All right, well, good evening.

I know I got quiet right at six o'clock.

Everyone was I'll go ahead and call it to order our city council uh pre-council for Monday, January 5th, the first one of 2026.

Um our main topic is uh our budget priorities as uh staff prepares fiscal year 27 budget.

Didn't we just do fiscal 26 budget?

Yeah, we're all right.

So I'm gonna kick it over to Matt Lou uh for presentation.

Are you okay with questions at any time or do you want to go through your slides?

We can do present uh questions at any time.

Okay, all right.

Matt, I'm gonna kick it over to you.

Oh, to start it out with uh the current strategic priorities.

Uh this is something that we're looking at redoing this year, and I believe we'll go through that process um sometime soon here.

But currently our strategic plan uh priorities are organizational excellence, safe community, uh inclusive and equitable community, resilient economy, uh reliable and a sustainable infrastructure.

And so these are our fame our five main goals for fiscal year 26.

We had uh three main priorities, uh which were public safety, affordable housing, and city employees.

And so we'll break down uh what that included uh in the next few slides.

So for public safety, we had the addition of uh six full-time police positions and reassignment of four park rangers and two airport safety officers uh to police officer positions.

We continue the investment in flock safety system and axon technology upgrades.

Uh we had the addition of two positions for the city's divert program, and then we have the continuation of additional one million dollar investment into the police and fire pitcher, which was basically 500,000 for each group for housing.

Uh we have the continued investment uh in additional homes with the Columbia Community Land Trust.

Uh we'll begin assessment of recommendations outlined in the Boone County housing study.

Uh, and then the CDBG home uh budget increase by 18.6% from FY25 budget.

Um we also saw an increase in segment.

Hi, folks.

We also saw an increase in uh what was it?

The housing permits for fiscal year uh 2024 going into 25.

We don't have 26 numbers yet, of course, but uh we did see a substantial increase from 24 to 25.

But uh okay.

We if I guess if they want to hear do you do you all want to hear the numbers?

Um I think we had them in our crosswalk that we did with the county at the work session a couple weeks ago.

So it's a that attachment that we had.

So we did get that update.

I would say in this this year, I think we need to.

I mean, not not trying to tell the council what's good or anything, but I think things that are that are within our purview, things that we can control or things that we could be more actionable with uh with as we go through the priorities for this year.

Be more actionable with can you do the microphone?

All right, it's hard to get used to the microphone.

Um, you mean items for housing that we can be more actionable with?

Yeah, I mean, just all together with our priorities.

I think that's something we definitely want to think about this year as we're building these priorities.

Uh, I don't think that's something that the council necessarily needs to figure out here.

I think we can figure that out together as we go through the process, but it's something we need to that needs to be on the front of everyone's mind.

Yeah, agreed.

Um something that I guess as we are fleshing out the budget process and moving forward in tandem with the housing study.

I hope to see um more of the connections from the crosswalk um action plan reflected in the items um specifically that we are budgeting for.

Yeah agreed um something that I guess as we are fleshing out the budget process and moving forward in tandem with the housing study I hope to see um more of the connections from the crosswalk um action plan reflected in the items um specifically that we're budgeting for um the other thing that came to mind was the affordable housing trust fund which I think we ceded with a million dollars last fiscal year 25 I think we've seen it in what the 24 okay yeah so finding additional methods to um continue to fund that I think will be important for longevity of that um fund.

Yeah absolutely okay and then lastly uh was the city employees and so we increased uh funding by 5.8% for personnel and 10% for employee medical benefits uh pay ranges and employee pay increase by 3.5% in fiscal year 26 and the city is moving forward with classification and compensation study phase three which will focus on performance management so uh we hope to get that all in place this year can I ask um that on the 10% for employee medical benefits the the big thing with that was that the city gave the cost for the increase and didn't pass it on to employees that was that 10% increase was because of that increase in cost that's correct and I'm Kathy can you come closer to a microphone like half one back over by you so that 10% increase we're recording so just microphone microphones you can pick it up how's that you can pick it up so the 10% increase to health insurance premiums actually just took effect on January 1st and that increase was shared between employees and the city we went to a new system previously we had um contributed a flat amount to each level of insurance and we went to a percentage so I'm gonna give a real simple example with employee only coverage.

