All right, so it's recording Congress.

All right, well afternoon, it's one o'clock.

We'll call the finance committee meeting to order on February 17 at 101 p.m.

Also Happy Chinese New Year.

And on the agenda today, well, uh, before we get there, I'd like to acknowledge Finance Director Rachel Go here, uh, Council President uh Michelle Dutch and Council Member uh Erica Banet and myself will change uh present.

Welcome and on the agenda today, we have one item, which is December 2025 Financial Report.

And you know, you know, can go is gonna take us through it.

Thank you.

We are ready.

All right, well, the first thing I want to make clear is that this is a preliminary report.

Remember um how at the end of the year we have a lot of work to do on year end as far as the approval side of the account, and so we hope to have everything completed usually by April.

We will have tighter numbers the longer we go into this.

I'd like to think the numbers are pretty good right now, as far as where we are on our fund balance and expenditures revenues, but there's still some trickling.

Okay, part of it also is slowed down by the trans transition tool weave software.

So we have a couple challenges this year, but we're gonna go over the numbers that we have to look at and any questions you might have.

But but I wanted to make that clear that um the fund balance will change.

I just don't know how much, and I hope it's very little right now.

It looks uh pretty solid.

So for the year, the fund balances, and I'm gonna go over a little of the things that are in the packet that are in the which is mostly like on page one in your agenda property is on yeah, eight.

So our questions I'll refer to some of that, okay.

And so um, so fund balances are up for the year 7.7 million, that's for all the funds, not just the general plan.

We had projected in the budget for 2025 initially, actually, the amended budget to be down 17.2 million, and that was going to be due to a lot of capital projects.

Um and some other areas, but we did not see as much activity in the capital projects due mostly to staffing and delays.

So and we do have a report that we include in this financial report for capital projects that speaks to that.

Um so I would advise going through that.

It's a lot of information, but it does have some detail, especially on page um six of the uh public packet, which is exhibit a that'll explain some of the reasons uh the capital project coming later.

But that's the crypto project summarine, yeah, it's right.

And so that'll hope you understand.

There will be a lot more activity on 26.

So we could push the capital projects to there.

And I know that um public works director and the engineer Michael will be um talking about that as well with you.

Um more to talk about that, but I want to get off practice for December.

So uh that those are the reasons for for us having a positive fund balance in all the city, which is a good thing, but we know we're gonna use a lot of the time.

Um next thing is extended reports.

Um, because our financial policy has says all the things it lays out everything that we that the city put together a couple years ago.

We have a 40-page report.

Now, at the end of the year, I think that's legitimate and it's necessary because we have a lot of information we want to provide.

But I have spoken with the mayor and the council president um about coming up with shorter reports for the monthly.

It's less work, and you don't need to see the same thing over and over and over again when you need to see it at quarters.

So we'll be coming to you with policy changes.

Hopefully, the next committee meeting.

We're gonna shoot for that.

And we have a lot of policy changes in the financial areas, not just for financial reporting, but we'll get to those later as we go through the year.

What I hope to do is bring um a list of items that we will be addressing in um so in March's finance committee.

We'll at least have that list of what I propose that we look at.

Hopefully, you guys also can have some for me of what you want to uh look at in future committee meetings.

Because I'd like to see us be proactive in what we're working on so that I can get ahead of it staff, right?

A lot of times you're gonna think of things like the third day before, like the questions you sent me, right?

And um, and I didn't look at those, and I'm trying to come up with answers, but it takes time, and I don't want to rush anything.

I want everything to be really very intentional and thought out well, so that when we have these meetings, we can spend our time for you know, not only practically but correctly and get you answers that you want, so we don't have to keep going back.

I've seen a lot of that happen last year, and um, you know, it was learning for me for sure, but I want us to be so um productive here so that we get a lot of time, a lot of use out of our time for all of us, right?

And I also think it's good for the public, yeah.

It's good for us because then when we take things from this committee to the council meeting, all the answers will be there, and uh it's pretty much almost like you can put on a consent agenda in many cases.

I think that's a really good use of committee time in my experience.

Okay, so that'll get back on track here.

So that's why you see a 40-page report.

When I first got here, you can ask um these two.

I got the reports down to about 15, 16 pages, but then I realized we weren't following the policy, so I went back and added all of that reports in.

So I what I'd like to do over this next few months is look at what's the most important part of these reports that you three believe in, and then maybe some of it that's extraneous.

We only show on the quarter side, so it's just stay with time, and then we can focus on those aspects of it too.