All right, I'd like to go ahead and uh call to order our finance committee uh meeting for Monday, December 1st.

Uh colleagues, we uh I received no questions to pass on to the administration.

Um does anybody have any general questions uh about the budget okay maybe one quick question just because it were you going to like follow up with anything?

I was, but please, the floor is yours.

Uh there was an NLC report that was pushed out by OML uh recently that indicated that um spending uh nationwide is up in among municipalities.

Um and this is probably located in the budget book, but uh director Burry, are you able to tell us where we fall in that percentage?

And I recognize that a good deal of that has to do with um inflation and things like that.

Uh so not off the top of my head.

I do not have the percentage change from last year to this year.

Um, but in all of those tables uh that are laid throughout the book, you could see the increases throughout.

We did have that slight anomaly um because of the five million dollar to the CIC.

So ours looks a little bit skewed.

Um but once you back out that one time expenditure, you could see that we are on that same trajectory of increasing um expenses from one year to the next.

Okay.

Thank you, Director Burry.

Okay.

Um I do have a general question um uh director bury.

Uh when looking at the budget and uh from 2025 to the proposed 2026, are there things in the 25 that are uh a carry over into 26, or are there things um that we wanted to do in 25, but we just didn't get to them and there are in uh 26.

Um majority of that falls in the capital improvement category, which are intended to be multi-year.

Um if anything that uh was not ready to be worked on this year would basically um be returned.

Uh they have to go through the entire procurement process before they could actually encumber those dollars.

Um so if they haven't moved forward at this point, chances are those appropriations will be returned and then will be asked for at a later time.

Okay.

And thank you for the reminder about the capital improvement um process.

Okay, are there any other questions?

Um wanted to uh go back a little bit down memory lane.

Um it seems like you know, we've been talking about the budget for a long time.

Um if you remember uh October 20th, we actually started talking about the CIP, and we had the second reading of that, and we passed it.

And the I really want to start there because the CIP and the Gehanna Strategic Plan are the two guardrails for our 26th budget.

Um but so part that in your head.

Uh October 22nd, we uh then were presented the all funds summary.

Um and then every Monday since then we have had uh discussions from uh the departments and uh you know some discussions by council back, you know, the by and large they were uh clarity type questions.

Uh and then that brings us all the way through um to today.

And so I just wanted to uh you know jot everybody's or jog everybody's memory about this.

This has uh been a very long process.

This has been a long process for our constituents.

Um I know that we actually have um yet another meeting um this year to actually two more meetings to go through.

Um but this is a uh a real hearty budget and uh it's important.

And uh 114 million dollars uh budget when you add up the general fund and the priority funds in the enterprise fund, um, and then the guardrails for our gehenna, you know, strategic plan and plus the CIP.

There's a lot going on uh for our constituents.

Any comments or questions about that?

Yes.

I'll just reflect that.

I think that this budget process has been smooth this year, due in large part, I think, to uh some of a lot of the work that uh all you three in particular, Senior Director Schultz, Wilmer, Director Burry have put in over the last several years, actually.

I think the the progress that we've made on the CIP, the staffing study, and and other forecasting, I think has allowed us to contextualize the budget in this year much better than perhaps in the past.

So combined with uh previewing, I think some of the staffing changes throughout the year uh and some updates.

I think overall it's really helped us come into this process uh more informed than perhaps we were in the past.

So thank you.

If I could, I I appreciate your comments.

We've been working very hard as a team trying to understand the best way to present the information for all of council.

It's a lot of information to digest, really in what is relatively a short period of time.

Uh so I appreciate your feedback, and we'll continue to work with council to find a process that works best as we continue to identify opportunities to improve our internal operations as well.

Uh but how we best convey that information to all of you and our residents in an easy to understand uh comprehensive and comprehensible manner uh remains a priority for us.

So thank you.

Okay, any other questions or comments councilwoman Bowers.

I I really do uh believe that your comments actually uh put a tight bow around this because we actually have a very good document for our constituents.

Um hats off to everybody uh that's put in mammoth amount of work into it.

Um as I've said uh before, and I'll say it again tonight.

The um the real heart and soul of our budget is actually in the all funds summary.

And so if you uh for anybody watching, for anybody uh looking at this, if you really want to understand our budget, it's in the all funds and it's in the proposed 2026.