Councilmember Letitia Johnson present.

Councilmember Mary Waters.

Mr.

Chair, we have quorum.

Thank you so much.

And with that, we'll move on to the approval of the minutes.

Have all members received copies of the minutes from November 19th, 2025.

Yes, I have Mr.

Chair.

Motion to approve the minutes.

We have a motion to approve the minutes.

Without any objections, the minutes will be approved.

Thank you.

And then we'll move on to chair remarks.

Just want to say uh happy new year to everyone and uh welcome to this new session in the city council.

It's an honor to serve as the chair of this um very important and essential committee and to represent the residents of District 7.

I just want to let folks know I am someone who believes in um transparency and and highlighting the people's priorities as we are stewards of their uh of their dollars.

And I also want to make sure that we're running this committee and and talk in a ways that residents at home can understand.

Um I know there's a lot of acronyms in government and a lot of uh things that we at the table may know.

Uh uh, but also folks at home want to make sure that they have an understanding as well.

Uh I believe that every resident should understand our budget and and not just the folks who manage it.

Uh and I want to make sure that we all have that shared goal and educating residents about the process, and and I'm really excited to bring them along in this journey.

And also very excited to work with everyone here on the council, um, staff and also in administration.

So just want to thank you all.

Looking forward to a great uh year ahead, a great term ahead.

So thank you.

Oh uh clerk recognizes council member Mary Waters.

Thank you so much.

Welcome.

Um the clerk would note I didn't know if you did attendance or not.

We did this time.

We did, yes.

All right.

So what am I supposed to do?

Um we're on we're in the agenda now.

We're about to open for public comment.

No, yes, welcome, welcome.

Somebody recognized me, so I just I didn't know why.

Oh, we're just recognizing your attendance.

Sorry.

No problem, no problem.

All right, we'll we'll now call for public comment.

Um I will also we'll cut off public comment at 11 p.m.

Um, but every uh folks for public comment, you have two minutes to start.

Um we'll start in the room and then go to Zoom.

You raise your hand if you have public comment.

Yep, you can come up.

And please state your name for the record.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jadante Smith for the record.

Uh I like to say this is probably gonna be one of my favorite uh council uh subcommittees of the year.

Um I look forward to seeing big things come out of this uh subcommittee.

Um I like to say that I like to advocate for the residents of Leland House apartments.

Um I think those happening to those residents is really really terrible, and I would hate to go through that.

Um I'd also like to ask if you guys could look into the affairs at Cash Community Social Services and Shelter and also Detroit Rescue Mission Ministry Shelters.

Um there's been lots of news stories coming out of those shelters about the conditions that residents are facing, um, women with children sleeping in their vehicles.

Um I think that's pretty terrible to see.

Um, I'd like to see if anybody could get me in contact with I know everything is different.

We have a new administration and things are very, very uh, there's still lots of moving pieces, but I'd like to speak to uh deputy mayor Brian White if Smite give me some contact information.

I've looked on the website, like his page and the website is completely down.

Um just because I have a personal matter um that I would like to have resolved if possible uh with the water department.

I'm not sure who's the head of the water department.

I'm not sure if we have Gary Brown here anymore.

Um I've talked to the administration about it, and uh the former mayor ignored me pretty much and uh was very rude when I made my request to uh speak to somebody about my issue personally.

I'm always advocating for other people when I have an issue, it's very, very sad to see people throw me to the side for my own personal issues.

Um, I like my issue to not go into litigation if possible.

Um also I like to hope that uh for the new council.

I know this is not the committee of the whole, but for the entire committee of the whole, hope you guys are able to produce some equitable and uh fair results for the citizens.

Um I know we come with a lot of complaints.

There's a lot of things you guys have in individual districts.

Um I know we have at large member here as well.

I know there's lots of things to tackle, but hopefully we can work together, um, even with the administration and produce some positive results.

Um I may come down here and make trouble a lot, but I am always if somebody reaches out, I'm always willing to help.

Whatever you have in your district, if you reach out to me, I will help.

I I make that promise, I give you my word.

You can help me middle of the night.

You call me, I'm gonna get up, and I'm gonna handle it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Do we have any other folks in the room for public comment?

All right.

Do we have any folks on the Zoom for public comment?

Yes, Mr.

Chair.

We have three hands raised.

Okay.

Four now.

The first caller being William M.

Davis.

Mr.

Davis, you can go right ahead.

Commissioner.

Uh, good afternoon.

Can I be heard?

Yes, sir.

Good afternoon.

Okay, I'd like to congratulate all three of y'all for being on this committee.

This is a very important committee, uh, especially for myself being a city chart retiree.

Uh, I'm concerned about what goes on and the dollars that are spent and the dollars that not uh are not coming to City Church Retirees they should, because this whole bankruptcy was a fake bankruptcy.

There's robbing a strip in City Detroit of power and abilities.

Um I was wondering, can you tell me when the city's annual compensation financial report uh for the fiscal year ending June 30th of 2025?

I know it is it says in paperwork I see today that y'all have that it's wants to be published before uh December 31st.

Do you know when it's going to be published and when it's going to be able to be reviewed by citizens like myself and separately?

I think a greater effort needs to be made to make sure that the city retirees are adequately compensated and need to find a way to do away with the annuity clawback uh because we have many retirees.

I might be a little bit better income than some, but I'm still concerned about all that uh that this is very taxing on them.

So hopefully the city can do better this year than what they have because I'm I was pleased to see Dugan Lee because I don't think he really cared about city church retirees.

I don't think he really cared about the fact that over 4,000 of us died since the time he's been in office, you know, from just the general fund.

Uh so hopefully this committee would do a lot of great work, and I'm looking forward to communicating with each and every one of y'all.

Have a good day.

I'm not all of y'all are young, but hopefully y'all could go into the jobs.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Davis.

And um, Director Corley, if I may, if you could uh just give insight on where folks can find annual comprehensive financial report.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good afternoon, City Council.

Um citizen can go on the city Detroit's website, then you go down to the office of the chief financial officer link, and then you go to the financial reports link, and then you'll see, and then you scroll down and you'll see all of the annual comprehensive financial reports act first.

And I think the last link would be the new 2025 um act for thank you so much.

Thank you.

Um next for public comment.

The next caller, Mr.

Chair is Betty A.

Varner.

Ms.

Varner, are you there?

Good afternoon.

And uh happy new year to all within the sound of my voice.

I'm Betty A.

Varner, the president of the Soda Ellsworth Black Association.

