked hard, so I want to make sure that we recognize them. And again, thank you to council for having the special session during your recess so that we could we could get that passed. That's gonna add about six million dollars uh in revenue to the city because we were able to get that done quickly. Um I wanna highlight OBM and financial reporting and control with the awards that we've received year after year for our budget book and our ACFER.