This meeting of the Finance and Order Standard Committee on May 6, 2026, included a lengthy public comment period addressing city finances, services, and transparency; a detailed presentation on the February 2026 Revenue Estimating Conference and long-term fiscal forecast; discussion and approval of two Neighborhood Enterprise Zone (NEZ) certificate applications; and approval of a no-cost contract for deferred compensation services.
Finance and order standard committee of Wednesday, May 6, 2026 to order. Or the clerk please call the roll. Councilmember Denzel Anto McCampbell. Present. Councilmember Letitia Johnson. Present. Councilmember Mary Waters. President. Mr. Chair, you have a coin present. Thank you, Madam Clerk. That moves on to the approval of the minutes. Members of the committee should have received a copy of the minutes. And with that, is there a motion to approve? Motion. It's been a motion to approve the minutes. See no objections. The minister stand approved. That'll move us on to chair remarks. I do not have chair remarks today. We'll open public comment. A request for public comment will close at 10 p.m. Um you have two minutes for your public comments. Seeing no folks in the room with us in person right now, we'll move over to those joining us virtually. If you are on Zoom or participating remotely, please use the raise hand feature, and you will be called in order. Who do we have on Zoom now? Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. As of right now, we have 10 hands raised. And our first caller is Owner Papa. Ms. Hughes, good afternoon. You have two minutes. Are you there? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. And through the chair, may I be her? Yes, you may, good afternoon. Today we have the revenue discussion. And I would like for you to take a look at the the uh the general fund um revenue estimates that have looked worse and worse. This this body that sits here today, along with the mayor who was in, you know, has been president, and even the president before city council president before that city council president. We see our funds dwindling. We need certain things. We have funds that come from uh we have extra surplus taxes that we can't use for anything that we need, but we can plug corporate taxes that we have supplemented for many many years, but we we can't take our money, and this is our money, and uh you you know it's not coming from the government or it's not coming from the state. This is our money, and we should be allowed to spend our money for things that we need, not to then support other things that um the organizations need because that is not our problem. Our problem is that in district seven, we have no rec center. We can build one. We don't need to wait on philanthropy to do what we can do for ourselves. And I'm a little tired of you telling us that we need to go beg somebody else while we're giving people like Sheila Cockroach's area, Corktown, white folks, huge discounts in their taxes that are that is dwindling the general fund. And then and then we get we get we also get what we call um user utility tax.