I'm here.

Uh I'm gonna talk about the community solutions organization where uh the director is Mrs.

Deborah A.

Royal.

She has a program that is unique that it will assist caregivers and the person who needs the care.

She also has other programs.

Uh she has an adult daycare under her umbrella, uh, where it provides uh house chores for people who need assistance, uh food prep, light cooking.

She also has a program where they she's affiliated with a restaurant that's on Seven Mile Road, West Seven Mile Road, I think it's in District Two, where the sheriff is really, really good, and you can get meals free from that particular restaurant, and you can pick them up, or it could be delivered, I believe, twice a week for people who are in the program.

Uh sometimes people just need a companion, someone to uh talk to.

This is for seniors and people with disabilities.

Please call 313 484, 3808.

Again, 313 484, 3808.

There are programs under her umbrella where you must have Medicaid, but there are also programs where you don't necessarily have to have Medicaid.

So if you're in need of services or know of someone who's in need of services, please share this information.

I use this service.

I'm part of the program, and it really is helpful to my family.

Thank you for this time and God bless you all.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Varner.

The next caller is to Hira Ahmed.

Good afternoon, Council members.

And uh congratulations, Mr.

Denzel McCampbell.

And thank you, Letitia, uh Council Member Letitia Johnson and Mr.

McCampbell uh for come for being part of our uh meetings that we're having at the coalition for property tax justice.

It shows that you dedicated for property tax um justice, and we appreciate you both.

We know we're heading the right direction with you too.

Uh I want to just highlight um what we we talk about, and I hope that we continue with the other people who don't know.

Um the coalition for property tax justice.

Uh, we sent out a memorandum, and I think all of you got it.

Uh, what elected officials must do in the first 100 days in office to secure property tax justice in Detroit.

I want to highlight the um basically um the the way to compensate over tax homeowners.

This has been a call for all four years.

Um, since we taught against the uh over taxation.

Uh what we want to do is make sure that we get compensated.

That's justice.

The reason why we have um the the uh people living in uh cars outside of uh the warming shelters is because they're homeless.

The homelessness is um due to the illegal over taxation and uh illegal over um assessment has caused uh 100,000 foreclosures, so we can't ignore them.

So we would like for you all to compensate the people.

They we won't have people living in their cars if they get compensation.

So this is what I want to emphasize today.

Thank you so much, and good luck and on your uh line.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you.

All right, and with that, we'll close for uh public comment, and then we'll move on to uh new business.

Uh sorry, Mr.

Chair.

My apologies.

So that we have one more caller who raised their hand before you cut off public comment at 110.

Okay.

That caller is calling user one.

Uh caller user user one.

Are you there?

Yes, I'm here.

Thank you so much for the lady that acknowledged because someone was just gonna skip me, and I had my hand up.

Happy New Year.

I hope that in 2026 that you will make sure that this winter, no more women, children have to die from being left in their vehicles where shelters will not let them come during midnight just to come out the cold.

No more Takiana Williams on you all's uh time clock.

This is wrong.

Um, you need to be paying your um city workers more money um so that they can earn a decent living.

Many of them are barely making it, and that's not fair.

What I'd like to ask of council member Campbell, um, I hope I said your name right.

Welcome aboard.

I hope that you will implement a policy to stop owners and landlords who have slum properties from returning against tenants who complain to council members by giving bogus lease violations or eviction notices, not because they owe any money solely because they complain the city council.

I have enormous amount of evidence to show that this has been a pattern going back 10 years and it needs to stop.

I'd like to know what will you do now that you are elected.

Finally, my question to Mr.

Campbell is will you be implementing new vocational skills that should be brought to Detroit, like eyelash technician training.

Can you answer me?

Thank you so much.

And definitely I uh those are um priorities for me, but I definitely do want to speak to you all on a one one-to-one basis.

So if we could if you want to uh is there a way that we can get our information.

Yes, to reach out to our office, you can email us at council member Denzel at Detroit Mi.gov.

Thank you so much.

All right, and with this at the any other folks for public comment.

Okay.

All right, so we'll move on to new business and under new business.

Um, could I get a motion to discuss item six plus uh six point one?

Um this is the financial report for the four months ending in October 34, 2025.

Motion.

All right.

And with that, I believe, thank you so much with all any objections.

We'll move on to discussion.

And with that, I believe we have um Donnie Johnson from the uh office of uh the chief financial officer um online, and we also have uh Mr.

Corley, right?

Sorry.

Thank you.

Um Corley.

Mr.

Okay.

So I'll probably have some courses.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Hi there.

Welcome, welcome.

All right, if you could um state your name for the record first and then go ahead and um give an overview of the report.

Sure thing.

Uh good afternoon, Mr.

Chair and uh members of the committee.

My name is Donnie Johnson, and I am the acting deputy chief financial officer and budget director for the city of Detroit.

Um I am joined today by my colleague Valerie Agoy, who is the acting deputy chief financial officer and treasurer for the city.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Um I am going to share this report.

I'm gonna bring it up on the screen, and then I'm going to give a little context around the report.

Um, since uh uh Mr.

Chairman, this is our first B our first monthly financial report together.

We'll be seeing a lot of each other.

Um, and uh so I'll lay out sort of what this report does um and um uh you know, sort of how we were how we should approach this report.

So one really important thing to note as you can see on the front, and this is really for the benefit of the viewing public as well, is that these reports are often delayed.

So the month that I come before this um honorable committee, we are usually a month or two lagged behind the month that we're doing the report on because of the timing of closing a period and and the timing of the council schedule.

Um so this one's a little bit more unusual because the holiday intervenes, right?

It it creates a bigger gap between the reports than normal.

So this report, and I think it's just incredibly important context is this is as of October 31st, 2025.

So the tenses in this report are going to seem strange in some cases, because this report is a snapshot of only that four-month period as of October 31st.

So I think it's really important context to set, uh, especially for the viewing public, that this report is not going to tell you as of today what's going on.

That report will come a couple months from now.

Um so what I will do is I will move in and give the sort of brief overview of the table of contents of how this report lays out.

We have an executive summary that then leads into what we call the budget versus actuals report.

And that's gonna um, you know, I'll go obviously go into that more when we're on that slide.

Then we move to a slide that discusses the annualized budget and projections, and that is essentially us providing our prognostication on what we think will happen with the budget.

Um, obviously, since this is a report four months into the fiscal year, it's still going to be fairly speculative because four months is not a lot of time and data from which to draw trends and conclusions.