So the city provides employee only coverage for the high deductible health plan the city contributes a hundred percent of the cost not a flat amount if you want to buy up to the 1500 high 1500 PPO plan the city is going to cover 95% of the cost of the employee only coverage.

If you are still in the 750 deductible plan that's closed to new enrollees then that's another buy up and it's 90% of the cost for employee only coverage and then we contribute a flat amount for dependents the same amount for every plan.

And that was new this year for previously we had covered we had a flat dollar amount and I'm sorry I don't have it off the top of my head um previously it was a black dollar amount and we changed to a percentage that went into effect January 1st okay yeah and the change in cost the 10% change in cost for our budget does that reflect the change in the way that we're covering it or does that reflect a change in expense because of an increase in cost of health coverage so there was a 10% increase to the gross premium for our rates and that amount the 10% is that total gross premium which is increased contribution by employees and increased contribution by the city does that answer your question yes yeah I was trying to understand if you were explaining how it that increase was shared or where that came from so do we expect year to year the cost of health coverage for employees to continue increasing around that amount I'm not sure about the amount but based on past experience I do expect there to be continued increase in costs.

We're self-funded and so the two things that drive our cost are medical inflation and claims experience and so you don't know year from year right what those numbers are going to be but I do I mean just based on past experience I would say yes we expect those to continue I just can't tell you at what what rate yeah I wonder if it would be helpful to look at previous years and rates that they're I have all I have all of that data I'm sorry I wasn't prepared to discuss this tonight have it at your fingertips now maybe that would be helpful for future budget presentations so we can understand what prolonged costs are for personnel.

Um so we can understand what prolonged costs are for personnel.

Absolutely.

Thanks.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, with that change from a flat rate covered to the percentage cover, have we seen costs to employees go down?

Have we seen employees paying less than they had to, or is it about the same for them?

Has it gone up because of the rising cost of health care?

So it did it did go up for employees this year, except for those that have employee only coverage in the high deductible health plan because we are continue to pay 100% of that.

In addition to that, we also increased our contribution to the health savings account as well.

Um, so that the city is contributing that full amount to those employees that are in the high deductible health plan.

The if I'm saying this off the top of my head, but I believe the highest amount that anybody's premium went up by would have been in the full family 750 um deductible, which is our close plan, you would have had to have a minimum of a 17 cent per hour increase to cover that cost.

And the 2% across the board we gave in September more than covered that for all of our employees, plus our employees are getting an additional one and a half percent that you approved affected January 18th.

You're saying that their pay raise covered the raise in their health insurance costs more than covered it, yes.

But their health insurance costs.

So what I'm hearing is that their health insurance costs went up about as much as their pay race.

No, no, what I'm saying is the if you were in the highest plan, the most expensive plan, which is the 750 deductible full family, meaning you have you know, spouse plus dependence on there, the most increase you would need to cover that increase would have been a 17 cent per hour pay increase.

And so all of our employees received more than that.

353 dollars.

And that's in our most expensive plan.

Some of our plans, some of the tiers didn't go up any, some went up a couple of cents.

That was the highest amount.

Thank you.

And we have three employees involved in that plan.

Okay, thank you, Kathy.

Sorry, I wasn't prepared to discuss that tonight.

No, no, no.

I think it's just I think to Valerie's point, we're trying to understand trends as we're setting to Matthew's point, understanding what we have control over uh as we're setting priority.

So I appreciate that.

I have another question on this section, but not on the benefits piece.

Um, with the pay ranges and employee pay increasing, um, and that amount coming out of the uh reserves.

Thank you, reserves.

I keep wanting to say how I keep coming up with different words for uh reserves.

What is the considering that this was a priority last year and it's likely to stay a priority?

