The Finance Committee of the Jackson City Council met on March 27, 2026, to review revenue and expenditure data and begin the process of amending the fiscal year 2026 budget. The meeting, chaired by Councilwoman Clay, focused on using actual six-month data from FY26 to project the remainder of the year, identify inefficiencies, and improve transparency. Key participants included Finance Manager Brandon Jackson, CFO Jillian Caldwell, CAO Peter Taverson, and council members Foote, Parkinson, Grizzell, and Hartley.
Good morning, it's 10 o'clock, and we'll call the meeting to order the finance committee meeting for the City of Jackson City Council. Are there any announcements or comments? Okay. In this meeting, we're going to examine the information that's been provided for us in terms of revenue, expenditures, et cetera, and work toward amending our budget for um the month of May or April. And we don't have to amend our budget immediately. We just need to do it before July. So this is a work in progress, and I hope that the council will work toward amending the budget one time for the whole 23 or 30,000, whatever we have to amend, and based on what revenues and monies coming in. Thank you, uh, Chairperson Clay. To that, and this obviously is more than a 10% adjustment, whether we do just the first part or we do the first part in the second part. Um what is the legal requirement for there's public notice that would have to take place? Um even if we wanted to adjust this budget in part one, what's the what would be the timeline for how that can be done Brandon Jackson Finance Manager? Um with the advertisement, they would um require us to actually have you all vote on the notice as well. So the notice would be afterwards of us actually um approving. So we would let's say, for example, I'm not I'm not saying we would, but let's say we were going to do this at the next council meeting when we post the the agenda the Friday before or whenever to notice that the meeting was taking place. That's the only sort of notice that would be required in advance, and then if we were to pass it on that meeting, then you would have notice after the fact. Yes, sir. Okay. Because it would be your uh the statement of votes of how you all voted. Okay. Okay. Um within two weeks, excuse me. Okay, but at that point, the the vote would have already taken place. And obviously, you would set up the timeline for us. Most definitely. Okay. Whatever date it is in the future. Will you do a timeline based on us amending our budget the first of May and tell us where we gotta be based on the first of May? And then that way the first half of the year is gone. We can analyze all the numbers from the first six months, be prepared to do whatever we need to and make it final. And we will have gotten any money that we're gonna get from the legislature. We will have gotten the major taxes, we will have gotten everything, and it'll be a simple 50%, and we can figure out where we're heading. Last thing I'm gonna say, and then we're gonna open it up for start to work. May is the meeting that we're supposed to start working on formulating our policies for the budget. So while we are doing this, we can come up with ideas of how next year's information for the budget will be presented to the council. Go ahead and get our calendar for the whole time from May to August. So by then we'll have everything in place, so we'll be working hand in hand with current numbers. Uh Chairwoman Clay may ask a question. Uh, and thank you so much for sending over all the documents that were sent over. It was uh helpful to be able to go through review. Um I want to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. A lot of it seems to be relying on fund balance. Is that an accurate interpretation of the numbers we saw Jillian Caldwell CFO? The numbers represented in the the um information we provided on yesterday are from the the FY25. Most of these packets are from the FY25 revenues and expenses, so that you can see where we landed last year on these amounts. And so we're not using these to um, so we are using these to help us see where we should be currently. We're using the revenues that were received last year to adjust the current year's budget, and we're using the expenses from the divisions for last year to put them back at those amounts instead of the overstated amounts. Are you finished, Mr. Parkinson? Yes, ma'am. Okay, so what I'm asking you to do is the six months that we've gotten this year, use those numbers and let's project the next six months.