We then have a slide that deals with what we call the amended budget reconciliation.

So anytime there are amendments to the budget, and when I say amendments, I do mean actions that were formally authorized by this body um and the the entire council to amend the city's operating budget, as well as what we call the um continuing appropriations um summary.

So we'll discuss that more when we get there.

We then do a slide on employee count monitoring, then we move on to income tax updates, updates on our cash, cash forecasting, cash position, and cash balances, and then we have close out with a um report on the accounts payable um and where we are in our accounts payable.

After that, I then will turn it.

I turn it back over to you, Mr.

Chair, and then we're open for questions, conversation, etc.

I did come prepared today.

Um, Mr.

Corley did send questions in advance.

Um I will provide those in writing after today's committee meeting, but I did come prepared with responses to those.

So um Mr.

Corley, I am ready, I'm ready for you.

Um I'm going to start with um slide our first slide.

So as of when this report was prepared, the city's audit.

So as of when this report was prepared, the city's audit, the audit of the city's annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025, was on is on schedule.

It was on schedule.

We did complete it, and it is published.

So the ACFR, the annual comprehensive financial report, which is really just you know the big complicated finance industry term for our audit, is published and can be looked at at this time.

We did timely make our submissions to both to the State Department of Treasury as is required by law, and we did meet that deadline as we have every year since the bankruptcy.

The OCFO at the time, we were working with who at the time was the mayor elect, now our mayor and her team to prepare the smooth and effective transition.

Obviously, that transition has completed, and we are continuing to support the mayor and her team as they settle in and you know start the process of you know making their mark on the city.

So we get to our budget versus actual slide.

So at the top of this slide, you'll see a category labeled revenue.

This is going to show you what we call the major revenues.

So major revenues are going to be the what can you can think of them as sort of the linchpin, the legs of the stool that support the vast majority of city operations in the general fund.

It's gonna be the municipal income tax, property taxes, wagering taxes, utility users' taxes, state revenue sharing, and then when we call other revenues.

The primary driver in other revenues is usually interest earnings on investments.

So we'll talk about it a little bit on the cash slides, but the city invests all of its cash, right?

We're a large cash entity in our bank accounts, and that money is invested in short-term investments, that does make us money.

And so that's generally what falls into the other revenues category.

So as you can see from this slide, um, as of year to date for the October, which I think tells the sort of more clear story, is that we are as of October 31st, we were running a little ahead on our municipal income taxes.

Now I do want to caution that this really is likely a function of timing.

And what I mean by that is we do our best to estimate in each period, each month, how much money we expect to receive in remittance from the state treasury of collections at that time.

We do our best to guess, but the world being imperfect, sometimes these remittances just don't come on the schedule we initially expect, and that usually what we what we causes what we call a timing problem.

And so in this case, we've received more money year to date than we were expecting to receive, which is a good story, but when I get to the next slide, it'll tell still tell you that that does not mean that on the whole of the year we think that we're going to be ahead in that area.

So that's the important caution I like to give this report is the year to date is not really the full story.

It is the story as of that time.

Um this kind of early in the fiscal year, when you see variances in these sort of revenues, it's early and it's almost always related to timing.

It's almost never a real structural issue.

Um the one thing that is genuine is the wagering taxes.

You'll see on this report that we are 15 running 15 million dollars ahead of where we expected.

It is no secret that our our wagering taxes are they're doing gangbusters.

They're they're doing quite well.

Um they are one of our leaders in revenue growth.

Um, you know, we we try not to, we don't pin everything on that because as we know, wagering could could become volatile in certain economic conditions, but it has been overperforming, and we continue, we do believe that overperformance will continue through the fiscal year.

When we go down to expenses, again, with the caveat that we're only four months into the fiscal year in this report, um, there really aren't any major deviations other than the largest deviation is in operating supplies, and this is something that Mr.

Corley and his team had pointed out in their questions.

So there is a 3.5 million negative variance in operating supplies.

This really is a matter of timing.

There were expenses that came in that we thought were gonna be more mid-year that came in earlier.

Just means that certain vendors that we thought were gonna bill us a little bit later in the year billed sooner.

On the whole, when you net go look over the course of the year, we're still balanced in this category.

This doesn't mean that on the yearly basis, we're going to have a budgetary problem.

Um, top line for this report, we are running about 20.5 million ahead on revenues and 0.1 million under or over on expenses, which means that we are still looking at a surplus, a running operating general fund surplus of around 20.4 million dollars.

So it's good news overall, still at the four-month mark of the fiscal year.

So as I noted, this next slide is what we call the annualized budget versus projection.

So you can see column A here is the budget, and this is the budget as it stands as of the date of this report.

Um it does reflect any amendments that had been approved by city council through August of that fiscal year, so July and August.

So there is a lag on the reflection in those as well.

There were no, I will say there were no budget amendments in the first two months of this fiscal year.

So the budget is as it was adopted for both revenues and expenses.

Then what we do is we make a projection.

Projections in revenues, we have a lot more data, a lot more ability to forecast, and we can work off of the analysis that we used for the September revenue estimating conference.

And that really guides our projection here.

So the projection you see here is the projection that we adopt that the principals adopted at the city's revenue estimating conference in September.

As I cautioned on the previous slide, you can see that municipal for municipal income tax, we are still continuing to believe forecast that we will have a shortfall in income tax revenues of 61.1 million dollars.

The February revenue estimating conference is coming up, and so we do expect to fine-tune that number as we have more data coming, and Mizagoli, of course, is a lot better positioned to answer questions about revenues than I am because revenues are a function of the Treasury department.

Property taxes, we do expect to overperform there, and we continue to see a $23 million overperformance and wagering as we go.

Utility users tax, we see that we're overperforming in that.

That is really driven by the utility users tax is a unique one.

It's really driven by the weather.

And I think a lot of people are kind of surprised to learn that that it's really driven by weather.

If it's cold, you run your heat, your utility bill is higher, the utility users tax is higher.

If it's hot, you run your air conditioning, etc.

And so we had some extra we've had some extreme weather incidents throughout the year, and so we do think that that is driving a higher utility users tax.

Um reductions in state revenue sharing, that is something that we knew was coming, and and we have now confirmed now that the state has adopted its budget.

The state's budget did cut revenue sharing, and Detroit's revenue sharing will be reduced as a result.

That number will be fine-tuned in the February revenue estimating conference with slightly something slightly more accurate now that the budget is adopted.

