Grand Rapids City Commission Budget Work Session - May 5, 2026
Grand Rapids City Commission Budget Work Session - May 5, 2026
The Grand Rapids City Commission held a budget work session on May 5, 2026, to review strategic priorities and associated budgets. The meeting covered public safety (police, fire, OPA, district court), mobility and vital streets, engaged and connected community, and governmental excellence. Discussions included staffing levels, overtime analysis, new state funding opportunities, and a vacancy on the commission.
Consent Calendar
- None noted.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Dane Gates (Third Ward resident): Expressed support for filling the commission vacancy with Kurt Repart, calling it a chance to "rectify an injustice."
Discussion Items
- Public Safety (Police, Fire, OPA, District Court):
- GRPD Chief Greg Trade reported 299 officers out of 312 authorized, with 100% city beat coverage. Overtime hours were down but court overtime up due to more officers. A $217,000 MCOLES pilot program funds additional training. The mental health co-response team has diverted 80% of 463 patients from jail or ER.
- Fire Chief John Brown noted 25,000 incidents in 2025, 117 million dollars property saved, and a recommendation to add an engine at Leonard Street. Overtime covers 26% of staffing at the new Kindle station. A disaster relief fund of $100,000 (seeded with city funds) was proposed.
- OPA Director Brandon Davis presented a 2.9 million dollar budget, including $400,000 from the state public safety trust fund for community-based programs (split $200,000 internal, $200,000 external grants). The Cure Violence program is supported by $750,000 in federal grants.
- District Court Administrator Sean Vander Kodde reported an 8% increase in fee compliance, reducing the city contribution by 9%. A 14% increase in felony cases was noted, with 80% adjudicated within 28 days.
- Mobility and Vital Streets:
- Deputy City Manager Kate Berens presented mobility investments, including doubling the neighborhood traffic calming program ($650,000 matching grant leveraged to $3.6 million) and continuing the DASH pilot (ending FY27). Parking rates for monthly parking will increase with COLA; on-street hourly rates are unchanged.
- Vital Streets Oversight Commission Chair Tim Roseboom and Acting City Engineer Cindy Irving reported 57.5% of streets rated good/fair (down from 60%). The FY27 budget includes 93 projects, 36.7 miles of streets, and $33.3 million in Vital Streets investment. New state funding (neighborhood roads fund) is expected to bring $8 million+ annually. Recommendations include doubling sidewalk snow plowing (to 400 miles), deer management program ($235,000 over 3 years), and $4.5 million for traffic safety.
- Engaged and Connected Community & Governmental Excellence:
- Chief of Staff Brendan Matthews highlighted investments in inclusive engagement, neighborhood connections, arts/culture strategy (survey open, recommendations due early 2027), and the Ward Wednesday newsletter (12% click-through rate).
- Governmental excellence items include a $100,000 overtime analysis study for public safety, continuation of Oracle ERP implementation, a pilot AI customer service chatbot for 311 (opt-in), and a compensation and classification study (final report expected by end of FY26). The commission vacancy cost is $33,146 for half a year.
Key Outcomes
- No votes taken on budgets; this was a work session for discussion.
- Staff directed to pursue new state funds for sidewalk plowing, deer management, and traffic safety.
- Disaster relief fund proposal supported by multiple commissioners.
- Commission vacancy (First Ward): No consensus was reached. The body remains split 3-3. The city attorney advised that a motion to reconsider would require five votes. The issue will be discussed further at the next meeting.
- Next work session scheduled for May 12, 2026, covering economic prosperity, affordability, health, and environment. Public hearing on tax rate and fees also set.
Meeting Transcript
Morning. Call this meeting of the city commission to order. Um, this is a compressed agenda today, so um not quite as complex as our usual meetings. Um I'd like to move straight to the roll call, Mr. Clerk. Commissioner Kilgore. Present. Commissioner Knight. Present. Commissioner Asassi. Present. Commissioner Purdue. Present. Good morning. Mayor LeGrand. Present. I haven't seen uh anyone have heard any word from Commissioner Belchuk. I will assume she's running late and not ask for her being excused at this point. We'll just simply hope that she's on her way. Um so uh city manager. Um this is your ship to drive today. Uh we're gonna discuss the budget. All right, thank you, Mayor, and good morning, everyone. Good morning, Commissioner, staff, members of the public. Glad that uh everyone could be here today. I'll do a couple things. One kind of describe this morning. We're gonna have uh four sections of our strategic priorities review the budgets for those sections, and we'll call the presenters up one section at a time. But we will allow questions between each section. So we'll we'll start with public safety. The other thing I wanted to highlight, uh at the end of the briefing, the very end, we do have a slide related to the commission's budget in the vacancy, uh, the cost uh relative or cost savings uh to the vacancy that allow the commission both to discuss that in the fiscal as well as uh operational implications of uh allowing that position to remain vacant. Uh a couple other things. Um wanted to highlight. We did uh our CFO Ms. Claren did send uh some of the responses to questions that you indicated you had interest or asked last week, and you should have received those in your email. And uh some of the questions we did refer to today's session as would be answered in session, but there are written remarks, uh written responses to those questions, and we hope to not only provide it to you, but it should be posted for the public uh shortly. Okay, with that, uh we'll begin today's uh session. And um just a reminder to the public we did present a preliminary fiscal plan last week, and today is the first deep dive into the budget work session, and we'll cover stay safe community. Uh that'll be our first section, and we'll then we'll have a group of staff coming to talk to us about uh vital streets and mobility as long along with the Vital Streets Oversight Commission, and then um we'll cover the last two together. I think we'll take uh engaged and connected and governmental excellence uh together. And we'll continue to have conversation on next week, and we'll um uh cover the last two strategic priorities, economic prosperity, and affordability, health and environment, and also we'll have the uh public hearing on both the tax rate and the um revenue uh fees. Oh, I do want to highlight we also in that response. I know there were some questions about um the fees. Uh we included a little bit more uh summary analysis of those fees and which ones are decreasing, remaining the same, or increasing, and uh a little bit more analytics related to that information. I know some of you asked about it. Okay, um our values remain unchanged, and what I'll do, I'll just give a highlight overview. There, I mean, we have all the experts here this morning that will cover um some of the issues that are in the budget. Thankful for our um interim police chief here who's gonna talk to us about uh some of the things you see before you relative to the investments in uh the police department and our fire chief is here to also do the same. We have our OPA director uh here as well as um I do want to thank uh I can I mentioned this before and thank the courts for uh while we often speak about the general fund subsidy, their budget is actually a decrease from last year's appropriation. So without further ado, I will uh let the police department lead the way and kick us off.
openpublica.com