Hello, everyone.

Today is May the 14th, and I call this meeting of the budget and finance committee to order.

Um, we do have our uh budget hearings today.

So thank you all so much for uh joining us, and thank you uh for my colleagues.

We do detect a quorum, so we will go ahead and get started.

Um, before we get started, I do have a few announcements.

I wanted to uh share some information about the budget process.

I know colleagues, I have shared this with you all before, um, but for the purposes of some of our um members that this is the first time uh going through a budget process.

There were some questions that came up, so I just wanted to make sure that everyone was really clear on this process.

So we are starting our budget hearings today.

The hearings will start every day at 4 p.m.

We have hearings uh today, tomorrow, and Thursday, as well as two days next week.

You can refer to the budget calendar to see the hearings of the various departments on each day.

After those budget hearings, uh, you do have the first iteration of your wish list available to be submitted to the council office on May the 23rd.

Then we will start our budget work sessions on May the 28th.

That will be the time that council members can work together and go through our wish list based on the information that we heard from our departments um during these hearings to try to work on some of the things that our committee wants to prioritize.

We will have a public hearing on Tuesday, June the 4th at 6 30 p.m.

So please remember to invite your constituents out to share their thoughts on the budget.

And then on June the 6th, that will be the uh the date that the finalized version of your wish list is due.

I did also want to highlight that we have community meetings.

So thank you for everyone that joined us on Monday night for our first community meeting in Bellevue.

Our next meeting will be Saturday, May 18th at the Northwest YMCA, um, located at 3700 Ashland City Highway at 2 p.m.

And then on Saturday, May 25th, we have two meetings.

Uh, the first one at the Southeast Community Center at 10 a.m.

5260 Hickory Hollow Parkway.

I will not be providing breakfast, but feel free to bring your own.

And then we will have one at 2 p.m.

at the Hermitage Library, located at 3700 James K.

Lane.

So again, would love colleagues if you all are able to attend.

These are not mandatory, um, but in essence, we would love that opportunity to hear from the community.

Again, these are not to replace that public hearing that will be on June the 6th, but just an additional opportunity for our community to have a conversation with us about uh the things that are important to them.

If you are on the budget and finance committee, I would invite you to go ahead and put your yellow committee sign up so that members of the public that are viewing will be able to identify which members are a part of the budget and finance committee.

Uh, but anyone can ask questions.

Any uh council member is allowed to ask questions.

Uh so you will not be precluded if you're not on the committee, but be helpful to um have that visual reminder.

For anyone that is watching, we do have uh resources available to help you understand this uh very cumbersome budget and process.

If you go to Nashua.org on the right hand side, you're going, excuse me, national.gov on the right hand side, you will see uh uh two smiling faces.

One is of our mayor and one is of our vice mayor Angie Henderson, who's joining us today.

And if you click on Vice Mayor Angie Henderson on the left-hand side, you'll see a navigation menu.

And from that menu, uh down at the bottom, you'll see council resources.

And from there, you can scroll down.

And the first link under budget will be the citizens guide to the budget.

So that has a lot of very helpful resources for you.

Uh colleagues, right under that link, you will see an operational budget link.

Um, in that link, you will be able to find the questionnaires for each department that we're going to hear from today.

So if this is your first budget season, each department did submit a questionnaire.

And the expectation is that we review those questionnaires prior to the hearing so that we can have that information uh to help formulate questions on that hearing.

That information again can be found in that link, and it is also available to the public.

So, with that, we're going to start off our hearing today.

Our first hearing will be from Social Services, and we are joined by Director Renee Pratt, and we thank her so much for her service to Metro.

And uh, you can find their budget in the budget book section G, page 363 in your budget book colleagues.

So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Pratt and Director Pratt, uh, feel free to introduce who you have with you, and you all are recognized.

Thank you so much.

Chair Porterfield, I have with me today my CFO, Andrew Sullivan to my right.

And we truly appreciate the opportunity to be first today.

I think I've been doing this 17 years and we haven't ever been in on the first day, the first one.

So a little nervous, but I think we'll be okay.

But again, thank you for scheduling us today.

Also, thanks to Mayor O'Connell for his trust in our department, our committed community partners, my devoted staff who are in the back of the room, and to our clients who come to us for help and trust us to get them through the darkest and the scariest days.