Finally, other revenues, you can see that we are down, we expect to be down on that, and that is a function of interest earnings going down as we spend down our cash balances in ARPA and our capital fund.

So as those funds are spent down, that's just less cash in investments to earn money.

And so this is what we expect will occur there.

As we move to the expenditure category, um, you can see that I actually don't have any variances there.

So four months into the fiscal year is too early for our expenditures to really forecast anything other than our default assumption, which is the assumption we use when we adopt a budget.

And that is that if we adopt this number, we expect to spend this number.

And until we start to see enough deviation in the data, we continue to just run on that assumption.

Now we know when we close our fiscal years, we tend to have underspend as a as a general rule, we tend to underspend in most expenditure categories as a city.

That's also driven by timing, right?

We expect certain things to happen within a fiscal year.

Life doesn't often uh work out the way we expect, or projects don't work out the way we expect, invoices come later than expected.

And so, you know, I do expect to see as we move through the fiscal year in these reports, you'll start to see variances in this category, and you'll start to see more positive variances, you'll see some negative, but my expectation in my experience of my 10 years here is that this will be something that we see a positive overall variance as we sort of undershoot our expenditures.

Um this leaves us in a position of a forecasted deficit of 32.2 million dollars.

Um, as this committee knows, um uh earlier this year, or not this year, last year, adjusting to being in a new year now, um, we did uh establish a what we call the corporate income revenue tax reserve fund, and as you can see at the very bottom of this slide, that was 42 million dollars, and it is doing exactly what it was intended to do.

So as a result of that reserve being in place, we continue to show a surplus as a city.

Um as we fine-tune these numbers and especially see underspend and expenditures, the use of use of that reserve, I expect will go down, and at the end of this fiscal year, what's left in that reserve will revert back to the general unassigned fund balance.

But it's doing exactly what it was intended to do, and it is keeping our overall projections positive for the city as we absorb these sort of uh changes in the income tax collections.

So the next slide is the amended budget reconciliation slide.

At the top, you can see that we've essentially reconciled the numbers to show a more apples to apples comparison of what the budget looks like for earned revenues versus expected expenditures.

What this essentially means is we when we adopt a budget each year, we adopt what we call prior year surplus, and that's the use of our surplus.

So when you saw the announcement at the end of last year that we had a 105 million dollar fund balance or surplus, when we go into the next budget cycle, we use some of that.

Now it's for one-time use only, not recurring use.

So we don't use it for staff or any kind of recurring expense, but we use it for things like capital blight elimination, things that you can kind of do on a one-time basis.

That is not earned revenue, right?

That's not something we earn from outside the city in, it's just the use of an existing fund surplus.

And so that gets excluded from the total revenue adopted budget because it's not real revenue.

But on the whole, even though these two numbers don't match, we are still balanced because we have resources to match our expenditures.

But what we're showing you is the sort of earned revenue expectation versus the adopted expenditure expectation.

The bottom section is what we call the continuing appropriations section, and that shows you the current balances in all of the continuing appropriations.

So continuing appropriations are those that do not lapse at the end of a fiscal year.

As a general rule, a general fund by law must lapse into the fund balance and cannot carry forward into the next fiscal year.

There are, however, some exceptions that have been made over the last decade, and these are some of those exceptions that continue to be in place.

Things like the public health fund, which is established by ordinance, and the ordinance specifically says this must continue.

The law specifically allows it to continue.

And other and a lot of these other items.

Some of these items I do expect will drop off at the end of this fiscal year.

They will either be spent out and finally closed out after years of spin down, or they will be transferred out of the general fund into special revenue funds or other more appropriate funds than the general fund.

And we'll talk more about that as we get close to that action taking place.

That would be something we would I would come to this committee to discuss more in depth.

But as you can see from a continuing appropriation standpoint, we have that $27.8 million dollars of funds that carried forward from in this case 25 into 26, FY25 into FY26.

This is what the change we're looking at.

So from September October, we did see some reductions in staffing in both police and fire, and some reductions in the legislative group.

That would be staff that had been brought on in temporary capacities toward the end of this last year, who then dropped off.

Police and fire, these are almost exclusively attributed to retirements.

Late last fiscal year we did see a sort of a bit of an increase in retirements.

There were a few separations, and separations are usually when someone is transferring to another jurisdiction.

But for the most part, we have seen an increase in both police and fire retirements as people reach their service year max.

Increase-wise, not a lot of big increases.

Public works, you did see an increase in public works full-time employees.

This was primarily driven by road crews, the folks who work on the roads and more engineer type people.

So they've been working really hard to recruit and fill a lot of their engineer positions, which have been vacant.

Overall, as a city, we went from a 10,422 FTEs overall to 10,425.

So we gained on net three FTEs month over month, a fairly flat change in personnel.

So I'm now going to turn things over to my colleague, Ms.

Goli, and she's going to walk through all of the sort of revenue and treasury-based slides.

Good afternoon.

I'm Valerie Agoli, Acting Treasurer, Deputy CFO.

So I'll start with the slide on income tax collections.

Again, this is through collections through October 2025.

We separate it into four categories.

We look at the withholding, which is what you're familiar with, what's taken out of your paycheck to go towards the city income tax.

Individual is the individual annual return that's filed at the end of the tax year.

Corporate is corporations that pay the corporate income tax and partnerships.

So what we have is we show a comparison at this point compared to October of 2024, we can see that withholding is up by 7.5 million.

Individual is down by just a small amount of approximately 300,000.

Corporate compared to the same time last year is down by approximately 4.7 million, and partnerships are down by approximately 640,000.

When we look at the collections net of refunds, disbursements compared to this point last year, we are up by approximately 1.3 million.

So I thought maybe I could address them in the presentation as well.

He had asked whether the projected shortfall for municipal income tax, which currently we project at compared to the prior year, we project at 61 million.

At this point, we do plan to examine it for the February estimating revenue estimating conference.

We did look at last year, and we find, especially with corporate income tax, that the point at which our estimate diverged from actuals last year was beginning in January when the court they start to file their corporate income tax returns.

And so that's something we want to make sure we have that data available before we consider any revisions to the revenue projections.

Let me see, he had also asked about the increase in withholding, which I stated was approximately 7.5 million compared to last year, and what that might be a reflection of.

Corporate filers can request an extension until October.

Some of the big variances you can see under other governmental funds, ARPA, because there's been a spend down, we have less ARPA dollars that are available to the city and available to invest in fiduciary funds, other was large compared to prior months, and this is the disbursement of class 9 and 14 creditors related to the bankruptcy.