Um what is the plan for getting it out of reserves and getting it into the regular budget?

I'm not quite sure I can answer that right now.

That's something we'll have to see uh as we go through the budget.

Uh but for us to not dip into reserves, there would definitely need to be some sort of uh cutback in in another uh budgeting category within the general fund.

Well, and I think to that point, it'd probably be um useful in this not for this evening's discussion, obviously, but part of when we do our you know budget work sessions and things like that, you know.

In 24, when we said yes, fund the classification and compensation plan, um, we believe that based on revenues coming in that we would be able to work with that.

And the reality has not aligned with that.

And so I think um, while this is the way municipal governments do things is on budgeting and these forecasts.

I think kind of understanding the the as we're talking about revenues generation coming in, what is expected, um, so that we can be realistic with our promises to employees.

As we as we sort of sort of look into the future and what has happened over the last few years, we always expect to grow at least with the population.

Population growth about uh 1.5 to 2% per year.

Uh from fiscal in fiscal year 25, we saw a decrease in sales tax.

And this is the first time we've had a decrease in sales tax.

Uh I want to say since the since the uh the housing bubble.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's been a long time since something like this has happened.

Uh, and that's not something that you plan for.

Uh, and so as we begin to look forward, could that happen again this year?

It is possible.

Uh, we have seen decrease in uh sales tax revenue receipts in the first few months of this year already.

Uh so it's yet to yet to be seen what we'll be facing for the rest of this fiscal year.

Well, when we when we made this determination about increase of compensation, we made a decision also at the same time that we were going to lead the market in in compensation to so forth.

So I guess I'm wondering, and that was 23, right?

That we made that decision.

So this far end now, are we still in that position?

Um, especially keeping in mind health care benefits in particular.

I believe, Kathy, you can tell me if I'm wrong.

I believe we're we're talking about looking not doing a full study, but but looking at that again uh within the year or so.

Is that I don't want to put words into our mouth, but we've got to see the board.

So we look at the consumer price index from December to December each year as a guideline.

That's one of the economic factors we consider when looking at the pay at the pay plan.

So for FY26, the year that we were in, the CPI was 3.2%.

We did a 3.5% increase, and we did that both with our pay ranges and employee pay.

So the range is moved by that much as well as employee pay.

So the first year we implemented as an FY24, we were at 6.7% above market.

We did not move pay ranges in the 25, but we did give pay increases to employees, and then for FY26, we increased the ranges and employee pay.

And usually at about the five-year mark is when you would do another study of pay, not comprehensive, like we did touch every job description, all of that, but at the five-year mark.

So we implemented this in FY24.

So ideally you would have that done.

So if you needed to implement it, it would be an FY29.

Okay.

It's got it's kind of speaking, yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

I I think this kind of goes to where my concern is in determining what our priorities are going to be.

You know, we've made employee compensation a priority for several years now.

At what point does something replace it?

And this kind of goes to the question I asked previous to meeting tonight is what are the metrics by which we're making these determinations?

And and that would apply to the strategic plan.

I understand that the strategic plan is undergoing some change and evolving and will include those kind of metrics.

But I think it's one of the things that makes it a little bit difficult for us.

And you'll remember last year, we started with I think five priorities and and couldn't settle on three until several months later.

And so it'd be good for us to do that sooner this time, I think.

But this just kind of speaks to the question in my mind in my mind at least, is how do we make that determination?

You know, we we said public safety, housing, and and employees were gonna be our priorities.

Well, how did we do and and how do we make that determination?

And and have we gotten to a place in any one of those where we can say, well, we can move something else up in that position.

I'm not I'm not suggesting that we need to do that.

I'm just saying that's part of the equation for me and making a determination about what our priorities should be.

Well, I was gonna say, you know, I think to that in the Carlin, feel free to jump in on it.

I think part of it is is um similar to a strategic plan, right?

You have the day to day, right?

There's the day-to-day of city government, the things we need.

And I almost think that city employees are the day-to-day, the people who are doing the work every day.

