It got quiet.

It must be it must be six o'clock because it got got quiet.

Um just to review a couple things.

Tonight is not an official meeting of the city council.

There's no attendance, there's no minutes taken.

This is to present the uh 2027 budget to the council and to public and um also something that that I wanted to point out, and that's it's been something that the city's done for years, and I think the administration and the legal team agrees with me.

We have mistakenly called these budget hearings.

There's only one hearing with the budget.

That's the first meeting of the budget before the full council or a vote, and that's advertised 10 days before.

So these are presentations, so I think it's just a overall mentality.

The mayor's kind of nodded, Eric's nodded.

Yes, these should be presentations, and that's what they are.

Um and uh the mayor is gonna speak tonight, regina's gonna speak tonight, and then we're gonna go into general department.

Uh not too much departments tonight, those will not not start until Wednesday.

But as we go through those departments, as we've done the last couple of years now.

Uh council will ask their questions, they will maybe request changes, and we're calling those exceptions to the budget.

And we will record those exceptions to the budget.

And we can't vote at these presentations with the department heads.

But as we come up with exceptions to the budget that council would like to see, I will kind of look left and right and kind of figure out if we have a consensus to move the budget forward without any exceptions, or with a list of exceptions so that Regina finance the mayor, then they know where to go back and uh and make those changes the council is requesting.

So I just wanted to lay that out kind of the ground round rules, not just for tonight, but for Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays council or budget presentations.

It's gonna be hard for me to change that too, because we've we have called them hearings as long as I can remember.

But uh so with that, the first item tonight is before you Elaine wrote on there.

I don't know if she fakes it, so she couldn't hear anything.

Can you hear now?

All right, please.

Okay.

So the the first item up tonight is that uh the 2027 budget proposal overview.

Uh mayor as before.

Remind me, Daniel.

Am I supposed to be green or you're okay?

All right.

I only have 57.

So good evening.

Um to city council as well as those who have um are here um for our budget presentation on the 2027 budget.

Um last it's funny on my memories on my phone, it came up last year, August 18th.

You were getting ready for your budget presentation.

So we do this every year, and this is our opportunity to just give you a broad overview of some of the things that our departments have done in 2026, and then are looking forward to a 2027.

I don't I'm not giving you a lot of detail tonight.

Obviously, departments will do that when they present to you, but I just want to give you some broad overview.

So I want to start with a thank you again to City Council for working with administration for the work that the budget committee does with our administrative committee.

And I know that the process starts early in the year, earlier than we would like.

But it's really important that we have the time that we need, so thank you for the work that you've done.

Special thanks to Regina and Ben and their team, the controller's office for Eric and all the department heads who find the information that we need and offer it as quickly as they can so we can get everything to you.

So I appreciate that.

I'm going to start tonight talking about public safety, and I'm going to go back in time and just give a big thank you to city staff for that winter storm back in January.

If you remember that, it's kind of hard to do.

We had 14, somewhere between 12 and 15 inches.

We'll call it 14 inches January 25th, and it took us a couple of days to clear out, but it was a huge public response from all of our public service agency, police and fire, and of course, Department of Public Works and Utilities and Parks.

And sometimes we forget once we get past one of those crisis events, just how much work and time the staff puts in on it.

So I just want to place that in front of you because a lot of what we talk about when we talk about staff and equipment is so that we have what we need when those crisis moments happen.

So start with security and risk.

As you know, that's a fairly new department.

We created it in 2024.

And so in 2026, and it's it's a part department of one, Mike Richardson.

Um, but his goal is to do assessments, looking at cameras for building, partnering, partnering with IT on cybersecurity and insurance review.

He spent a lot of time working on security as we set up Arcadia Drive for Department of Public Works and working with the team who's putting together the new animal control animal care building.

Sorry, Nicole.

Um they also applied for and received a grant for two camera trailers, which we'll be able to use for events throughout the year.

They um we received a grant for 16 additional meridian barriers and cables, and those are huge.

Those are those big ugly contraptions that we put on the streets when we're holding events.