Staff from Council Member Alejandra Salinas's office and I see Councilmember.

Joaquin Martinez in the horse sheet coming to the horseshoe now.

So with that, we will welcome our favorite department, City Council with the Finance Assistant Director Vernita Jones and Merrick Hamilton.

Great to see you guys.

The floor is yours.

Alrighty.

Good morning.

My name is Vernita Jones, and this morning I will be presenting City Council's FY27 proposed budget.

Next slide, please.

So before I start, I would like to introduce my team.

We have Merrick and the other team members here.

These are the individuals that help City Council every day.

They are very vital to the 16 great people that you see right here that's running your city, and they help them daily, weekends, evenings.

My office is always there to assist them.

And I do want to add something else that when you get up here, people always talk about their staff and their team.

I want to say that this is my team, and you all don't get enough recognition.

They recognize everybody else.

Everybody always comes and hammers you all, but they don't give you what you need as far as recognition and appreciation.

So I want to appreciate the council members as my team.

Next slide, please.

So today I am going to go over City Council's office breakdown, the alignment that they have, budget comparisons, the increases and decreases for FY27, Council's expenditures.

I'm gonna do a small overview of the council district service fund.

We're gonna do the budget programs, and then I'm gonna go into a detailed um spreadsheet for the council district service fund, and we're gonna do the priorities and initiatives.

Next slide, please.

So we have the city council's organizational chart, and for FY27, we have approximately 91.6 staffers that will be there.

You can see the budget for this year is 16,965,724.

That proposed budget consists of 16 council office, which you see in the organization chart.

Each budget for the council office is six hundred and sixty-six thousand five hundred and ten dollars.

We also have the health benefits on there and council district service funds.

Next slide, please.

The demographics for FY26, we had 53 females and 31 males.

The ethnicity, we had 29 Hispanic Latinos, 26 white, 26 black African American, and three Asian Pacific Islanders.

Next slide, please.

The strategic alignment for city council, and as you know, I'm speaking as council as a whole.

And the city council members, as I stated before, they are great individuals, all six of them.

16 of them worked work diligently to help the city with the mayor's priorities, which are infrastructure, quality of life, public safety, and government that works.

And as you can see through the town halls and the workshops that the council members have throughout the year, that brings on the citizens' engagement and that helps them to reach this vision of victory that they're trying to accomplish with the city of Houston.

Next slide, please.

So I will give you a comparison of FY26 to FY27's budget.

The adopted budget in FY26 was 19,246,137, and it is broken down as you can see on the side.

13,063,996 was the actual operating budget that we had, and it was $624,023 per office.

There was also a budget amendment that was approved and added on for SWAT, which is the stormwater action team.

Each council district office received 279,000 dollars and the health benefit was 6 to allocate to a project of their choosing.

That gives you your adopted budget.

Then presently, our current budget is 22,566,698.

The adjustments were the restricted accounts, which are basically your IT accounts.

Then we had a council district service fund carry forward of 3,323,451.

To explain the carry forward, that are those are the council service budgets that are not completed within the fiscal year.

All these projects are submitted and approved, but as you know, there are over 300 projects that they get, and a lot of times they're not able to finish them before the end of the fiscal year.

Those projects and the funds are carried forward to the next fiscal year.

That is what it means by carry forward.

Then we have a health benefit adjustment of 14,000.

That gives you your current budget.

The proposed budget is now 16,965,724, giving each office $666,510.

Also included is the $5,500,000 for the council district service fund and your health benefits budget.

Next slide, please.

So this is just the increases that you see.

We had to hope for full-time, hope for part-time, elected officials increase, the pension increase, IT increased, and then we had the health benefits increase.

Next slide, please.

The decreases were you see the first four are all from the IT department, and then they reduced our budget by the three million that was given to us last year for SWAT, and then they also reduced the carry forward for the council district service fund.

Next slide, please.

This is just a brief overview of the expenditures.

As you can see, they basically stay the same.

Personnel kind of increase, and that was due to the 3.5% hope increase that the council members' staff received.

And the three million million eighty thousand you see, that is the SWOT that we had for FY26.

Next slide, please.

So this is your personnel versus your non-personnel.

And personnel and city council is 93% of their budget.

93% of city council's budget goes directly to their staff and personnel.