Um, and so does that need to continue to be a priority, or is that just a given, right?

The given is is that you're paying people a living wage to do the work that the city expects of them.

And then, but then you know, priorities to me are similar to the strategic plan.

There's those are the other things that we would like to do as well.

We would like to invest and increase affordable housing and housing options.

We would like to continue to invest in public safety, and how does that happen?

So that's to me, is that question of priority setting?

Is it if it's just your bread and it's your normal day-to-day things, does it need to be on the list?

Or I assume you know that city employees are priority.

Well, that's true, but we did you know make it a point of determination that we were going to address that.

I think you could say that about any of those strategic areas and any of the priorities.

Public safety, of course, is essential to what we do.

Infrastructure is of course essential to what we do.

How do we where do we focus in any particular year and how do we make a determination about what that focus is going to be?

And I think right now we have a unique opportunity.

So we we put on an RFP for consultants to help us build our next strategic strategic plan.

Uh we have three proposals and they're really impressive.

Uh, we're gonna interview those uh three companies to buy them the one person that we're somehow with a microphone, you're still very violated.

We're at this point where I think we have a really unique opportunity.

Uh we did an RFP for uh proposals for strategic plans.

Uh, we have three firms that submitted uh those three firms have submitted pretty impressive uh backgrounds.

Uh we're gonna interview them.

Want to say, is it so I think one schedule for a half and then that later is not okay.

So we're gonna start that interview process, and we're gonna select the firm to actually lead that process.

Uh we also do the community summit.

And so I think here's an opportunity for us to use the community summit to actually talk to our residents about what our priorities should be to help us develop that strategic plan priorities.

And I think once we have that in place, I think ideally the mayor's right.

No, employees should automatically be considered our bread and butter.

We're a service organization.

We put people into vehicles and put people into offices, provide our service to our residents.

I mean, your commodity is your people, and so it should be a given if that's one of our top priorities.

And so it's really looking at what should be the priorities in our strategic plan to kind of help us develop what our budget priorities should be.

And all those things should tie together, and we should have the correct metrics that actually can be measured and viewed to kind of make sure that we're moving forward in our processes.

And so it's an opportunity to reset and kind of create that document which should guide us moving forward.

So my assumption is is that for you, city manager departments are coming to you with their proposed budget.

Yes, you view it through the lens of our of our priorities.

And the idea is is that this is kind of telling you also what to say, not this year, because it's not, you know, I mean, it's a it's an important thing for us to do, but it's not in a priority, especially if we have um potential slow revenues coming in.

Um, I guess my question would be is um to make sure that that happens.

Right.

Because I know you know, last year we said em city employees were important, um, but it wasn't in the proposed budget um originally, you know, what you first came to us.

So I think like is is that acknowledgement from councils is like if we really do mean this, then how what does that look?

And and we have to be honest, I completely recognize looking at revenues coming in.

So we're setting this as the preliminary priorities discussion, but this is not the end all be all because we don't know what revenues are gonna look like coming in.

So I I wouldn't feel confident saying, like, yes, 100%, give everyone a 10%, everyone would love a 10% increase in raise, but if we don't have that money coming in, obviously it's not realistic.

Absolutely.

And I think once we actually start the budget process, we're actually looking forecasting for our revenues that can help us really understand exactly what we anticipate coming in.

And if there are revenue enhancements, what do those look like?

Or if there are expenditure cuts, what do those look like?

Because that has to be part of that conversation.

Right.

I've got Betsy and then Vera.

Thanks.

Um, I was just gonna say that I think we need to keep the employees on our list of of council priorities because it because it gets really easy to say, oh, well, this is a standard and we don't need to address it.

And I think that's what happened before is that we were like, oh, we're okay in the middle, or oh, you know, we need to wait longer to look at this, or we've got we have this comp study that's coming in that's taking an extra four years because we had COVID or whatever came along.

I think we need to make sure that we keep the employees on this list and that they are important because they are what the city does, and then you know, the expectations are that they're gonna do a great job, which they're doing.

