The Omaha City Council held a budget presentation session on August 11, 2026, to review departmental funding proposals for the 2027 city budget. Finance Director Steve Curtis provided an overview, followed by presentations and question-and-answer discussions with the Planning, Police, Fire, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Public Library, and Convention and Visitors Bureau. The meeting recessed at 6:30 p.m. following a motion.
Melton Rowe. Festerson is absent. Good one. Harding. Absent. Mr. President. An affidavit of publication is on file, and a current copy of the Open Meeting Act is posted in a white binder on the East Wall of Legislative Chambers. That's good. Okay. I'm just gonna run through this real quickly, and this has also been made available to the public in a couple different formats. But this was the briefing document that we used with pretty much everybody. How about that? Okay. We decided to up that a little bit. And that's the surplus that we try to end the prior two years with. And so we we attempt to make sure we have a surplus. Property taxes that go into the general fund are about 128.7 million. Uh sales tax is about 288 million, and restaurant taxes about 46 million. Working on 47 and restaurant taxes, roughly flat. We're projecting with the prior year. Uh, one of the things that we try to remind people is that when they look at their property taxes, it's this sheet, that we are just one component. We're about 20 percent or so of the total, 21.39, I believe, in this year, and we kept our levy the same at 43.99. So that's been that for now a couple of years. Uh sales or uh property tax rates. If you look at this chart that I think you have, it basically shows it's been relatively flat for quite a while now. Uh if you go to the appropriations page, which is what you're kind of interested in today, uh, for the departments, some of the bigger departments you might notice uh police went to 261 million from 233 million, which is roughly a 12 percent increase. Fire uh looks a little misleading on this page uh because of bond proceeds, but they actually, if you do general fund only, they went from 141 million to 147 million, which was a growth rate of about four and a half, four and a quarter percent. Uh parks is a little misleading, also if you look at just the total funds. If you go to the uh general fund, you'll see they go they're going up about five million, and as a reminder, they're gonna go up five million plus philanthropy is committing another five million that's not reflected in the budget. So uh in total, they should be up about ten million dollars. Uh one other final thing is position count. Uh position count went up about 43 positions, and it's spread out over a couple of places police, fire, public works, parks, library, all of whom are doing presentations today so they can speak to those position increases uh as they come up. And with that, I'll call that a good intro. Uh ready for questions if you have any, and we'll be here for the whole presentation if you have questions throughout the day. Thanks. Council members, council member Melton, you're recognized. Thanks. I think one of one of the things for me, I I how do you go about trying to estimate um the revenues such as sales tax revenue, you have it going up eight percent. Um and I asked that I wouldn't know how to forecast that, but it seems much higher than we've ever had before. So how did you come up with an eight percent estimated increase in sales tax? Well, remember that's eight percent over the prior year budget. The actual for 2026 is trending quite a bit higher. So it's actually only about four percent, I think last time I calculated over what we think we're gonna collect in 2026. Um and it's one of those things we've talked about in various committees that we can't necessarily attribute it to anything in particular, and the state's not been uh able to shed a lot of light on it, so we assume it's an actual trend unless they can tell us something different. And and this is a problem we've had. Of course, I I this might is I think is this our 14th budget? Something like that. Mr. Curtis, I think I think it is.