Chair of the budget and fiscal affairs committee and welcome to the May 12th, 2026 budget workshops.

This is the first of many, and we are excited today to start with the finance department, fleet department, and general services department.

So colleagues, as you know, these workshops.

Hold on.

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Testing.

Okay, we're resolved.

Okay, so as you know, budget workshops start today.

There are snacks in the back and finance department and everybody here, you're welcome to them too if you want to come get them at some point.

Um we've got workshops from today until the 19th.

This Saturday morning, 10 a.m.

at the Fondy Rec Center will be our budget town, first budget town hall.

I know that's what everyone wants to do on a Saturday morning, so head on over.

Then May 20th, we'll have our uh the public hearing on the budget will be here at 9 a.m.

May 20th also will be the budget um town hall at 6 p.m.

And then there's some flux in the dates, which I think we're gonna hear about um soon.

So with that, I will and reminding everybody to put their questions up on SharePoint.

Um, you know, that's easy to do, and get as you look through the budgets.

If you even before or after the budget workshop, please submit your questions in writing, and we'll make sure they all get answered.

I want to welcome Councilmember Flickinger, staff from Councilmember Kamen's office, staff from council member Jackson's office, staff from Councilmember Mary Nan Huffman's office, Councilmember Julian Ramirez, staff from Council Member Tiffany Thomas's office, staff from Mayor Pro Tem Cassex Tatum's office, staff from Vice Mayor Pro Tem Amy Peck's office, staff from Councilmember Martinez's office, council member staff from Councilmember Alejandro Salinas's office, and council member Twila Carter.

Welcome to the horseshoe all.

And with that, we will yield to the very hardworking finance department.

And Alyssa, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Um, before I get started, I just wanted to recognize everyone on my team in the finance department that's here supporting me in the audience, um, and everyone that is back at the office hardly working.

Um, sorry, working hard.

Um, I'm sorry.

They are not working, and you're over here.

They are they are hardly getting any rest.

They are working hard.

Um, as you can tell, I have not had enough sleep, so um, that's part of getting ready for these department budget workshops.

Um, so they put a lot of time and effort into not just the budget book, but what we're gonna talk about today, which is the um finance department in our regular operations.

So uh we do more than just show up once a year with the budget, right?

We come every month with the monthly financial reports, but more than that, um we cover all different areas of finance, and so you're gonna hear about all of those today.

Um, so on slide.

We'll go to the next slide.

Slide three.

I'm just talking about strategic alignment and how the department breaks down.

You know, we talked about the mayor's four priorities, and that's how the budget book is organized.

Um the two uh mayor's priorities at the finance department um works under our government that works and infrastructure, so you can see our different programs underneath government that works and uh and infrastructure in those categories.

So we'll um dive into each of those programs today.

Looking at the total expenditures by fund for the entire finance department, this breaks it down by general fund and central service revolving fund.

And I guess I just want to take a second to talk about central service revolving fund.

Um, this fund is a fund that's used by central service area departments like finance, HR, IT, fleet, that is used by departments that provide services to our other clients' departments.

So we use the Central Service revolving Fund so that we can more accurately keep track of the work that we do on behalf of the other departments and ultimately revolve those costs back to those departments so that based on each one of those client departments, you can see what is the true cost.

So for example, for the police department, part of the police department's finance operations are within the finance department and the central service revolving fund, but those costs get revolved back and are reflected in the general fund budget for HPD.

So you can see from that view what is the true cost of HPD's operation, including all the support services that comes along with it.

So that's the reason that in the finance department we have general fund and central service revolving fund.

So going on to slide five, expenditures by fund.

Again, we're breaking out between general fund and central service revolving fund.

You can see our FY27 proposed budget is an increase from the FY26 budget and estimate.

That is due to some increased activities around consolidation that we're focusing on.

You can see the general fund is fairly flat, but as I mentioned with the Central Service Revolving Fund, since we're serving other departments as our clients, that's where you see that budget increasing.

So moving on to slide six, this slide breaks down the personnel versus non-personnel cost.

You can see that in the general fund and the central service revolving fund, again, personnel is the majority of our cost, about 78% of our cost in the general fund and about 90% of our cost in the central service revolving fund.

Underneath our supplies and services line, the services is the second largest share of our non-personnel breakdown, and the majority of those costs are related to our financial audit contract with our outside auditor audit firm, which is Weaver, as well as funding to compensate the Harris County Tax Office for billing and collection of our property taxes.

But as you know, we once we adopt our tax rate, we provide our adopted tax rate to Harris County Tax Office, and they submit mail out the bills on our behalf.

So that's the majority of the cost in the non-personnel area.

Under expenditures by program, this is just a summary, a snapshot of what you see as part of the big budget book that's also available on the website on the finance department's website.