This is the disbursement of the B notes that were issued in 2014.

And then, you know, I can go up to the top two, the retiree protection fund.

Those are the quarterly approximately $18 million distributions from that fund that we make to shore up the pension fund.

And that is a strong cash position.

This is where we forecast to make sure that we have enough cash that's liquid so that we're able to pay our obligations, such as salaries and invoices to vendors, etc.

This is something that Treasury updates monthly.

This version reflects the updated September revenue estimates.

But what we basically look at are the total sources of cash coming in the door, the total sources of cash going out the door, make sure that we have uh ending common cash pool that is considered still strong and at um approximately it ranges between our forecast 700 million um to 750 million.

Um we are comfortable with this and uh don't have any concerns with this slide.

The last slide is accounts payable and suppliers payments.

Now this is not a function of Treasury, just so that you're aware, but um I do present on it.

I do hear the presentation and um what they what they provide here is to show you for the month of September how much they had outstanding in accounts payable, and then they add the invoices that were processed, um then they subtract the payments that they made, and then that shows the total AP at the month end.

And in this case it's 42 million.

Then they subtract any invoices that are on hold, which um it describes reasons that could be on hold as um pending receipt, it doesn't match the purchase orders, there's something um wrong, and so once they subtract that the total AP not on validation hold is um 25 million.

Uh so then they subtract out any retainage, which are invoices that they hold until the supplier satisfies all contract obligations, and that shows the total amount of net P uh net AP on hold of 20.5 million.

Um in the chart below, they also show um by date uh how they're doing uh this month comparing compared to the prior month.

So you can see um we often look at 61 days plus, and they they always want to keep that as close to zero as they can, um, and the 31 to 60 days.

We can see in the previous month um for the 61 plus there were 28 that were still um outstanding, but uh my recollection is they said that had some that was related to um estites excuse me, sheets payments, um, which is when we at Treasury transfer any uncashed checks um to the state of Michigan under the unclaimed property act, and then um people, individuals and companies can get their money that way by filing with the Department of Treasury.

Um the the slides um I'm sorry, the graphs on the right, the top one is a representation of the table on the left, and the second one shows um ACH virtual versus checks, and of course, the city has tried to move to ACH payments uh as much as we can.

And that concludes my remarks.

All right, thank you, uh Mr.

Chair, members of the committee for letting us do this presentation.

I know it took a little bit longer than normal, but I wanted to make sure we were thorough for our first our maiden voyage.

Um, and uh, you know, I will say the RSQE is the research seminar in quantitative economics.

Thank you.

Only because I I literally had to look at a document yesterday about it.

The only reason I remember is because I just read something.

So yes, um, so Mr.

Chair, we're gonna turn it back to you for questions.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Johnson, thank you, Ms.

Goldie.

Uh, and I appreciate the uh explanation on things uh and laying it out there, especially for our first committee minute.

Thank you so much.

Uh with that, I'll open up for questions from our colleagues.

Mr.

Chair.

Uh member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and uh happy new year.

Thank you all so much for the uh detailed report.

I do have a number of different questions that I was joting down as you all were presenting the information.

So just to make sure that we are level setting because this is all of our first time on BFNA.

Um so one, I know we talked about the quarterly report when it's done and when it is posted online for the community to see.

Um so can you just clarify whether or not it is posted online prior to your presentation before BFNA?

Uh through the chair to member Johnson, yes.

So once we submit the report to the council officially, um, you know, regardless of when the next the BFNA meeting ultimately happens, we do post those reports.

Okay.

They are on the um you can usually find them by either going to um Detroit and my.gov slash OCFO or Detroit and my.gov slash budget.

Both will lead you to the right place.

Perfect, thank you.

Um second question.

Um you talked about the utility user tax, um, and I know that that is state law.

Can you share what the percentage is do you know?

Through the chair, I actually don't Ms.

Goldman.

It's five percent.

Thank you.

Um my next question is relative to the 61.1 million uh in income tax revenue, the deficit that we were projecting for the price of current fiscal year, right?

Um can we talk a little bit about where that is coming from?

I know last year uh there were comments that were being made that gave the appearance that we were giving money back to corporations to address this deficit, but can you share a little bit more detail on where the deficit is coming from why we are projecting such a sizable deficit through the chair?

Um so the fiscal year 26 uh estimate is 61 million dollars, and that's how much less we think we're going to get in municipal income tax revenues compared to what we thought in February of 2025.

So in February of 2025, and and that's when we were preparing, you know, in January for the revenue estimating conference, um the assumption was that uh that municipal income tax revenues would continue to grow.

Um I think the team, and that's what had been happening in prior years, and and I I think the team had um estimated a 2.1% growth based on what we expected for fiscal year 25.

So we started out with expecting income tax of you know, the the estimate was 455 million for fiscal year 25, and then we grew that for a projection of 470 million for fiscal year 26.

Um then we uh estimate the revenues again in September.

So there's the two revenue estimating conferences, and then we have more information.

Um and the team is able to to look at what's happening, and there are things that were happening that happened after we um came up with the uh February 2025 estimates, and those kinds of things included um the tariffs, which did impact we believe profitability of corporations, and um another thing that happened was the one big beautiful bill, which had many changes to federal tax law that um benefited corporations.

Um it uh I don't have a list of the changes, but some of the things were how quickly you could depreciate.

Um I can't think of the other ones right now, but I if I do I'll I'll share.

Yeah, and and so um we looked at that, and for the city's corporate income tax, our starting point is the federal taxable income.

So, unlike we know the state of Michigan um has uh subtracts those things out, or I mean makes them add those amounts back in, um, we don't do that at the city of Detroit.

That's just not what city state the state um statute says.

So we um our team did an estimate on the impact of the one big beautiful bill, and also looked at where fiscal year 25 results were actually coming in now that you know it was September and we had more information, and um that's how and why we are we projected that for corporate income tax revenues that would come in 40 to approximately 42 million dollars less than what we had anticipated at a point in time in February of 2025.

Um we we also think that we were overly optimistic with the withholding in individual again.

Um we we do rely on RSQE and um some of their economic full um projections, but since our projection was originally based on where we thought fiscal year 25 was going to come, um we did lower that as well.

We we do rely on RSQE and some of their economic projections, but since our projection was originally based on where we thought fiscal year 25 was going to come, um we did lower that as well.

