The City Council held a budget workshop on April 7, 2026, to review the proposed triennial budget for fiscal years 2027, 2028, and 2029. The meeting began at 9:00 AM and adjourned at 1:23 PM. City Manager Colleen presented an overview of strategic priorities, department budgets, and financial outlooks, followed by detailed presentations from department heads. No votes were taken; the session was focused on discussion and feedback. Public comment was brief, with one resident expressing appreciation for the transparency of the process.
Calling this meeting to order at 9 AM. May we have a roll call? Johnson. Here. Kelly. McColsky. Here. Subitini. Here. Weeks may here. And approval of the agenda. Madam Mayor, I move the we approve the agenda as presented. Support. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Any opposed. All right. So city manager, will you be starting us off on the well, yes, on the presentation. Yes. We'll just keep this in. All right, good morning, everyone. Uh quick overview of where we are in this uh agenda or budget setting process. Uh so we previously met to discuss our strategic planning goals. Uh internally, the department has and myself worked on a first draft of the budget that was reviewed by my office, uh, that was reviewed by the finance committee this week leading up to this budget workshop. And today is really intended to be um the council bodies first look at our budget setting for fiscal year twenty-seven and then forecasting for twenty-eight and twenty-nine. Uh, the current plan is that we will have our first reading April thirteenth, and then the appropriations act will be adopted on April twenty-seventh. What we're hoping to accomplish today, uh quick review of our strategic priorities based on the strategic planning workshop, and then a look at our uh the regional millage outlook and general fund outlook, followed by specifically general fund department presentations. We'll have a break for lunch, and then in the afternoon, we'll get into enterprise funds and special funds. Again, uh, just starting out our strategic planning discussion, reviewing our mission and vision as we look at what those strategic planning goals are for fiscal year twenty-seven, as well as our values. A community center, the Coolic Center work, police and fire facilities, housing development strategies, and then a bucket we've sort of labeled as other priorities and services. So the goal with the first part of the morning is to take each of these strategic priority areas and review the action items that we've identified. So first under the community center item one dot one, uh, reopening identifying the cost of purchase. We have identified you know, we have identified negotiations are ongoing in this, so there is not a cost impact yet assessed within fiscal year twenty-seven. Uh and I'll I should clarify. Particularly in in this section, as we look at these strategic action items, because this is our interpretation of what you told us. So if something doesn't hit the mark, please let us know so that we can revise. Section 1.2 is the minimum cost to reopen that facility. We did get the draft condition assessment completed by our consultant engineers, and the current cost impact is expected to be between six and seven point six million dollars to reopen that facility, largely driven by the number of major systems that are now inoperable, either due to the flooding that occurred at that facility or just protracted vacancy. 1.3 also has to do with reopening cost estimates. We viewed this as kind of a subsection of the OHM facilities condition assessment. So those costs are delineated within the current FAC draft that we have. But if more information is wanted on them, that we'd be happy to kind of dive into that number. The next one for operational cost, this is us looking at assessing the current or the previous operating costs of the Cooling Center as compared to our current operations for the parks department. That is in progress. Certainly we would expect to have that information before the start of fiscal year 27 and absolutely before we make any determinations on moving forward with a purchase of the cooling center. Similarly, the the cost comparison to our current facilities at Inkibizo. We did note the annualized cost for that current facility is about 33,000 annually. That is factored into the fiscal year 27 budget. And the estimated costs for those are included in the fiscal year 27 budget as outside service costs or professional service costs.