So we want to keep those folks and we want to keep paying them appropriately.

And I think that's how they that's how they ended up on that list, is because of other priorities, the employees felt like they weren't important to us, and so it's making sure that they understood that they are our top priority, and so that needs to be part of our company.

And that's I mean, that's exactly what I was gonna say, but I was gonna add a little bit more, which is I I mean, I absolutely think the city employees need to stay as a priority.

I would love for it to be a given that our employees are our priority, but as you said, they they ended up there because they were not feeling like a priority.

Um, and now we've just seen the the pay raises go into reserve spending, which if I was an employee, I would be sitting there doing the math and figuring out okay, and in so many years, the raise that I got is going to go away because the reserves will go away.

Um, and then I'm gonna be making less than I was, and so I think as we are in that spot, we need to make sure that we are prioritizing stabilizing employee pay, ensuring that they know they are a priority, ensuring that we remember they are a priority in lieu of adding potential services and other priority areas we might have, we need to first get that employee pay actually into the general budget.

So I think it needs to, if not move up in our priority list, absolutely stay in our top three.

One of the things that I wanted to name here when we're talking about employee raises um and um our revenues, um, is that uh keeping up with our employee raises like many of the items in our priorities, um not repeating those causes us to fall behind quickly.

Um it's not just about um is this still a priority, it's that if we don't repeat that we fall behind, we don't keep in the middle, we fall behind, and we can very swiftly lose the leadership position that we are attempting to gain.

And I think that is the same metric that we use to choose this.

The painful part about that is that the economics of housing and public safety are similar in that respect.

Um also are staffing for public safety is tied to this same issue keeping up with staffing and making sure that um our officers and our firefighters are um appreciated in their jobs and stay in their roles and have long careers with us.

Um we have some fighting metrics pulling against us.

We can go forward for I think it's the next one, which is like what are our priorities is coming here?

But also needs this microphone back, or I mean Mr.

Carl that probably okay, I was like the mayor said I think our next step is to talk about what everybody else is priorities.

How do we how do we sit down and establish those?

So I think one question I have is um it I think it's aligned to what Nick brought up, and it's the how do you measure what we did?

Um, the examples for public safety are easy to track, right?

It's the personnel as the investment in flock, it's the investment in technologies.

Um, easy to track, it's the pay increases, those kinds to your point, Matthew, is that your your question at the beginning about what council has actual control over?

Is housing what made you kind of think because that's a harder one to measure, unless it's incentives we've offered or changes we've made to permitting, you know, is so is that the question is like what could we actually fund to do that?

Yes, there's a there especially especially with the housing, there's a lot that has to come from the public to help us with that priority.

Um that's not something that we can do all on our own, and so having something on our side that is actionable that we can check a box for, uh, that we can say uh we did this much last year, we did this.

I mean, even when you're looking at the the rental permits, we we really have no control over that.

So yes so um I think then as we're because we're it's not art and all be all um, I think probably what would be useful for us is similar to when we get the citizen survey results like last year, got the citizen survey results, then staff was like, here's what we think we could do to address some of these issues, and they proposed starting up our own academy, doing these different pro you know, doing these sorts of things to help address that.

Is it your thought, DeCarlin that staff will come with, hey, if housing remains a priority, here are some things we think, and it has a budgetary impact to it.

And I think the the because we've done the housing study, because we have the crosswalk that actually kind of explains some of what those priorities are from the housing study, the those metrics are the metrics that we can utilize in order to say here's the things that the housing study calls for.

I think I think with to Matt's point, while it talks about the number of permits being issued for new houses being built, you know, how much control does the city have in that, and what are the things we can do to actually help move those processes along?

So some of it may not just be a budgetary change, it can be the simple change to some of our codes on housing.

Does that allow for more housing to be built?

And does that does that meet that goal and does that meet that metrics?

And so I think that's kind of where we're trying to that part of there's part of it that is a budgetary report, but some of it's just some of the regulatory things that we're doing.