So those are the the big items, and uh it in no way is it um it's just related to a change in the economy, a change in federal policy, and a change in federal tax law.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

So I just wanted to kind of clarify that for the community, um, and because in summary, my thought was um right size and the estimates based on changes to federal law.

So just wanted to kind of make sure people didn't think that we were giving money to corporations, but really just having better estimates of what we anticipated coming in based upon the laws that were changed within the federal government.

Thank you.

And if I might if I might add just one little bit, I think that would might be helpful for the viewing public, especially.

Um we can only so there are two statutes in the state that create an income tax.

There's the income tax act, and that is for the state income tax.

They then have a separate act called the municipal income tax act, and that's what authorized city municipalities in Michigan to create their own income taxes.

When the state um created uh what we call decoupled, they they stopped matching the state income tax act to the federal income tax act in order to have higher higher taxable incomes for state revenue purposes, they did not subsequently also amend the municipal income tax act.

We are still coupled to the federal income tax.

And so the federal government, when they created these new accelerated depreciation, accelerated research and development credits, all of these sorts of things, we can only tax what we are what legally we are allowed to tax, and that is the taxable income as defined in the municipal income tax act.

And so that is all we can do.

Um, and unless the state legislature changes it, what we classify as taxable income is always going to be lower than what the state now classifies as taxable income.

And so that is obviously going to be a driver in what happens with our income tax, and it's a it's a conversation we need to continue to have with Lansing.

Thank you for that.

Um I just have a few more questions.

Um the next question I have is um they're going to get simpler.

Um I know Ms.

O'Goli, and you indicated that you only report out on the AP side of things, so to the administration and whomever uh is now the liaison because I'm not sure who it is, I would love to get a better understanding of the net AP on hold and really trying to understand if those are just open purchase orders because I know sometimes there can be challenges with um vendors submitting uh invoices through Oracle and things of that nature.

So would really just like to get an understanding of what that is, net AP on hold, um, and then to Mr.

Downey Johnson, under continuant appropriations, I did not see the CLT fund, and so I'm interested in why I didn't see that through the chair to Councilmember Johnson.

That's a fabulous question.

Um the those funds are not in fund 1000.

So I hold those funds in what we call fund 4533, which is the capital projects fund.

It's a kind of a misleading name, it's a little bit broader.

Um, and that fund is a no-year fund.

So funds in there don't lapse.

Um, and so I can assure you that the CLT funding remains in place and available.

Perfect, thank you.

Um the employee count that you shared, gave the overview of.

Uh I am just wondering if we will receive an update prior to our budget hearings.

Yeah, oh yes.

Um, that's very possible.

Um, if if we want to do um instead of waiting or trying to sync up with the month, these monthly reports, you mean you would like an update before we kick off, regardless of where we are in this reporting status.

That would be wonderful.

Uh yes, that is possible.

Okay, thank you.

And lastly, um, I know prior to Ms.

O'Goli being here, there was some conversation discussion around um working on ensuring that Detroiters, um, even those who may use creative ways of identifying where they receive auto insurance are if for all Detroit residents that live in the city that we are proper properly receiving the adequate amount of income tax from them.

There was a search essentially that was taking place just to make sure that those that live in Detroit are paying Detroit income tax.

Are we still doing that?

And and I ask that because as I'm looking at the withholdings, that says to me, okay, more Detroiters are working and paying income tax.

Um I'm just wondering if we're still going through that process to identify and make sure that residents who live in the city of Detroit are effectively paying the adequate amount of income income taxes.

Yes, so um we the the city continues, so um I think through the chair, I apologize.

Um a broader context setting just for the for the viewing public.

Um the state of Michigan administers our income tax, so they do the enforcement actions on our behalf.

So what we we call this enforcement, tax enforcement, um, and uh yes, so that continues to be underway.

Um, and we also sometimes call it uh tax discovery.

So tax discovery, meaning we're looking for places where someone has been not filing, um, circumventing various rules in order to not pay income tax.

Um, and this includes businesses as well as individuals.

Um, individuals can be very creative um in their income tax uh filing.

Um, and so um what we that we call this tax discovery or tax enforcement, and the state um has had an enhanced work on that um each year.

I know Ms.

Ms.

Agoalie is is uh closer to it and works very close, and and she herself was at the state of Michigan um uh at a point in her career, so she's very familiar with these sorts of things.

Excellent.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Member Drossa.

Uh-huh.

Member Warders.

Okay, thank you, uh, Mr.

Chairman.

All right, so just a few questions.

Um maybe I missed it somehow with regarding the whole Opera transition.

Ums that are still supporting programs and positions today.

So which programs and jobs rely on ARPA right now.

When do we need to decide whether to fund them permanently or in them?

When do we need to make that decision?

Uh through the chair.

I do not personally have the level of detail, like the number of personnel or things like I that can be provided.

That can absolutely be gotten.

I I just don't have it on hand specifically uh as of today.

Um the we are planning to have any current ARPA funded programs for the most part wrapped up by June 30th of this year.

Because we need to complete what we call close out and reconciliation in that take for a grant this large, because this is technically treated as a grant, um, it will take about six months to close out and reconcile and get everything finalized with the federal government.

So we are looking to have those decisions sort of made no later than June 30th of this year.

Well, I certainly hope 99% of it is done by it to our budgeting in March.

I so that we have a better sense, you know.

Yeah, and through the chair, uh the it's a that's a fabulous point, which is we do take I do taking that into account when I'm working on and preparing the budget, um, uh the draft budget for the mayor, and and then um you know uh to working with the council on it, I do take into account the plans as of you know the latest I have as the until the last minute until the pencil's down on the budget.

I do my best to try to account for that to say, all right.

Well, I know this many people are pl are going to come over and stay permanently, so I've accommodated that.

I've planned for that in the budget.

So I do my best for timeliness on that.

Um so I will continue to do that.

All right.

So you you mentioned that wagering taxes are coming in much higher than expected and helping to offset the shortfall.

So if uh wagering revenue slows down, what is our backup plan to avoid budget problems later in the year?

Through the chair, uh it's an excellent question.

Um, one thing I like to always point out when we're going over, and I'm gonna scroll my slides back to um the forecast slide.

So, one thing I always like to point out is that um you know one of the benefits that we have is that we can always um change our spend habits relatively quickly if we need to.

Um, in this case, we were proactive for this fiscal year, and we put aside a reserve fund that would ensure that we did not have to make any cuts, no services will be affected.

Detroiters would not notice any difference in the services being provided to them, even if all of this if that came to pass.