And the other was the 827, as you can see, I have broken that down as well, and 49% of their other category is restricted accounts that they cannot touch.

Those are the IT charges, and then you see it broken down in three more areas in supplies, capital non expenses, and other charges.

Next slide, please.

So council district service fund.

A lot of people have questions about that, and I'm gonna try to explain it as best I can.

I've already told you about the carry forward and FY25.

The carry forward was three, three hundred twenty-three thousand four fifty-one.

They adopted five million five hundred thousand.

Currently, we don't know what the carry forward would be until the end of this fiscal year, and then we'll be able to give you that number.

The proposed is five million five hundred thousand for FY27, next slide, please.

Now we'll go into the program details for council.

Council has a proposed budget of 11,466,000 for the office budget, which includes the health benefits, pension, employees contractual from HOPE, the council members' legislative pay increase, and each council office was 666,510.

And our task and our target is to ensure that each office stays within that budget every year, and that's what we try to do as our target.

Next slide, please.

Program two would be your council district service fund, and that is $5,500,000.

And the target is $300,000 projects for this year.

Please note that this is just operating.

We don't have metro target numbers in there, which would be an additional $100 or more projects from their metro fund.

So we are trying to ensure their projects follow the policies and are submitted in a timely manner, so this can be a successful program.

Next slide, please.

So I only highlighted this is like the top 40 major projects that they have with the council district service fund.

Just a brief overview of what they have submitted.

But again, there's over 300 projects that have gone in with the council district service funds.

You can kind of see next slide, please.

Again, this is just the top 40 that you that we have that have been submitted by the council office.

Next slide, please.

This is where the money went for council district service fund, and this is broken up by department, and you can see exactly where the funds went to which department and the amount.

Next slide, please.

These are the metro projects, and it shows exactly where their metro funding went to.

Basically, most of it went to sidewalks and panel replacements is the majority of the metro funding.

Next slide, please.

These are the priorities over the city of Houston, as you can see.

These are the district offices, and it kind of entails and it goes in alignment with what I stated earlier.

You can see quality of life infrastructure, then in alignment with the mayor's priorities.

Everything is in alignment as you can see, council and mayor together.

Next slide would be the at-large priorities.

Again, you see public safety, quality of life infrastructure, everything in alignment, and they're all together as one going for the same goal.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

These are again the priorities and initiatives.

They're just typed out a little bit clearer for you to understand and read if you needed to view them.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

These are the restricted details account.

If you had questions to know exactly what your IT accounts were, this gives you a description.

Next slide, please.

Thanks for your time.

Any questions from anyone at this time?

Thank you, Bernita, and to you and all your team.

Merrick, everybody, thank you so much for all you do for us at City Council.

You guys work to keep us in line and make sure our spendings in line, and we really appreciate all of your good work.

And I just want to shout out City Council here.

There's a good statistic in the data of this.

I'd like to think I rubbed off a little on people.

We are down on paper and printing around the city council by 70%.

We have gone from spending 107,000 dollars to we're gonna go, well, this is what we're saying we're gonna do.

31,000 dollars.

So keep that in mind.

We don't we want to we want to keep that going.

Everybody's doing a great job.

It's actually overall in the whole city.

In every general fund department, paper and printing is down 23 percent.

So we're getting there, Vice Chair.

We're getting into the technology here.

All right, Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, madam chair, and I want to second what she said.

You guys do a great job.

We love working with with you all and appreciate everything that y'all do for us.

I did have a few questions.

You know I'm gonna have some questions, Bernita.

So if I could ask you about slide four, the organization chart.

Yes, sir.

It's got me down for 6.8 FTEs.

Yes.

Man, I wish I had 6.8 FTEs.

I'm not sure exactly how that's computed, but we currently have three full-time and and one part-time.

So, yes, sir.

So the way that works, we have to input this information into bud prep in order to allocate your funding, and sometimes your staff goes from three to five or three, you know, four to six.

So on an average, each office has an average of five, and that's the best way to calculate it because they fluctuate throughout the year.

Some people have two or three, some people have five or six, and it just so in order to get it into bud prep, we just averages out to five.

Okay, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

Let me ask you about slide um seven.

So the budget comparison.

You mentioned uh metro funds.

Yes, sir.