Okay, okay, Valerie and then Nick.

Yeah, uh I mean to Carlin, you brought up exactly what I was looking for and hoping for, especially in that first slide when I was talking about um making those connections to the um implementation metric in the housing study.

We have metrics for those, and the useful thing about that is we've also identified the partners for the other things, so we know which ones are in our court.

We also know which ones tie into different financial expenditures that we have a concrete metric for reporting, and we have concrete ideas about ways that we can budget for it.

One of the things that I would consider also, as we're talking about things that are perhaps less concrete, like code changes, are um staff and um reports.

We tend to contract for studies for a lot of those items, um, and we have growing needs in our planning department to meet some of these requirements.

Um I I think that it is there are things that are financial indirect, and there are things that might not look that way, but still still are I think Valerie pretty well covered it, and and you were going exactly where I was going to go as well.

We do have metrics for that, as Valerie said, and I think though this is where it gets a little confusing because what we're talking about here is budget priorities, but they reflect what our priorities are as a city on the whole, and and not all of that is necessarily financial or budgetary in particular.

Uh, but yeah, addressing codes, dressing the fees, and those kinds of things are because so in my mind, it's like the housing study does this for us.

It says, here's where we want to go.

Now the question is, how do we get there?

And we depend on the staff to make that happen.

There's certainly budgetary considerations there, and any changes we make in some of the processes we do will have an impact on the budget as well, of course, because of the revenues that are that come in through those fees and so forth.

Um so I just saying that out loud in that we're we're talking about budget here, but it really is beyond the budget of what we want to accomplish all together.

Oh, absolutely.

It's what's interesting.

So when uh Valerie was talking about what we have, we we outsource a lot of our planning things.

Part of our issue is we couldn't hire planners because our sellers were weren't at that point where it was more advantageous for someone to take on a job with the city, and now that we got our salaries up, we're able to hire senior planners so that we can actually do that planning work.

But if we can't maintain our salaries, we're not gonna be able to maintain that staff.

And I think that's kind of that ebb and flow of how we have to look at things.

Okay, Betsy had our hand.

Um maybe I'm jumping forward too far, but do we have?

I mean, I I like the priorities we had last year, and and I don't really see a reason to change them because I feel like they were important to us last year, the year before, and and they're still still need to be moving forward on those or maintaining those.

Are there other priorities that we want to consider on this list, or do people feel that some of these priorities need to come off?

Or is this am I jumping too far ahead in this conversation?

Um, so last year um these are the three that came to the top.

Um, the other ones that we had were infrastructure and social services funding, um, which we didn't see any declines in them, um, just more of like kind of staying the same for what it was we saw invested in.

Get done.

I think I agree with you, Betsy.

But I think, and this kind of goes to Matthew's issue or point about revenues and reserves and so on.

That I would like to see a fourth, and that is to the strategic plan of resilient economy.

What can we do or what you know add that in?

It's like I said, number four.

But that's what we need in order to be able to generate the revenues to pay for the other things, the increased staffing, the raises, and so on.

Uh, like you said, we can't continue to dip into reserves because those will eventually dry up.

So, how do we grow the economy in Colombia?

Um, I know housing is tied into it, it's not an easy answer, but what can we do again?

Regulations, encouragement, recruiting, you know, ready, chamber, et cetera, bring those businesses in to grow our economy.

So I would propose that we add a fourth, and that is you know, um increase economic activity, something along that line.

Um, so a question I have um as we're developing this.

Um, you mentioned you know we're doing an evaluation of our current fees and cost of services, you know, kind of across the board to understand, right?

That we're we're adequately covering the cost of doing these things, but doing it not in a way that's not allowing people then to develop housing, right?

That's one of the conversations we've had about all the cost of permits and connection fees and all of that.

Um, I think with that, and I don't know if it's necessarily aligned with the economic increase, and because that is one of our strategic plan areas, but is the how can we evaluate the potential reductions in state and federal funding?

If we're gonna continue that on your housing slide, you have that there's an 18%, 18 and a half percent increase.