Um if we uh I think, and this isn't me trying to wiggle out of answering the question, it's I I think it is the genuine answer, which is we really truly don't see uh them going down because sports betting is has become such a big business.

That is at these high numbers are really driven by online sports betting.

Um more um providers are coming online with apps for folks to very easily hop on an app and gamble.

Um and and folks, there's a large uptake on that.

Um, and so we are just not seeing any sign right now of real cooling in that space.

One place where we keep one time when we keep an eye on it is if we see broader economic contraction.

Now that seems logical, but what we learned during the pandemic and during the sort of mini economic contraction we had then was that actually people tended to gamble at a higher rate despite unemployment being high, despite economic contraction being increased.

It's sort of a it's sort of a unexpected um uh pattern that we saw.

Now, is that going to be the pattern every time?

I I can't say that for sure.

But we just don't see any real risk with wagering.

Now, what we're gonna do starting at the rev February revenue estimating conference is you know, we are gonna start kind of reaching what we would consider like a more logical plateau where we're gonna start being a little bit more conservative and saying, all right, let's just assume we stay at this number, and if we do overperform, that's bonus.

You know, it's it's a nice surprise.

Um so we're not gonna continue to chase the number one to one every time.

We're gonna kind of keep it reasonable so that we're keeping our expectations you know moderated.

Okay.

Uh all right, so police and fire operating well below budget uh staffing levels.

Uh, the savings from these vacancies being offset by higher overtime costs, and how is that showing up in the budget?

Uh through the chair, yes, we do see um overtime as one of the big drivers in police and fire's budget as a result of this staffing, but we also see that both departments are starting to make progress in bringing those numbers down.

So it's a concerted effort that we've been working on with both the chief and the commissioner on you know, are there um ways we can rework schedules and and finding ways to sort of make sure we're being cognizant of the use of overtime?

But the fire department just um completed an academy class for the fire academy, and so we do expect to have um I don't I don't know the number um off the top of my head because it it fluctuates for a couple months while people either stay or don't stay after the academy, but um we do expect that's gonna go quite a ways to helping the fire department do that.

And remember we do um cross-trained, so we're we're medical first responders, so that um a medical first responder can handle both medical runs and fire runs.

Uh well then the final thing I'll say is that I certainly hate it when the state cuts us in revenue sharing because I'm almost reminded that they still owe us.

Number one.

Number two, but do you anticipate um the state cutting revenue sharing on an annual basis?

Is there do you anticipate any trend of that?

Uh through the chair, we've not received any uh you know, again, I hate uh I hate to give sort of a an unsatisfying answer, but it's almost impossible to know because you know, I mean you you know quite well how the state budget cycle can work.

Um and we know this year's state budget cycle was quite let's just say c chaotic, um, unsettled.

Oh, um and so um you know revenue sharing is always you know there is always appeal in certain groups um in the legislature for that because it means they can hold more money to the state, you know, they fund their priorities instead of passing more revenue back to us.

Um and so it's always a risk, but we've received no indication that that's something they want to keep doing.

What you know, I think the indications have been more that this was just a it was an unfortunate necessity in order to make all of the priorities work.

I yeah, get it.

All right then.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Member Waters.

I'm sorry, may I add one?

Yes.

Through the chair.

Um council member waters.

Uh one other thing that I wanted to mention regarding the wagering tax, and it was a question that Mr.

Corley had asked, so it gives me an opportunity to address it.

Um with the internet gaming, um there was uh provision that um they could they pay on their adjusted gross receipts, and that could be deducted by 10 percent or for what they call free play.

Um and the state law uh has that tapering off, and so it used to be 10 percent beginning January 1, 2025, the deduction went from 10 percent to 6%.

Um, and then in calendar year 2026, the deduction is four percent, and after that it will no longer be available.

So um we've done some estimating on that, and uh we didn't include the impact of that directly in the revenue estimate because we want to see how that impacted uh what people decide to do, whether they'd still offer free play, and um, but we will be looking at that for the February conference.

But my point is that it it gives us more confidence as well in the um in in the wagering tax revenues.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if you could uh Mr.

Johnson uh get that list of the ARPA fund uh positions to um all of us, that would be great as well.

Thank you.

I did also have a question before I tell turn over to Mr.

Corley Corley for any additional questions he may have.

Uh the fugitive dust fund, where is um I know it's not listed here.

Uh what fund is that out of, Mr.

Johnson?

Yes.

Um so the fugitive, so monies for the fugitive dust uh capture under the future dust ordinance go into the public health fund, which is that first line on this continuing appropriations.

So right now the continuing uh the public health fund has a balance, or as of October 31st, I should say.

Um the the public health fund had a balance of 641, uh 290 dollars.

So um when people violate the fugitive dust ordinance, this is where the um the fees and the fines uh end up by ordinance.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

Chair.

Member Johnson.

Thank you.

Prior to uh going to Mr.

Corley, I have a question relative to that.

Um there were dollars that were put into the public health fund maybe two or three years ago.

I remember uh Member Santiago Romero and I were working together on that.

Um do you know if any of the dollars that are within this fund have come from um the fugitive dust ordinance or for those that have not uh met the ordinance?

Uh through the chair, yes, some of this is, but I will, I mean, I will candidly say that it's not a huge amount of money per year.

For the most part, uh I know there's frequently a perception that there are a lot of violators, but when we actually go out to do enforcement, we find that they're not actually in violation of the ordinance.

Um there's also the you know, often they can, you know, they work through settlements on how much they ultimately pay to the city.

So that's not really the primary driver.

We are spending down some of that seed money.

But yes, we do receive receipts um every year for um you know fines related to noncompliance.

Okay, thank you.

It would be great to see a breakdown of that.

Um I'm really interested in understanding those that have not met the letter of the law and have um essentially provided some resources for this fund.

Um and then I'm really interested in how we utilize the the balance in the fund.

So um would love to have a conversation with Member Santiago Romero uh and you or perhaps someone in BC to talk about where the dollars are being utilized that are in the fund.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Member Johnson.

And and furthermore, in a conversation uh uh Mr.

Johnson, um I know in the ordinance for the fusion of dust, it did uh it's my understanding that it created its own funds, so just if we could have a further conversation on the connectivity with the public health fund as well.

Yeah, uh so the fund that was created by by the ordinance, Mr.

Chair, is the public health fund.

So it was named the public health fund um when it was created.

Okay.

Wow.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Corley, do you have additional questions?

