This meeting of the Lakewood Finance Committee focused on the initial review and discussion of 25 Council Budget Priority drafts submitted after a May 11th retreat. Council members presented their ideas, sought input from colleagues and administration, and began categorizing initiatives as budget-impacting (for 2027) or policy-focused. The committee aims to finalize priorities by late July to allow collaboration before the 2027 budget is introduced in fall.
Thank you everyone for coming. I will go ahead and call the June 22nd, second longest day of the year uh finance committee meeting to order. Right? Secondly, you're right. Thank you. Shortest night. Yeah. Pleasantries. Um first order of business uh is the revenue approval review and approval of the April 20th 2026 uh Finance Committee meeting minutes without objection, uh they are approved. Uh the second um order of business, which is the only one which since this is the first time we've kind of done it this way, um we'll see what we can get through in an hour. I know housing planning development is next for zoning um refresh update. So we'll see where we get uh within an hour of kind of what some of our priorities are. Now, some of these, as we discussed on the floor on Monday night, these are encapsulated in the letter from President Keppel uh to the June 15th docket about council budget priorities. Some of these as we go through them, I I I kind of envision this meeting us just literally going one by one, not trying to go super into the weeds um with each one, but kind of explaining them to our colleagues and to the administration and to the public should they be listening to understand what the intention is behind kind of the idea. And this is where it's you know, it's kind of a kickoff to the 2027 budget process, but some of these reading through them, I think are would be very difficult to implement in 2027, uh, but I think they start a larger conversation about what council prioritizes, what we'd like to work with the administration on, where we have shared uh priorities uh and responsibilities. Um then also as we've talked about often, you know, council members can't get in groups of plus three and talk about these things. So uh I kind of envisioned this as a little bit more of an informal discussion about these things, who might be willing to take the lead, what departments might be uh the ones that um would would be the ones that kind of we need to follow up with, who would do that following up, who would be uh the people that would lead the charge, kind of what the the high level policy goals or budget goals are associated with it. Um does that high level make sense to everyone? Yeah. Okay. Um so in no um I didn't do this, but the ones that I authored seem to be first, so I will I will go through them quickly. And also, you know, should the administration have any input? Uh I I kind of view this as more of an open house and you know I don't want to spend a tremendous amount of time, you know, more than five minutes on any one of these. Uh I do think that each one of these deserve more than five minutes, so we will have more follow-up, uh whether that be in a meeting with the mayor and some department heads, uh, or that be uh at another council meeting in another committee or something like that. Um so the first one I'll just I'll go through as quickly as I can. Uh Mr. Chair. Yes. Real fast. Um thank you for this, first of all. Second of all, in addition to your comments uh about the list, some of them are non-budgetary. And so presumably we'll touch on those and talk about them in whatever committee they might belong to. Thirdly, I guess my invitation to my colleagues here is that we're in the idea stage. We're in the creative initiative stage, and the point here is not to knit picks stage and to poke holes and shred you know a proposal. That'll come later, presuming that we have more deliberation by council ages. I guess that should be a question of the chairs. Is this the one and only meeting, or will we be working further in the future on this? Yeah, yeah. I maybe um jump from step uh one to step six. Um so the the way uh I envision this and it it we've talked about with the administration that you know before August recess, if we can have some coalescing around the things that we'd like in this this budget, this 2027 budget. Um so I'm willing to as chair of this committee schedule as many meetings between now and August recess to go through these things. I guess if that's that that's your first question. Um then the way I view that is we kind of can coalesce as a council, have some input from the administration through July and June and July. And then if we need to, we won't have council meetings in August, but it's a perfect opportunity for us to meet with department heads uh or different departments to kind of more fully flesh these things out with some you know legislation and full budget uh going into September. That is not kind of like uh the only pathway, but I think that's uh uh a helpful framing to look at it. Uh Director Mahoney has indicated that up and through September, you know, we can have kind of a review of the revenue uh expenses of this year, so we can kind of understand where we're landing in budget year 2026, going into budget year 2027 with some of our projections, um, understanding what some of the directors, you know, their priorities are, what the mayor's priorities are. Um because as the council president said, and I I agree, there's no like administration budget and council budget, it's just the city's budget. Um so we're gonna work as closely as we can to make sure we can um get it done, and obviously by the end of the year, we need to pass a budget. Um so that's the goal. Uh we're six months from the end of the year, so I think we have some time.