We have no control over CDBG home funding, and as we saw, it was at risk in this last um proposed budget from the federal government.

And so I think that understand, I think it's gonna be important for us to evaluate, you know.

Let's say those funding goes away.

What can we locally do to shore up that loss?

Because that's a lot of money that goes into our local economy that helps build affordable housing, helps keepable in their homes.

When we talk about housing, one of the other metrics, we're talking about the whole spectrum of housing units that are needed from transitional, uh unsheltered uh to market rate to above market rate.

And so what can we then absorb if some of those funding happens and what are we prepared to say no on?

And and I think that's a tougher question.

Um and I I'm not sure, I'm not sure that we'll have any sort of answers to that, but it's something that we need to be prepared for.

Absolutely.

And I think that's our reality is that's that's that's the reality.

If our revenues don't catch up, then we have to look at what do we do?

What can we do?

Are there cuts that need to be made?

And if not, how do we kind of lean on some of our other local partners to kind of step up and help assist?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, some of the things that I liked about the housing study is that it did identify new things that we're not currently doing that we can do.

Um, and there are a lot of partners that we have in this area.

Um, a lot of ways that we have in the past leaned on our partners, um, and we've helped contribute some of our ARPA funds.

Um I'm excited to use our money in the things that are in our wheelhouse to improve, and many of those things make it less expensive for our nonprofit partners to build housing as well.

Um so I think that this study helps us make pointed and purposeful improvements in how we address housing.

Um that may be the answer to handling slavy funds in the future.

So the way that I'm hearing it from council is like maintaining sounds like kind of those three main priorities at the same time of balancing these additional revenue as well as the evaluation of our existing sort of cost of service studies that we have.

Is there anything else that council would want to help direct on for that for budget?

This is not the first conversation we'll have.

Uh I guess question I will have is go.

I'm sorry, this is not the last conversation.

This is the first.

Um, what is the plan for engagement now over the next few months?

Uh for the as this is developed.

And we last year we did kind of budget 101 town halls, community summit had the conversation.

What are the plans?

I don't know if you are Matt wanna we have a schedule.

I don't I don't have to, but there is a schedule for what our plans will be in order to do some outreach.

Okay.

And then that will then come back to us then to kind of inform us as we're developing and we'll also have conversations about revenues and forecasted revenues sometime in the coming months.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, I got it.

I I have it.

Well, but we'll do this, we'll send something to you guys.

Okay.

But there is there is a schedule that we'll call out for all the different meetings for and all the engagement opportunities for our sense.

So I think one other thing.

Okay.

I think one other thing that will be useful to know is that you know, the city manager gives direction to the department heads based on kind of these forecasts coming in.

It'd be useful to for council to know like what sort of guidance have you given.

Like last year, you know, there was the don't don't increase any cost, you know, reduce travel and training.

Be useful for us to have that information and also for us to look at because when council develops our budget, we have a very small budget, the majority of it goes to our boards and commissions.

Um I I was gonna say not knowing um what okay, thank you.

Not knowing what those revenues look like.

I think I know right now I'm in talking to the city clerk.

You know, this is the time where they reach out to staff liaison for our boards and commissions.

I was probably gonna go with requesting that boards and commissions not request any increases based on last year's budget, um continuing what they have.

Um, but unless there was any other sort of and and Sheila can always give us the numbers on how much did they use for anything and do they use it all?

Um, I not knowing it's you know, we're only three months into the fiscal year, so not really knowing what would be spent.

I think my recommendations would be just to keep it as is.

Um we then do have they have the time and any opportunity during the fiscal year to come back to us and request additional funding.

Um, but I know Sheila's like those budgets are due in February, and so I need to give guidance to the staff liaison.

Is there any concerns from council on that one?

All right, Sheila, does that help?

Uh oh, she's coming in the microphone.

I just want to make sure I understand.

Um based on what you said, I'll reach out to all of our staff liaisons for boards and commissions and tell them that funding is gonna remain static.

