Tuesday, May 12th is a council budget workshop as we do with all public meetings.

We have a 15 minute public comment period, three minutes per person.

And uh do we have anybody signed up to speak?

There's no one signed up.

I don't know if there's anyone online.

Is there anybody online?

Uh

there's nobody online.

All right, we'll go ahead and close the public comment period and uh call the meeting to order.

Um the first item on the agenda is review and discussion of proposed City of Milford fiscal year 27 budget.

Mr.

Mayor and Council, Chris Coleman, City Manager.

Just wanted to provide a brief opening before we turn before I turn it over to Lou and get into all the numbers.

So I realize acknowledge that this is my first budget process in Milford.

However, with my 30 years of local government experience, this is not my first local government budget.

I understand the city has limited resources and raising taxes is often a last resort.

Furthermore, I view the city's budget process as a pie with each department expense being a slice of that pie.

There are years when some slices increase, others stay the same, and some are reduced.

The

department has done a great job spreading out their resources as the city continues to grow, providing the service delivery expected by council, me, the department heads themselves, and their respective team members.

This

year you'll hear department heads um discuss their FY27 requests, and some include in some requests include additional resources.

We will continue to strive to provide high level service citywide through the department heads of leadership and the professionalism of their respective team members.

We are beginning the FY27 budget process this evening.

This is a draft FY27 budget.

We know that this is not the final budget as we have meetings scheduled tonight, tomorrow, and Thursday.

This

is a draft FY, I'm gonna repeat it again.

This is a draft FY27 budget that is balanced and comprises a mix of existing revenues, new growth, new revenues, one-time revenues, and a proposed increase in taxes that tracks with the levels of inflation.

Now

I know you've been waiting for the numbers, so I'm gonna turn it over to Lou to discuss uh the actual numbers with the FY27 balanced budget.

Thank

you.

Thank you, Chris.

Uh good evening.

Uh this is Lou Vitola uh Finance Department.

Uh we have been working feverishly on the production of the fiscal 27 operating budget.

Um, like Chris said, it is still a draft.

Um I'm gonna um share a little bit about what is in tonight's um packet for this first workshop and what can you what you can expect to hear from us uh before we hop into it, but I will be brief.

Um you can see these first two um files here the operating budget summary excluding capital with comparison to fiscal 26.

That's in a format that you will uh find very familiar to the last I don't know how many years of budgets.

We've modified it a little bit, uh regardless of what systems we've been in.

It's it's been in kind of the same format for for years.

Uh and then we have the detail uh which we're not gonna go through line by line today, and even when we get to each of the department directors tonight and tomorrow night, we won't be going line by line.

We're gonna cover the the highest level items.

Um I've already begun to get um a handful of questions in from some of you on council and from across staff.

I'm doing my best to respond internally to staff and and to those asking questions, but what we'll end up doing uh is what we've done probably the last three or four budget years at least, is to accumulate the questions, even if they're asked and answered on the floor, uh, and repeat those and have a running QA uh tally that we'll put on the workshop for the 14th, and that that will produce again at a future stage in in the budget.

Um so so yeah, I guess that's all I'll say about the the files that you see here.

It is a balanced budget, but it is the first draft.

We know it's gonna change.

We know that that there can be some that there's you know it's it's a conservative budget, but not super conservative, meaning there could be savings where we find it, but it is about as thin as as we can make it.

Um there are revenue increases.

So I'll I'll start with the utilities, and now we we do have revenues and reality transfer taxes here on the um on the agenda for this workshop.

I can address these areas now at a high level, um, but we'll dive into the detail on these, if not tomorrow, then Thursday, um, because we have all of the utilities tomorrow, and the utility revenues are going to be more relevant as part of tomorrow's discussion.

Although I don't want to belabor that meeting either.

So we'll get to that at that point.

But for water and sewer, we are undergoing rate studies.

But for fiscal 27, and I I still have to get confirmation and a level of you know a level of support from our rate analysts, but we have been very strong in water and sewer the last three years in a row.

And I think between the five-year rate study, which featured rate increases every year, and the next five-year rate study, I think it's appropriate for us to, for lack of a better term, take a breather and continue to assess what our growth has done for us in water and sewer.

So I don't anticipate any rate changes in water and sewer.