Or the metro funds included in this slide, or no sir.

What are those come out to the metro funds per district office?

500,000 as well.

All right, 500,000 in metro funds.

Okay.

And uh you also mentioned um carryover.

Yes, sir.

So for the last a year ago, it was gonna be three million uh carryover.

And will there be a carryover as well for this coming fiscal year?

We just don't know what it is.

We just don't know the amount because they are still working on the projects until the end of the fiscal year.

Okay, and what is what is the need for a carryover fund?

I'm gonna give you, let me give you an example.

Say, for instance, they gave fifty thousand dollars to parks to do some renovation.

They've started on it, has not been completed.

We will not pay them until the job is completed.

So the fifty thousand dollars that was allocated to parks, that project and the amount will be what you would see in the carry forward.

And there are several projects that are like that that they've started, but they don't complete it by June 30th.

Does it get carried over for another full fiscal year?

Is there a limit there?

It is not a limit, it's soon as the project is done, but the council members work diligently with the each one of the departments to ensure that these projects get completed every the next fiscal.

All right, and just to make clear, let's see, there was another slide here.

Okay, it's slide number eight.

Elected officials pay increase.

It's got 148,560.

Now that is not per person.

I want to make that clear.

Oh, yes, sir.

No, it's not.

So you divide that figure by 16, and that comes that tells you what the pay increase is.

And that's that's not something we voted to give ourselves.

That's something that happened as a result of something the legislature did.

Yes, sir.

Based on the judges, the Harris County judges' salary.

It is a charter and ordinance this given that the council, the elected officials will receive it.

As long as as well as the mayor and the controller.

Great.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Vice Chair Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

I have several questions, Vernia.

I'm just kidding.

I don't uh I just want to take the opportunity to thank you and your team for all the hard work.

You are always there to support and help and uh keep us uh productive and moving forward, and I greatly appreciate working with you and and all the all of the members of your team.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, I don't see anyone else in the queue, so we'll go to public speakers again.

Thank you to for to all of your team.

Thank you for everything you do.

Um we will first hear from Astrid Lang.

Uh-oh.

Hello again.

Is this thing on?

Okay.

Hello again.

Um thank you all again for everything that you do, and also for everybody that works behind the scenes.

Um, it's very impressive.

I uh one of my friends takes notes on all the city council meetings, and I help proofread those.

I've been doing that for the past couple years, so Emily takes notes.

Yeah, yeah, good for you.

We really like that.

Yeah, it's uh it gets a lot of word out about things that are happening in the city that uh normally people wouldn't notice or be aware of.

So yeah.

Um one of my questions is about health insurance, um, because that can be an expense that keeps going up and up and up, and I know that there's been some changes certainly with people I know that are on the marketplace and have had to drop their health insurance, but do you all see any kind of unanticipated increases similar to what has happened elsewhere?

Um I'm pulling up the health benefits.

It does always go up a little bit, of course.

We're we're kind of getting towards the end of this contract.

Uh we do pool all our health benefits.

Uh we we pool we used to do it by the individual office, which was really unfair because the more employees somebody had, the more that health uh health benefits cost ate up their council budget.

Now I think very wisely we we spread that out uh among the whole city council, so everybody kind of shares in that.

I think um overall our our expenses on are projected from we pay a lot 452 million dollars.

Um last year will go to 465 million dollars.

So that will probably entail a little bit of an increase and I'm sorry, three percent increase.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks.

But thank you for your question.

Thanks for being here, and thanks for being note.

I did look over some of the budget hearing notes that she took, and I thought they were great.

Kind of like a kind of like minutes for us for to have from the meeting, so really appreciate that effort.

I'll toss it along.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, next we will hear from Laura.

Laura Gallier.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

That was very informative.

