I think it's today Tuesday.

Wednesday, just kidding.

Yesterday was Tuesday.

Today is May 15th, 2024, and I call this budget and finance hearing to order.

Thank you all for being here today.

We do have a quorum.

So thank you for your patience.

We did want to ensure that we had a form today.

And then we will have some again tomorrow.

We also have some next week.

Your wish list will be due on May the 23rd.

And you can also uh turn in your amended wish list by June the 6th.

We do have budget work sessions that will be starting on May the 28th.

And we have community listening sessions.

So thank you for those of you who joined the Bellevue session on Monday the 18th.

The remaining sessions will be held on uh Saturday, May the 25th at the Southeast Community Center, located at 5260 Hickory Holler Park Parkway at 10 a.m.

and the Hermitage Library located at 3700 James K Lane at 2 p.m.

And I'm sorry, I missed the one on the 18th.

The one on the 18th is at the Northwest YMCA, located at 3700 Ashland City Highway at 2 p.m.

So this Saturday at the Northwest Y and then the following Saturday at the Southeast Community Center in the Hermitage Library.

We also have the public hearing on Tuesday, the June June the 4th at our regularly called council meeting.

So please encourage your constituents to come out to that as well.

And uh as we did yesterday, um, we will go to uh the other committee member, uh, excuse me, the committee chair of the associated committee.

So all of today's committee um committee hearings, excuse me, department hearings are all under the umbrella of also public health and safety.

So after we go through the department uh presentation when it's time for QA, I will start with uh Chair Evans, who's here with us uh since she is the chair of public health and safety, and then we will recognize other members.

Um, lastly, for any citizens or constituents that are watching.

Um, if you have questions about the budget, I did want to make sure that you know that we do have the citizens guide to the budget available on Nashville Nashville.gov.

It's an amazing tool that will answer uh a lot of the questions that you may have about the budget and process to our colleagues.

Um the questionnaires that we are going over today, you will find them in the SharePoint in our SharePoint that's on Nashville.gov.

You can go to the council page and then go to council resources and under operational budget.

And under that, the third link will be the questionnaires, a folder um containing the questionnaires uh for our hearing.

So please make sure that you are referencing that.

Um, with that, uh, we will start with fire, and before we call fire up, I am going to uh go to finance for one moment.

There's a question that I keep getting from people in the community, and I want to make sure that finance has the opportunity to explain um discrepancies that people may see between the the ordinance that has been filed and the numbers that we see in the budget book.

So uh Mr.

Aaron Pratt, you are recognized.

Thank you.

Um, Aaron Pratt, budget officer, um department of finance.

There's a description, there's always gonna be a variance between the ordinances that are produced.

So the mayor's recommended budget ordinance, the budget and finance chair ordinance, and the final council approved ordinance and the operating budget book.

If you looked at the fiscal year 2024 budget book, operating budget book, um, there would be a variance between those ordinances and the amounts that departments are distributed.

That's based on the pay plan.

Pay plan is centrally budgeted during the budget process until the final pay plan amount is approved by council.

Once that pay plan amount is approved, we then work over July and August to distribute and reallocate those funds specifically to the departments.

So department A will would be at a certain amount, a base amount throughout the budget process, plus any approvements that were approved by council during that time that was added to the budget.

And final piece of that is the compensation amount that's then added to the budget for that department as instructed by council.

So we do that operation in uh July and August based upon the final approved budget.

So for instance, a department like finance would have had a budget of $50,000, and the pay plan that would have probably been approved was two percent.

So we would have added that additional two percent um to that department's budget in the July August time frame, and that would show up in the fiscal year operating budget book, which we produce in September slash October and submit to GFOA.

Thank you for that, Mr.

Pratt.

Um Councilmember Allen here recognized.

And so just for clarification, in the ordinance, it shows the aggregate of what you're suggesting for the pay pain plan improvements under general government.

So that that chunk of money is already there in the total that we see.

So the totals are the same, it just not distributed out to the departments.

Is that correct?

That is correct, Council Person Allen.

On page 15 of the current ordinance, um, there is an administration internal support account called pay plan improvements of 41.7 million dollars.

That amount will then be debited and credited to departments once the final budget is approved.

Great, thank you.