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh I think Mr.

Johnson would agree with me.

This is gonna be a fun budget finance and audit committee.

Great questions from the council members.

And I appreciate the appreciate the responses going to be coming uh to our our questions in the LPD.

So oh you got responses.

I really appreciate that.

I just want to make a disco really just a couple um points.

We can go back to page of session.

I'm sorry, executive summary.

That's page three.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, I just wanted to make a point.

Um the uh annual comprehensive financial report was submitted to the state by the deadline, which is December 31st.

And I just want to you know remind the council and the citizens, there was there was a point, uh, Mr.

Chair, especially be prior to to bankruptcy, where we were chronically late, sometimes up to three months late in submitting our annual reports, you know, financial reports to the state.

So I would say coming out of bankruptcy and the creation of the office of the chief financial officer was really instrumental in ensuring that we got our financial reports done in time, you know, um, for the state.

And that is also has helped to improve the financial outlook of the city.

The fact that we're producing our financial reports on a timely basis, because there were times that we did not, unfortunately.

So I just want to uh indicate that.

And um, you know, I appreciate the overall comments that you know, this is early in the game.

It's just four months, so I so I understand that we can't rely a lot on just four months of data, but it does give us some, you know, some barometer of what's going on.

And as Mr.

Johnson was indicating, um we'll be getting more updated reports, you know, fairly soon over the next couple months.

Last thing I want to say is that the reporting that they do here in budget finance and audit, they also report these same reports to the Financial Review Commission, and that's by the fourth Monday, I believe, of the month.

Um, and so coming out of bankruptcy.

Well, let me let me say this.

Um the financial review commission was first you know, in place, they had you know full oversight of the of the city's finances.

Fortunately, the city ended up with three consecutive budget surpluses, which means that the financial review commission went into a more modified or much lower oversight um position.

Um but when they came out of that, there was a there was a requirement that the that the FRC put on the city Detroit, and that is to have to file monthly financial reports so that it can you know monitor what the city's doing financially, um, and to also provide quarterly reports.

And so these reports that the OCFO will be presenting to this committee and the citizens, you know, when they are prepared, is in requirement that was put in place from the financial review commission.

So I just wanted you know uh indicate that as well.

But thank you so much for the robust uh conversation.

Thank you.

Um and Mr.

Chair, if I might, I I do need to correct the record on something.

I did I I misspoke earlier.

I said that sports betting was driving the wagering.

I that was my brain being confused.

It's online gaming.

It's it's the online gaming.

Yeah, that's that's what I meant.

Thank you, Mr.

Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Corley.

Uh and I did I have an additional question on the uh I know Mr.

Corley asked about this as well, but if we can just um discuss it on the uh vacancies and uh I know we talked about the public safety, but the non-public safety uh departments.

Um is that is that because of a higher freeze, or do we have any indication that those positions will be filled soon uh in this budget year?

Um there so I can just say no, there is no hiring freeze.

So there was no hiring freeze um at the end of last year.

Um something that uh so all municipal governments, all local governments, this is not a Detroit specific problem, is we we struggle, right, to recruit.

Um local government does not often pay as much as private sector.

So a plumber, a licensed plumber, or even a even just a journeyman plumber, can make considerably more money um working at uh you know a private plumbing company than working with us as a skilled tradesperson.

Um and so you know, it is a constant race on our part to try to be competitive in the ways that we can.

Um and so for a lot of our departments, this you will see this report almost persistently being the amount of staff are below the budgeted uh uh assumed head count.

Um, and that is just a it's just by virtue of the fact that it is often very difficult to recruit for certain types of jobs, especially the more specialized they get.

Um, and that's where we begin to fall back on um you know pri contractual services.

So where we have don't have enough support, we don't have enough plumbers on board, for example.

The um uh construction and demolition departments facilities division will have a con what we call an as-needed contract with a plumbing firm, so that if you know, if we only have one plumber remaining on city staff, that's clearly not enough to address all of the issues, then we have to call people in for it.

We do actively recruit, I think we've had an open post for licensed electricians.

This is a public announcement now.

We do have a open posts for licensed electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and construction, um, qualified licensed construction experts.

Um so if you're interested in listening, please do apply.

Um I believe we've had an open post for electricians the entire time I've been with the city.

So 10 years and five months.

Um and we've never um in my time with the city been fully staffed with electricians.

And I started in the so just fun fact, I started in the general services department with the city.

That was my first department here, and that was one of my things I struggled with is trying to can I find some more electricians and plumbers?

Um and the answer ultimately was no.

I can't keep because I just can't keep up with that.

So we do struggle with um vacancies, um, and we take that into account when we do the budget.

You know, we think through what does this mean?

Does this give us the you know a little bit of comfort that we'll be able to stay within the budget if we know we're gonna have this normal churn and what we call vacancy savings as part of the expense experience?

Thank you, thank you, Mr.

Johnson.

If the public is listening, uh we do have some opening, so please check it out.

Good good government jobs.

Good government jobs.

Any other are there any other questions from my colleagues?

All right.

With that, I'll um entertain a motion for this report to be received and filed.

Motion without any objections, the uh financial report for four months ended in October 31, 2025 will be received and filed.

All right.

Uh we'll move on.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, and with that, we'll no further new business.

We'll move on to member reports, and we'll start with Member Waters if you have new reports.

Oh, well, well, thank you, uh Mr.

Chairman.

Not much of a member report.

I I'm here to learn all that I can.

Uh this um budget and finance um committee, and I I look forward to um uh working with you all, both you and uh member Johnson.

And so I mean you have such a calm demeanor.

We'll see if that lasts.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Member Warders.

Hopefully it lasts.

Um hopefully uh member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm certain it will last.

You'll be the balance of um of all of us.

Mine lasts as well.

Uh I might say some things a little differently, but but we have a good time.

Um I don't have any member reports, just want to I indicated yesterday that we have coffee hour on January 16th.

We are still going to have that coffee hour at the Commons at 7900 Mack Avenue, although I know very shortly after that we will be running for a continued orientation.

So just um want to say that we will um run from coffee hour to make sure we're still doing our job.

So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Member Johnson, and and again, I just want to thank everyone, thank my colleagues um and uh uh folks from the administration.

Thank you for uh bearing with me as this is our first meeting, my first meeting chairing, and I look again look forward to uh a great year, a great term ahead, and uh appreciate you all.

So uh with that, if there is no further business before the committee, the committee will stand adjourned at 218.

Thank you.