If I understood correctly, each um district office has uh funds of five hundred thousand dollars of district program funds five hundred thousand dollars of metro money and two hundred and eighty thousand dollars of SWOT each year no that that 280 some odd was just for last year that was a budget amend amendment that passed um so that is not in this year's budget okay but there's five hundred thousand of metro and five hundred thousand of district funds yes and how long has city council each had um that much of metro money uh well the whole council district service fund started during mayor parker's terms at 2015 right and met was metro part of it from the start yes so since 2015 so that's money that's not being spent on public transit it's being spent on other things it's part of our general mobility money that comes in we get a quarter of the penny sales tax that metro gets we get a quarter of that for everything related to mobility street lights all all of like street and traffic expenses that's kind of been in place for a very very long time so it's not it's not actually taking money from public transit it's part of our general mobility funding that the city um that the city negotiated at the very beginning okay and the the slide uh that showed uh how all the district funds are spent for different um departments was very helpful because it's much better than what I did which is the back of the envelope adding it up all by myself um but I do think I wanted to find out um is this information transparent to the public so that those of us for example who have been advocating for a long time to freeze the HPD budget that we know that a whole lot of district funds in fact the m the biggest single line item of district funds is for HPD overtime hot and flock.

Yes good point and and other than here I do think there's several dashboards the controller's office dashboard that has all the the expenditures from this fund that you could be able to track because yeah you do see that HPD is the H it's really mostly HPD and public works and and parks that are getting the bulk of these funds.

Okay.

Um is it transparent how somebody like me could apply for a project from a district fund do we just email or call the office and talk to y'all about it.

I'll let council member Huffman address that I don't get this money.

Thank you.

I think these are all really good questions.

You know we have the um 5000 you know for metro and then we have the other 5000 here.

Now we can use this 5000 also on road projects and things like that but it gives us a little bit more flexibility.

We can't use the metro money on things that aren't you know like mobility related like streets and sidewalks and and things like that.

Typically in how my office operates is you know we use our council district service funds to respond specifically to the constituents so if I have a constituent from district G call in and say hey you know there's a pothole on this street then you know for these kind of smaller fixes not total road you know to redo entire roads but we'll put in you know how much does that cost and so I think when constituents call in it is constituent um led so a lot of these problems are you know that we're seeing we have big districts and we try to be everywhere but we can't be everywhere at once and so we need people in the neighborhood to be our eyes and ears and tell us when when there are problems and so yes call your council member let them know if there's something specific that you want done and really every time a call comes in like that to my office, we put it in to have it evaluated, get a price for it, and then decide, you know, if it's something that fits our budget.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Council member Martinez.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Laura, and just to add on to that, so uh metro, but then you got the operational side, which uh councilmember Marinass is speaking to um if I think your question was uh how can you possibly get or somebody in the community, right?

Um you have to make sure that whatever program um is being requested also has a tie in with the city department because every city department we have to just have it sponsored by a city department.

For example, uh we do spay and neuter and district I.

BARC has to be the sponsor and department.

We've done uh fitness uh so we've done some fitness uh activities out in Mason Park.

At that point, we either need parks department or the health department to be the sponsoring department.

Um every organization has to be um, you know, uh it's uh a vendor or you know, nonprofit that be could be uh looked into as well.

So it's not like Laura, you want to do this, let me just give you 10,000 dollars.

There's a lot more um it runs through legal department, it runs through the sponsoring department finance as well.

So there's a lot of uh a lot more uh checkup that needs to be that needs to happen rather than just freely give out uh those operational dollars.

Okay, thank you.

And so going back to the metro, uh that would be uh maybe a request would be hey the bus stop in my neighborhood isn't covered, that type of thing.

Okay, just wanting to make sure I understand it.

Um I uh what is HOPE HOPE?

That's the municipal employees union.

Okay, thank you.

I thought so.

Um so you answered my other question at large do not have these funds.

Um I did want to ask Councilmember Martinez, I emailed you, but I didn't get a response, about um there was sort of an outlier in your district funds about 400,000 for a golf course.

I was curious about that.

Yeah, so um it's what's been happening in my district and specifically along that corridor on Wayside, it's there's been a lot an increase in golf balls.

We've increased the number of rounds there at Gus Wortham, and so we've been seeing a lot more um activity of bus coming in and whether pedestrians, whether it's vehicular uh accidents uh happening, and so it was a priority essentially for us in my office to make sure that um that specific corridor along Wayside uh was being addressed, and so we partnered with um the Houston Golf Association who manages and maintains that that facility.

Uh they gave also uh funding towards it.

Um so as much as it a lot outlier, it was something that was should have been addressed maybe five years ago, uh, but it's something that we started prioritizing because we started getting a lot more calls in my office.

So I know for folks that might not live in district I or specifically in the east end might not totally understand.

