Proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

And we're going to handle this is uh the flex director, Mr.

Collins.

He'll make some uh overall comments and then we'll open it up to questions from the city council.

We'll begin with the members of the finance committee and then we'll go around the table.

Uh I'd like to ask everybody, all the members of the city council, uh, as we go through this, if you find if if there are if if at the end of the day, you conclude that you might think some changes to the budget are necessary or desirable.

Please go ahead and get with Mr.

Carbo.

Uh, or well, first of all, discuss them with Mr.

Collins.

And then if you still think that's the case, get with Mr.

Carbo to draw up uh a the proposed amendments to the budget, remembering that we cannot add any income.

So you're if you're going to if you're gonna add something to the budget, you gotta if you come up with a resolution to change the budget, you gotta just gotta even out.

If you're gonna add or subtract revenues, then you gotta add or subtract expenses to match.

Hopefully, we will have none of these, and everybody will be absolutely delighted with the budget that's been presented to us.

But we'll see.

So we'll start out with Mr.

Collins.

Thank you, Mr.

Collins.

Yes, sir.

So thank you, and thank you guys for taking time to do this.

This um the 2026 budget is a little different than what we've done over the last couple of years.

Uh, rather than just kind of look at this from a math problem, how do we balance it?

We started out with going back and looking at the last couple of years, specifically 24 and 25 to look at actual revenues and actual expenditures to kind of go back and see what the future looks like.

Obviously, we've had some questions about being level funded for revenue for the year, so we knew that that was gonna be a bit of a challenge.

So we started there.

There were also some just simple requested additions to the budget, additional staffing.

We knew that um there were some other costs that were coming through, so we wanted to be mindful of what those were.

We've made an effort to to address those to the extent that we can.

We also worked at combining um some areas, some of our revenue.

We'll get into convention center and how that looks different, capital and how that looks different.

Um, but this the budget that you have is um just simply a synopsis of all of that work.

Um, you will you will in just a moment have handouts for for the slides that we're about to go over.

And at any time, if you have any question about any of this, please let me know.

We'll work through.

So uh with that, we'll we'll start right on in.

Um, so for 20 20 FY 2026, the budget is comprised of the general fund, capital improvements and the enterprise funds supported by the general fund.

In years past, there's been a convention center fund in addition to this with OVG coming on board.

The convention center operations are done by contract.

So in years past, the convention center budget that you saw was primarily pass-through money.

Um, you would look at a convention center budget and it would show sales tax, it would show lodging taxes and other things, but the convention center itself did not generate those revenues.

Those were monies that were applied to the convention center and then moved back to the general fund operating account or the capital account.

Um, with the change and how OVG has come in and they're gonna be running the convention center in a different format.

We simply condensed those funds, everything that would have been operational in the convention center has now been incorporated into the general fund.

Um, as an example, you would have seen a line item last year that said convention center sales tax.

That was simply an allocation of sales taxes that went to the convention center is passed through for a standalone budget.

That standalone budget has simply been removed and everything has been incorporated back into the general fund.

Uh the general fund budget summary itself, uh as you see here.

Um there are some increases to some departments.

Um, the top right, the biggest um line of this are the taxes.

That's comprised mostly of sales taxes.

Um, about 17 million of that difference is is made up of what have been previously been going to the convention center.

So everything that was convention center sales taxes made its way back to the general fund.

Everything that were any other licenses and taxes that had gone to the convention center have now made their way back to the general fund.

So we're relatively level funded across the board with our sales taxes, licenses, and other sources of revenue.

We've simply combined those into one location.

Um, so overall, not a substantial change on all of the revenues, it's just condense those to one location, and that's the list that you see here.

Um let me let me back up one one slide.

You'll see also is you have in your budget on the far right-hand side, and we'll address this for in just a minute.