The Kearney City Council held a budget retreat on May 14, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers. The meeting was devoted entirely to a presentation and discussion of the City of Kearney budget led by City Manager Brenda Jensen. Topics included the budget process, state legislative impacts, revenue and expenditure trends, the proposed Fire Station #3 project, and a wide-ranging list of future capital projects. No formal votes were taken; the meeting served as an informational session and a starting point for future budget deliberations.
No inner classroom. Okay. In accordance with section 84 1412 of the Nebraska revised statutes. The current copy of the open meetings act is available for review and is posted on the wall. Peggy, please take roll. Mayor Nicolette. Here. Bushcutter. More here. Schmidt. Here. Stratman. Last but not least here. Okay. Agenda item three. Sure, I'll tell you that much. That's why we're having this. Yeah, we're all invited right now. That's for sure. Um, okay. So we're gonna cover a lot of different things tonight, and I please ask questions as we're going along. Um, I didn't bring my budget book, but I know Brad did, and I know Kayla can also okay. Well, she can probably pipe up and try and answer some questions too if I can't answer them for you. But um, so we're gonna just briefly I'm gonna cover the just the budget process. Um, some of this I know is gonna be a little redundant for for some of you, but for a couple of you newer ones, just so you kind of have an idea of where we're at in the budget process and how it works. Um, we will also talk about the influences that the state has over our budget, uh, the types of funds that we have broken down, and then um the the main conversation is gonna be around our general fund, um, which I'll explain why we're talking about that. Um, I'm also sorry, Peggy Brenda Jensen city manager for the record. Um, I'm gonna go through a little bit of cost escalations that we've seen over the past five years and and why we what we attribute those to. Um, we're gonna talk then in a little bit more detail of capital projects, including the fire station project and then some of the other kind of large capital projects that we have just on the um ever growing wish list is maybe what we'll call it. So um, first of all, budget timeline. So we um we're in October one fiscal year start, um, but we start our actual budget process in January. The first time you guys see anything is in March. So we're doing a lot of kind of behind the scenes stuff on some of the smaller items. Um, but what we present to you first is in March is the special sales tax public hearing. So if you remember that just a couple months ago, talking about uh it's about six million dollars that we have to spend um each year on larger capital projects. So we go through what those are planned for current fiscal or the next fiscal year, and then we talk a little bit about um future fiscal years. And then obviously today we added in the the May budget retreat. Um this is a little bit of a newer item that we have. Um, but there's a lot that happens behind the scenes between January and June. So just know that there's a lot going on, a lot of pieces of the puzzle that are being put together. Um, and then really where we kind of start um more of the public interface side of things is in July. So we start with the uh this year we happen to have the joint city county budget meeting. So um for the two newer ones, that's we all sit in a room together. The city does lead it. Peggy leads it for us, um, and Kayla will present it as finance director, but we go through all of our co-location agreements and true up kind of current fiscal year and talk about next fiscal year, what budget projections look like. There, the county is on a July 1 fiscal year, so it it does make things just a little bit different. Um, but we go through kind of each of our co-location agreements that we have and get to detail those and talk about the costs that are associated with each one, and then also in July, we have our budget, our actual budget retreat where you're gonna see fiscal year 26 for the first time um in full in all of its glory. Um, and then there's a state's sorry you said the county's on July 1st budget. Uh July, yeah, their fiscal year is July 1. But they still vote on their budget at the same time we do, don't they?