Um, but if they do come across a need, they can set a report to council to try to get that need accommodated.

So yeah.

Is that correct?

Sounds good.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Sheila.

And I think um probably useful for uh council's consideration.

Um Sheila, you might provide kind of like actuals versus budget of years past of boards and commissions.

That'll be useful for us when making those determinations.

Yeah.

But not today, but yeah.

Okay, so we have before us our budget calendar.

So do you want to go over this?

Uh Matt.

Sure.

So budget priorities we had that in this today.

Uh we have our first budget town hall meeting scheduled for the 29th of January, 26th.

Or 26th of January, I'm sorry.

It's waiting.

What is the date?

That's our uh this is the due date for us.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I thought it was right.

29th of January.

Um we have our second town hall meeting will be the 26th of February.

Uh budget amendments will be due for the second quarter.

Uh um, but um uh well, there'll be first read to council, uh, the second of March and then finalized 16th of March.

Um we have April, we have our first work session going over revenues and forecast.

Uh that that's subject to change.

I mean, we could do it earlier if if it looks like there's an issue, but right now that's that's about where we're looking at uh then we have our third town hall meeting on the 28th.

Yes, so when we uh so when we're in April, we're actually looking at our forecast revenues.

That's when we start making those decisions about having those conversations about this is what it's looking like, and so it's then we'll have those conversations with department directors of okay, we need to scale back, we may need to make some of those changes because our revenues either are exceeding what we anticipated or not.

All right, and then that will follow up in May with the third quarter budget amendments.

Uh those dates are yet to be seen.

Um then we have our four fourth budget town hall meeting, uh, which will be on the 28th of May.

Uh those budget town hall meetings, we're doing a morning or afternoon and then the evening session.

I think this year we're gonna try to do uh virtual on the evening sessions to get a little bit more participation, even though we had pretty good participation last year, just kind of help out.

Uh and then uh we have uh our first pre-council work session for uh CIP on the 15th of June.

Um then we'll we'll start heading into the budget work sessions in July, and so uh we have our first and the second budget work session on the 14th and the 16th of July.

Um we'll have the the Carlin will be presenting the budget to employees hopefully on the 16th as well.

Um we'll have our budget press conference on the 17th, and then our third council work session that's Saturday uh the 19th.

Um then we'll go into public hearings and the regular council sessions uh for CIP plan.

Um then we have our our final budget review on the 20th ahead of going to council uh starting the actual budget here.

Well, thank you for providing those.

I think usually, yeah, if you also wanted to send out the budget town hall dates um and where and locations, so we can share that out.

That'd be appreciated.

Um is there anything else that council wants to talk about?

Pre-council.

Okay, 13 minutes until our regular meeting at seven.

Is there anything on the agenda that anyone had any questions about tonight's agenda?

Just to kind of they wanted to have an opportunity.

Yeah, yes, actually, I need to pull up my notes really quickly to highlight the U.

Um on the consent agenda V 32525.

I had sent in a question about um where exactly on the property the sidewalk will be, and in the response that we got, it said that staff will have a graphic prepared for distribution.

Do you know when we can expect that?

Will it be prior to the consent vote?

Yeah, right now awesome.

Clint's like, I got this.

All right, figured any other questions on items that are on the agenda this evening.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I thought it was a full wave.

I didn't know that's not something.

Yeah, all right.

Any follow-up questions on that?

Is that good for you?

Okay, any other questions on anything on the agenda or anything else for the good of the order?

No, appreciate.

I I will say when asking the questions on intro and first read, I do not need the answers.

You do not, I mean, this is the the whole intent of this was to give you the heads up of questions.

So staff who are working so hard on Monday mornings, I don't need the answers to intro first read.

So we told them it's a heads up, but they just do this.

All right, cool.

Okay, appreciate it.

Sometimes I send those to council inquiry the day after, just so yeah, they don't have to see it tonight.

All right, well, I appreciate it.

I'll go ahead and close our pre-council.

See you all in 10 minutes in the chambers.