Uh for our little budget workshop here.

Well, we're just gonna jump right into it.

So uh Mr.

Nolan, if we want to start with the present through.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Uh appreciate everyone being here.

Um, really just wanna really set a framework for for tonight's meeting.

Uh and really the idea is to really have an open discussion.

Any any questions, uh anything you would like to review, really it's it's open and um all the department heads are here.

Um finance city manager, deputy um city managers here as well.

So uh that's that's really just is kind of set the tone for the meeting.

Um within this packet that uh is in front of everyone.

I'll just go through what's included.

Um there's a revised draft executive summary, uh, and what's what we are currently working on uh is a clean draft of this document here.

So really what the pieces that are included here tonight are components, the major components of the of this larger document, and we'll have a nice clean document for everybody for the uh from the meeting on June 11th.

Uh also included in this packet here is a revised org chart, uh budget review schedule, uh summary of proposed levy and proposed tax rates, um, the proposed general fund revenues, the proposed uh fiscal year 2026 expenditures for general fund, uh any new proposed positions, our CIP roll forward, which is really gonna take us from uh our CIP document to currently where where we are, as far as any changes that that have may have been suggested.

Um we have uh civic support, detail on civic support, as well as the revenue and expenditures for water pollution control.

Um I know that we have Peter is with us today.

He spent an awful lot of work on on uh the civic support.

So he's here to answer any questions, and uh we can go through any of those those schedules.

Um so I'd certainly open it up to council for any questions or any direction as far as you what you'd like us to touch on.

Yeah, anyone from the council want to go to start with the uh low-hanging fruit, which is the civic support and understanding that uh solicitor BN gave us a very helpful memo outlining the restrictions on the original trust revenues and how they could be distributed.

I think the short form of this, and uh Mr.

B and tell me if I'm wrong, is general welfare of the community helping the poor and the destitute in our community to use the kind of historic terms, and then secondarily beautification of the city itself.

Um outside of that, I think some of the drift that we had over the years was when we would receive supplemental funding through things like ARPA, we use civic support as a distribution mechanism for that, occasionally wading into areas outside what the original trust intended.

Can you talk to us about how the administration taking council feedback has reframed our approach to some of that civic support and how we are also making sure we continue supporting community partnerships that may not fall under those buckets but are still core parts of what helped make our city function with a relatively small staff?

Absolutely.

So really there's there's as uh counselor side just mentioned.

Uh we really have two buckets.

We have uh the buckets uh that really impact as far as our the offshoot of our sears trust, which is our public improvement fund.

So what we have available in fiscal year 26 is uh roughly 163,000.

Um we took council's direction um along with uh deputy city manager and Peter as far as really working on a uh a framework of a rubric of measurement to review those applications, make sure we had uh minimum requirements of documents that we received, and then it was reviewed by a subcommittee of I believe it was six members internal to the city.

Um and they reviews reviewed all those applications, scored them, and um, and what we came up what we came across uh is gonna be what we have up here on the screen, uh, which is our proposed award funding.

And we really have this broken down into two pieces.

This top piece is going to be um funding that will come from our public improvement fund.

And then as we work our way down, um it's then we identified a number of organizations that really we we feel can be supported with general fund um general fund funding.

Uh so that that's gonna be like the Edward King House for for programs that are are really uh an offshoot of really personnel that the city currently does not have, and they're really picking up the ball um and and helping us with those services.

And I would and I would note that we those those items that came out.

There is one, two, three, three, there's ten of them.

So then with some with some council guidance, we thought, well, let's put put together a proposal that says this is this is still valuable work that the community does, and we'd like to still contract with this, just as we do for all of our purchase services for uh around the city humanitarian and otherwise.

And so essentially we can detach this from the Sears Trust, but still achieve the same desired end state through a purchase service program.

And that's what we've accomplished through this division.

It it's not 100% perfect.

There are gray areas in each of these sum elements of Sears Trust applicability, but portions that do not, and vice versa.

But we felt that this was the best division very conveniently and coincidentally, the dollar amounts uh worked out pretty well when we did that division.

We were only a few thousand dollars off.

That was just a lucky coincidence.

It wasn't what we were we weren't driving off of that, but it turned out that way and it worked very well.

Just to make sure we heard that right.

So what we've done here is we have gotten the Sears Trust and the associated trusts that are intended to help the general welfare and beautification of Newport back within the boundaries of the trust income that's generated and back within their original clear intent.

That's correct.

Thank you.

And in that the sheet that I have up on the screen here is included in your packet, the top piece uh are gonna be the organizations.

Um the organizations in blue, those are the organizations that are fund will propose funding through the uh the Sears, the public improvement fund with the organizations at the bottom here in that uh purplish color, um, which will be through the general fund through that contract services.

And in addition, thanks to uh Peter's work, this is now flowing through a more objective scoring process based on the merits of these organizations and how they tie to the original intent of the trust, a matrices and approach that can be shared publicly as part of the application process in the future with this panel that proposes to the council recommendations based on an objective criteria.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

Mr.