I'd like to call the City Council special meeting, the budget workshop on Monday, April 13th, 2026 to order.

Item two on the agenda today is presentation discussion and consideration of the fiscal year 2026-2027 police department budget.

Ms.

Panis, are you kicking this off or is someone else?

As I catch you off guard.

Or is the chief.

I was going to kick it off.

You were going to, so yeah, so um, oh, I probably can do this.

There we go.

So here's our agenda today is our uh we will have some presentations today.

Uh first of all is police, as you just mentioned.

And then our community agency review commission.

Uh we'll have our water rate discussion and then just an overall budget summary where we are right now.

So I think then we move on, right?

Okay, so we will move on to our police presentation.

And Chief Younger.

Mayor and Council, good afternoon.

Appreciate the opportunity to come before you again and talk a little bit about your police department and the proposed budget.

Uh same information, but the slides are a little bit different, so my old brains having to adjust to what's up there.

Uh so what we have before you is a proposal for a total budget for your police department for fiscal year uh 26-27 of uh $39 million.

Uh areas of primary areas of opportunities, challenges, and changes, which obviously is much more exhaustive than just three bullet points.

Uh but the ones that I'm particularly interested in and want to communicate about are uh sworn staffing, uh technology costs, and then allocation costs.

Uh FOP negotiations are ongoing, so there is a potential uh that the outcome of that could uh impact the budget, and we'll look at the areas where that could uh present itself as we go through the next few slides.

So what you have on this slide is a comparison of this year's proposed budget versus last year's or FY26's budget.

Uh so you can look at it by the uh five major categories and see up or down uh kind of where we're at.

The total budget as proposed is a little bit, I think about a percent down from last year as council directed a flat or uh lower target was the preferred.

And so as everyone can see, personnel makes up about 75% of the police department's budget, and that's both sworn and professional staff.

Uh and then it encompasses both salary benefits, all the things associated with it.

Uh you see that we're uh projected to be up about 1.85%.

Uh that's mostly through uh expectations of the 10-step pay plans uh that apply to both uh sworn and professional staff.

Uh materials and supplies, you see uh a decrease there.

Uh other services and charges, and I'll go into more particularly what these areas kind of kind of cover on the next slide.

Uh slight increase there, uh, and then percentage-wise, a significant decrease, but dollar-wise, uh not terribly large in capital outlay, and then allocations uh with a decrease of six percent.

So what's driving a lot of these either pluses or minuses uh in the personnel budget, as we mentioned, uh the collective bargaining agreement, and then the current 10-step plan for uh professional staff.

There is one new position proposed in this.

That position is a budget analyst uh in cooperation with uh city management uh looking at putting more professional staff uh in positions to help finance as we manage these uh large budgets, and so uh that's what the one new position is uh in addition to it while we'll be in the the police department's uh cost center.

Uh we do anticipate that uh position also providing assistance to fire as needed uh with management of uh of the public safety funds.

Uh materials and budget again, that was one that was down a little bit uh last year, uh some of the medical supplies that we purchased, some vehicle maintenance stuff, uh some materials for SWAT uh that we're not having to purchase this year, is a little bit of the reason that that's decreased.

Uh other services and charges budget, contract services and training.

I think it's important to recognize the increasing role of technology in all departments, uh, but especially in the police department.

Uh and with that increasing role, you have numerous service contracts and and other requirements that go along with that.

So there's a little bit of increase there.

Um I would expect that would continue into the future just because of the again the increasing uh amount of technology.

And then capital outlay budget.

And then capital outlay budget, there was a large percentage decrease, not necessarily large dollar decrease, but a lot of that's getting to the final stages of the expansion at the training facility.

That's been an ongoing project, as you might recall for the last two budget cycles.

It's my understanding that we're kind of reached a milestone here recently where we have tentative agreement on the site plan and all that.

So I expect that actually to be coming back to council probably in the next couple of months to try to get that going for an RFP.

So really exciting uh occurrence there.

And then cost allocations, I know there's been quite a bit of discussion about the difficulty in following allocations and transfers within the budget as a whole.

Uh so that's no different for the police department.

We have allocations where we pay other departments for the services they provide us to the tune of about 6.8 million in in this year's uh budget, but it's actually a decrease of around 7%.

Uh and then I won't read this word for word, it just kind of touches on what we already said were opportunities and challenges.

Uh as council has been informed for the last several years, we are entering into probably a 18 to 24 month window where we're gonna see increased volatility on the sworn side of the house.

Uh so July 1st of this year will be the first group of retirees eligible under the increased uh multiplier that Senate Bill 102 provided.

And so while we've seen a little latency in retirements over the last uh 18 months, uh historically the police department sees about uh 4.8 to 5% attrition uh in a given year, uh most all of those retirements.

Uh but we've seen far less than that over the last two, and we're gonna see more than that uh over the next two, so upwards to 15 percent over the next 18 months, I would say.

Uh but we've with council's approval on our budget for the last couple years, I think we're in a really good position uh to transition through that.

Uh so currently uh we're one under full staffing uh before we enter this uh expected volatility in July.

Uh again, I don't have paper in my hand, so I can't tell you for sure they're going, uh but they've looked me in the eye and tell me they're not gonna be here at the end of the year.