The Elgin City Council held a special committee of the whole meeting on November 12, 2025, from approximately 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM to begin deliberations on the proposed 2026 budget and three-year financial plan. City Manager Rick Kozel, Finance Director Deb Naraki, and other department heads presented detailed information on the general fund, recreation fund, riverboat fund, and capital improvement projects. No public comments were received. The meeting focused on understanding the $4.2 million gap in the general fund, driven largely by personnel costs and declining riverboat revenues, and discussing potential revenue options, including a 13.2% property tax levy increase.
Call the committee of the whole meeting for the City of Elgin special committee of the whole meeting for the Elgin City Council for November 12th 2025 to order. We'll please call the roll. Council members of our Dixon. Present. Good. Here. Martinez? Here. Ortiz? Here. Powell. Stefan. Here. Thor. Here. Mayor Captain. Here. Uh, we have no one uh signed up for public comment this evening. So, Mr. Manager, you're gonna work from down on uh main floor tonight. Mayor Council members, good evening. This is the first of three meetings of budget deliberation regarding the 21 decision proposal budget and through your financial plan. We got a reintroduction last week to lay the groundwork for what to expect as part of the discussions. And this evening, we are going to be hearing from Deb Naraki with discussions about the general fund, the recreation fund, the river boat fund, and after we get that information, we will segue into information on the proposed capital improvements in the 2026 budget, and at that time you will hear department heads coming out with brief descriptions of the initiatives that they're recommending for this year, and in every instance when the council has an inclination to ask me or any of the department heads a question or seek clarification, no need to wait until the end of the meeting, just fire away in the normal manner that you do working through the mayor. So on the November 19th, the plan is any follow-up items or questions that are unresolved after this meeting will be resolved at the beginning of those budget deliberations. But also scheduled during that time will be a presentation on the utility fund that includes water, sewer, and all of the money and incredible number of capital projects that flow through that through that initiative. We put everything together on November 19th in preparation for the truth in taxation hearing that will be occurring on December. That's the first Wednesday in December. December 3rd is really the final meeting in which we need to dial in any potential changes or amendments to the budget because by December 17th, the third Wednesday in December, we're obligated by law to approve a balanced budget. And unless anybody wants to stay until the end of the year to work through the holidays through that, that has been the plan as long as I've been working for the city. So the hope is to work through this evening for about an hour and a half or so. And if the mayor is so inclined, perhaps a 15-minute break, and we'll go on with that. We have work planned that'll take us to about nine o'clock, but if the council wants to go any later than that, we're certainly able to do that. So before we begin going through the previews for the benefit of the public or those that are watching from home, Karina Nava is gonna come up and do a quick walkthrough with the online budget book to show the most salient portions to help and then to help not anybody on the dais, but everybody at home follow along with what we're presenting. So Ms. Nava. Thank you. Hello, good evening. Um so for those not too familiar with our online budget. I'm just gonna walk through how to access it. So if you go to Elgin IL.gov, um that's our home page. You can access the budget right from there. Um but uh first at the cover we have uh budget introduction. We have the menu on the left-hand side. So you're able to see the letter of transmittal, uh, personnel changes, that's where those live. Um actually it's easier if I look at the computer screen. My eyes are not that great. All right, uh, under general information, uh, we've got uh the demographics, the how to use this document, budget process, all of that, and then uh fund summaries. So this is where you'll find the summaries for the general fund, the river boat fund, any special revenue funds, um, enterprise funds, so you can explore there, and then um under departments um has the departmental uh summaries of departmental budgets. We've got the user fees, and then um under capital improvement plan, department requests is where you will be able to find a lot of the uh capital requests that we will be talking about today.