The Kansas City Council convened on February 6, 2025, at 7:45 PM to approve the January 30, 2025 business session minutes and receive a detailed presentation on the Fiscal Year 2025-26 submitted budget. Budget Officer Krista Morrison, with support from consultants Micah (Gov Strategist) and Chris Fabian (Tyler Technologies), outlined the $2.5 billion budget, highlighted priority-based budgeting implementation, and discussed the structural imbalance. Council members posed questions about transparency, scoring methodology, community engagement, and timeline for hard copies.
The meeting will come to order. Our first item for business is approval of minutes for business session of January 30th, 2025. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. So we're moved and second. All in favor, okay, by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes. We'll get a presentation on this year's budget. Ms. Morris. Right. Well, good afternoon, Honorable Mayor Lucas, members of City Council, and City Manager Platt, Krista Morrison, budget officer, and I'm happy to be here today to present Kansas City's fiscal year 2025 26 submitted budget. Joining me today and this entire budget process on the far right is Michael, um, excuse me, Micah Innermill. He's with Gov Strategist. Um Micah probably is not a stranger to anyone in this room. Micah has been with us since this city council took office and helped develop the new citywide business plan. So the business plan is the foundation for our resource allocation for Kansas City. So I'm really happy to have Micah on board as we now continue to work with a citywide business plan to align resources to meet the goals in that plan. Also with me today to my right is Chris Fabian. Chris is with Tyler Technologies, and Chris is the co-founder of Priority Based Budgeting and leading expert across the country in priority based budgeting, and he's helping support our implementation in Kansas City over two years. I also want to acknowledge to my right here the first two rows. If you all would not mind standing. This is the Kansas City budget team. This is a group of finance professionals, public administration professionals that I am lucky enough to work with every day. And they're the ones making this happen. Notice their faces. I think these will be your future leaders in the region, and um really grateful for the time that they spend in the budget office and appreciate their hard work every day. Um thank you all. I'd also like to thank our departments, our directors, and our fiscal officers. The budget is a citywide process. Our departments start in July of every year to bring this budget to you every uh February. Important to note is we started in actually April or May of this year because of our implementation of priority-based budgeting. So it has taken a lot of time, and um, I think time well worth spending that you'll hear more about ahead with our departments, but I want to thank them for their work, this budget, but every budget as well. And finally, last but not least, is our fearless leader in our finance committee, uh, our finance chair, uh, Councilwoman Boo. Thank you for leading the budget process, making sure that it's a transparent process. Everyone's voices are heard, um, understood, and I think you will see great progress ahead for language access this year, and I appreciate your leadership through this process. Thank you, Krista. Yes. So I'm gonna start off today just talking a little bit about the state of the U.S. economy and trends that we're seeing. Um, we have been talking in finance committee, and the last uh several quarters, we've been talking about um growth in Kansas City's revenue, but slowing growth. And we are not alone in that trend. Um, in fact, most major cities across the country uh due to high interest rates, housing costs, unemployment. We're seeing a slowdown of revenue growth across the country. Um I'm highlighting here some other cities, and this is on page six of your presentation. Um, this is some of our peer cities across the country, as well as some large cities. Uh Kansas City is not alone by slowing revenue growth, but also the increasing pressures we have on expenditures. Um Mayor Lucas in his state of the city today talked about Kansas City and its strong financial position related to our fund balance.