The Killeen City Council held a budget workshop on February 24, 2025, to receive public input and establish priorities for the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. Council members, city staff, and citizens discussed the city's financial forecast, spending priorities, and infrastructure needs.
Please turn off all your electronic devices. If you would like to talk, please take it in the hallway because it's extremely it's a small room and we don't want to interfere with the recording to make sure we get the notes corrected. If I'm not mistaken, the chamber is open. If you would like to go over to the chamber and look at the meeting, uh this budget meeting on the screen in the chamber. Let the record show that all council members are here except council member board. I have not so I'm assuming there's a presentation first. I don't have any questions. I think we do uh we have citizen comment first. Please bring the agenda. So anyway, citizen comments, if you would like to speak, do we have sheets to sign up? Okay, please sign up for citizen comments. Ms. Wilson is the timekeeper. Ms. Wilson let me know. Do we have anybody signed up for citizen comments? If not, we're moving forward. So do we have anybody? Yeah, we've got one here. Okay, who is the job of this? Once again, I'm gonna ask you to keep your voice low because this is a small room. You do have the option to go in the chamber if you would like to have a sidebar conversation. You do have that option to go in and form it for it's open. Thank you. Okay, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. All right, the meeting is in order. I'm gonna say it one more time. If you would like to have any sidebar conversations, the chamber is open. This room is small. This is a meeting that we're having. So please be respectful. So the citizen comments on the agenda item. This section allows members of the public to address the council regarding an item other than a public hearing item on the agenda for council consideration. Each person shall sign up in advance, may speak only one time, and such address shall be limited to four minutes. A majority of the city council is required because we do have a quorum, but any time extension. That means you have to vote to give them an extra minute. The mayor and council members should have one minute to respond to citizen comments with a statement or explanation without engaging in dialogue. The item for discussion at the workshop is DS 25-005. Receive input and priorities fiscal year 2026 budget. With that being said, uh our assistant city managers. Once you start when they start speaking, they five o'clock. First person will less around, you have four minutes. Thank you. Everyone's going to have your own priorities. But I feel like if we pass, we've put priorities in the wrong place. When we're spending tens of millions of dollars on parks, instead of building new fire stations, hiring new police personnel, uh taking out funds so that we can expand the police station. I think we have our priorities in the wrong place because parks are nice, but they're not in SESC, if we're not safe, then who's going to go to the parks anyway? So I think that this year it would be a great idea if we could put more emphasis on safety, not just in the buildings and the structures themselves, but in making sure that we're giving not raises that are going to make sure that we're able to retain our employees, not just in the first responders, but citywide.