I think um once you start getting the calls in into the office and emails and uh it's something that he's just raises to the top, and we got to figure out ways to address them.

So I was just kind of thinking it was something that the golf community could support.

I there's you know, and quite frankly, honestly, Laura, I think we always try to find ways where because government can't do it all.

Um, and you know, the golf community is looking at Herman Park as well.

They're looking at other, you know.

So I for me uh priority is addressing my constituents as quickly as expeditiously as possible.

Okay, thanks for all your answers.

Councilmember Ramirez, hold on.

There's a couple of things.

Uh Laura, just real quick, because you asked about metro fund and district service funds.

I just want to make clear the the at large operating budget for FY27 under this budget is 666,510.

So no district service funds, no metro funds.

That's it.

666,000.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Huffman.

Thank you.

And I I think that Councilmember Martinez made a good point.

You know, I don't have a golf course in my district, and so I'm not, you know, getting those types of calls, and where some districts have a really big problem with illegal dumping, you know, some districts don't.

And so really the council district service funds are incredible for helping address address the specific issues in each district.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Carter.

Also, Laura.

You're very popular, Laura.

So well, sorry, it just uh council member Huffman just reminded me of a good comment for you.

So uh at at large offices, obviously don't have the funds, but if we have excess funds and we want to contribute them to a project, such as I'm contributing to homelessness in one of the district, um in one of the districts, but also illegal dumping in a district if you have excess that you want to help your friends and neighbors.

So that's what we do with with some of ours.

And if you have any questions on my office, you know where to find me.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And next we have Rain Eatman.

These will probably be my last few questions for today.

Um, one, I wanted to see if anybody from the uh backend team, which you guys again, um, wanted to know if anybody could speak to the amount that's allocated towards the translation services that each council district is supposed to have and how frequently those services are being used.

Um if that's I think that's through the Department of Neighborhood budget.

Oh, and um we like we just we've used them at like the budget town halls and things, and we I think it comes out of their budget, and if you hold on, I can get you the number that um the overall city number on language.

Absolutely, thank you for that.

Um the other question I had is um, and I do apologize, I wasn't able to attend the uh health department budget um conversation, but could there possibly be a conversation between H the Houston Health Department and Council team to provide council members the option of having office space at some of the multi-service centers, at least more than one?

I know council member Jackson actually expanded into the Acres Homes Multi-service center uh when I was a staffer, but um there was some um not confusion, but there we weren't able to expand into all of the multi-service centers, and I think it was either due to limited space or it was a financing issue, but is there any way that a conversation can be had where no district service funds are utilized to rent out those spaces and it's just available for council members to use if they choose to have a uh constituent service day or uh meeting space or similar to that?

Yeah, I know some of the council members do have a a kind of satellite office and and you do pay lease costs for it.

Okay, um, yeah, we can get you some information on that.

Yeah, I mean just finding ways to kind of free up those district service funds for things of that nature, and then um lastly, um since we are looking at a possible trash fee, um, and there is proof that not proof there's evidence that it could possibly um uh grow year over year.

Is there any appetite to explore shifting hot team expenses back to being fully funded to HPW or solid waste?

Um that way, I mean, I know the the luxury of the hot team is that council district members can decide exactly where and when to respond, and hopefully, in some iteration of that order and ordinance, they would still have that luxury, but effectively using those uh funds to take the burden off of the council members so that way they have more dollars to put back in community and not basically subsidizing more solid waste employees.

Do you think that would be a feasible conversation or something that would have an appetite for?

Um I think that's up to the district council members and up to the solid waste budget, and if if there's a way to, I mean, I'm sure they'd love to shift to do more, so they could do more, but um that's just a conversation that would have to be had with solid waste, and we'll have be having that uh budget workshop today at 1 30.

Thank you.

And and in answer to your question about language services, it's about a 438,000 438,000 dollar budget line item for language services.

438,000 American services, which includes oh uh it's for the the Office of New Americans that not all of that is language services, but that's the total budget, contained within there.

We can look into the other data to get you more specific.

But thank you, Rain.

Great questions.

Any other speakers for the city council budget?

Okay, seeing none, thank you very much again to our wonderful mighty small small but mighty city council team, and we will take a short break before going to Office of Business Opportunity.

Thanks.