The City Commission held its second FY2026 Budget Workshop on August 6, 2025, from 9:00 AM to 3:18 PM at City Hall. The workshop covered a follow-up from the first workshop, the Board of Finance annual report, updates on the General Fund, Risk Fund, and Health Fund, the pay plan, PTO policy, and proposed funding for civic partners and non-profit organizations. The meeting concluded with commission direction, including discussion of Mardi Gras.
Clearly we're not in a circle again, so next year that will be our goal to have our circle back, but uh staff kind of semi-begged not to have to put them through that with all the meetings we have this week, and that seemed fair. Um so anyway, so we'll we'll be fine up here. Um but just remember, I mean, it's kind of a little more informal, and just want everybody to feel like they're getting what they need um off their mind as we walk through this. So on that uh on that note, I will turn to uh the city manager for her opening remarks. Yes, good morning, Mayor. I'm good because you know forgot to send that memo about what I was wearing today. So good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners, uh staff, uh members of the Board of Finance are here. Good morning. Um this is your second budget uh workshop where we have a very busy day, as you can tell from our agenda. Um the uh um we have a follow-up, and I'll just kind of run through it. Um we have the follow-up uh from the budget workshop number one, and uh it the it is attached to your agenda item in in Granicus. Um we had some some items that we need to follow up on some answers for you, others we do not. We need more time. Um and lesson and Gene are going to go over that. Uh the board as I said, the Board of Finance is here, members of the Board of Finance, and and they're going to give their annual report. Uh we're going to do the general fund update. You'd ask for some additional information on the general fund, which less has provided. Um we're gonna run through risk health, the pay plan as well. And that's gonna be the uh Dr. Smalling show. So that'll happen later on today. Um those are obviously critical uh pieces of information for you as you draft the budget. Uh item number eight is the PTO program, and that's actually a follow-up from the budget uh workshops last year where you asked us to investigate a PTO program. Uh we did we did some research, we did not do a deep dive. Question is do you want us to continue? Um or or put that on the shelf for for a while. Uh and then uh at a time specific, which is one o'clock, we're going to have the um um aid organizations. Uh the committee has met. We have made our recommendations. We had a very large number of applications requesting a lot of funding. Um and so we're gonna run through uh staff's recommendations for aid to org uh and then receive city commission direction. Um I understand from uh Commissioner Dugard that he has a hard stop at four. Yes, which I think would suit all of us as well as scheduled to four, right? Yes, we'll schedule to four. Um so um uh with that I'm gonna hand it right over to Les if that's okay, Mayor, and he'll start in with the follow-up. There we go. Well, you know, he mentioned he had a hard stop, and I jumped on that. Okay. Um yeah, let's go to Les and Gene. Great. Good morning, Mayor Vice Mayor Commissioners. Less tire, the finance director. I'm here with Gene, our budget manager. Uh the first item, as Jennifer mentioned, is our follow-up memo, and if you'd like, I can walk through each item or or I could or the commission can ask specific questions. There's there's twelve, I think there's twelve items. So I'm happy to walk through them, but it's up to the commission how you'd like to do it. So anyone uh wish to have anything pulled out or you want to go over every one of these or mayor, if I may. Yes. I wasn't implying uh an additional FT, you know, full time, just somebody with passion and vision. So with that was the only clarification I wanted to make.