It says it started.

Um, I will go ahead and just kick us off then.

Um, good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to our uh special council meeting here.

It is October the Monday, October 13th, 2025.

Um, special joint council meeting um with the NCIP.

And with that, I will ask Clementine to do roll call and make announcements.

Councilmember Barber, President, Councilmember Garcia.

Here council member Rash here.

Councilmember Smith, Mayor Williamson.

And then I'll call the role of the NCIP committee.

Um maybe you can just go in order.

Yeah, that would be easier.

Delman Beach.

Alternosa.

Downtown alternate alternate.

Thank you very much.

Public comments.

Sorry, I'm not used to such a long role.

And participation information is provided on this meeting's agenda, which is online at moderate.gov/slash agendas.

In-person attendees, please keep your electronic devices and phones muted to prevent audio interference in our meeting.

And thank you for participating in your city government.

Awesome.

Thank you, Glenn.

With that, I will ask Shanneri to kick us off with a pledge of allegiance, please.

Exactly.

Which we say is one nation under the individual liberty and justification for all.

All righty, thank you, Shannary.

And with that, we're going to go to convene a joint meeting of the City Council and NCIP committee.

And our item on the agenda is a public appearance item number one joint meeting of the council and NCIP committee to discuss potential appropriation of NCIP funds into the general fund to address the city's $10 million structural deficit in the next fiscal year's budget.

With that, I'll pass it to Nat for staff presentation.

Thank you very much.

And good evening, Mayor.

Our city council and NCIP committee members.

We're grateful for all of you and for all your time this evening.

As you know, the city is facing a $10 million structural and ongoing budget deficit.

Over the past couple of months, our city council and staff have been very hard at work identifying solutions on how to address the structural deficit.

Council conducted an index card exercise to identify revenue generating strategies and expenditure reduction strategies it supports.

And we know these discussions will continue.

In fact, next week we will review revenue generating strategies that indirectly address the budget deficit.

This has been a very open and transparent process that is involved and invited members, feedback from members of the public, including all of you.

The city council has done an excellent job of identifying solutions that address the 10 million dollar structural deficit.

Of the solutions that could directly address the deficit, the most significant proposed by council is a sales tax increase that may go on the ballot in June of 2026.

That 0.375% increase, if approved, would bring an estimated $3.375 million in revenue in fiscal year 26-27 and $4.5 million in years beyond.

Unfortunately, that would only address some of the $10 million structural deficit.

And we know that we can't count on those revenues, even as we undergo polling to gauge community support.

We have a brief slide that Andrea will share up here on the screen that walks through the timeline on revenue generation and what we're looking at, what we're looking at.

So we were able to balance the budget this current fiscal year, fiscal year 25-26.

And we'll go to the next uh next movement on the slide.

One more time.

Oh, there we go.

So uh we have some immediate options that uh we'll be talking about uh today, and council will continue to discuss.

One of the items and the key item for tonight is uh consideration of NCIP funds for the general fund to balance the budget for uh for the next fiscal year, also salary savings and chilled and uh frozen positions.

Looking at the short-term options also include pausing programs and services, council is considering that, and we've been having some conversations about those options.

As we go to the next item, midterm.

Midterm options as we look into the next fiscal year is partial revenue from the sales tax increase, as well as potentially bringing a parking tax forward and uh looking at uh potentially another service provider for filming these uh city council meetings and other boards and commission meetings.

As we look at 27 and 28 long term, a first responder fee, stormwater fee, admissions tax, these are other revenue generating strategies that are on the table.

As we've discussed, two of the deficit reduction strategies that are part of the index card exercise involves the NCIP.

One involves reappropriating a portion of this year's NCIP funds into the general fund to address the deficit next year.

The second involves a one-time defunding or what we would call freezing of existing projects.