The Louisville Metro Budget Committee held a community budget hearing on May 13, 2026, at 6:00 PM in Council Chambers and virtually. Vice Chair Markus Winkler presided. Over 30 public speakers provided testimony on the proposed FY 2026-2027 executive budget, expressing concerns about cuts to various services and requesting funding for community programs.
Utility partners and all emergency personnel. Your work is often unseen but never unfelt. You bring calm to chaos, hope to crisis, and strength to moments when it's needed most. May we leave here today reminded of your courage, inspired by your service, and forever grateful for the heroes you stand watch over our community. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor Greenberg, for celebrating this day with us. Thank you, first responders. Hi, I'm Kayla with Louisville Water, and this is Made with Pure Tap, a special segment where we're highlighting some amazing local businesses that use water to make their products. Here in Louisville, we're proud of our water. Louisville Pure Tap is an anchor for the small business community and an important ingredient and some tasty products. Today we're at River Green Cocktails. Let's go see how they're using Louisville PureTap. Hi, my name is Danielle Nan, and I'm the owner of River Green Cocktails. We are a local canned cocktail company. Right here in Louisville, Kentucky, we make all of our canned cocktails with premium gin, real fruit juices, natural sweeteners, and Louisville Pure Tap water. A good water source is really important for our canned cocktails. We use about eight to nine ounces in each 12 ounce can, and so it's important to us that we have a really good water. When we started this business and we're creating the cocktails, we considered filtering the water. So a lot of canned cocktail companies will use filtered water, and we said, well, why would we do that? Louisville Pure Tap Water is the best water in the country. So we are a registered Kentucky Proud Company. It's really important for us to use as many local ingredients as possible. For example, we have a bee's knees cocktail. It's made with premium gin, real lemon juice, and a honey that we get from a bee farmer out of Columbia, Kentucky. River Green Cocktails are available throughout the state of Kentucky. Danielle, we're proud to give River Green Cocktails the Made with Pure Tap seal of approval. Thank you for your commitment to quality and using Louvre Pure Tap. Cheers. I take a lot of calls from folks, and it seems like we've had an uptick of folks where the landlord decides, you know, I need to increase their payment. Is there any reaction to that? Do you all have any suggestions for that? It's a national problem. Rents are going up way faster than incomes are going up. Home prices are going up. I mean, it is we need much more rental assistance. It is just it's skyrocketing, it really is. And it's a it's a national issue. Yeah, we live in a in a state where rent controls are illegal, right? So there's not something we can do there. Yeah, it's in the constitution. Um so you know, the they're very little about controlling those rents, right? Uh they'll say the you know the the the market is the best decider there, right? To where if people aren't renting them, the rent will probably, you know, the rental costs will go down, but in an environment where we had don't have the supply that we need, we need more units. And this is where you need to talk to the state individuals, uh, your elected officials, because if you uh don't do something about the cost of uh rent going up, then they will truly be forced to a nursing home. If you want to shoot your budget, shoot yourself in the foot with about the budget, Chad. 100,000 a year. I mean, you know, the federal government pays a lot of that, but still can take a base a lot. So you you better take a long look at the long long haul picture of that because it could be very, very much more negatively uh impactful to your budget than trying to actually increase it. I understand landlords have to make a living, and I don't begrudge that, but to what extent is you know fair for those individuals. So uh it's something they really need to take a look at because if they don't have a roof over the head, they're gonna be going uh state custody or something like that.