Raleigh City Council Budget Work Session – February 16, 2026
Raleigh City Council Budget Work Session – February 16, 2026
The Raleigh City Council held a budget work session on February 16, 2026, to review resident engagement results, compensation and benefits, and a targeted staffing study. The meeting included presentations from Budget and Management Services, Human Resources, and Matrix Consulting Group. Council members discussed competing priorities, vacancy rates, retiree health benefits, and staffing needs across multiple departments.
Discussion Items
Budget Engagement Presentation
- Lauren Williams (Budget and Management Services) presented the results of the FY27 budget engagement process, which included listening sessions and a community survey that received 1,984 responses—seven times the previous year's count.
- 82% of survey respondents rated Raleigh as good or excellent as a place to live, 72% as a place to work, and 71% as a place to play. 87% were satisfied or very satisfied with drinking water, 80% with greenways, and 86% with parks. Services residents desired greater levels of included affordable housing, Go Raleigh bus, and sustainability.
- 82% of respondents supported dedicating additional resources to competitive employee compensation, enhanced public safety, and parks. When asked to rank priorities, 52% listed affordable housing as the top priority (284 mentions), followed by police (132 mentions), 911 call center, clean drinking water (106 mentions), fire/EMS (133 mentions), and Go Raleigh transit.
- In listening sessions, 25% wanted more transportation funding, 17% asphalt maintenance, 17% public safety, 15% affordable housing. 37% wanted parks funding stable, 20% community engagement, 16% transportation. The top services residents felt were unnecessary included leaf collection and free parking.
- Councilor Brown raised concerns about categorizing transportation versus transit and asked how contradictory feedback is reconciled. Councilor Jones noted declining attendance at in-person sessions and suggested partnering with council community meetings. Councilors Lambert Melton and Patton asked for further breakdown of “other” categories and for consideration of year-round engagement capacity.
Compensation and Benefits Update
- Sharnell Jones (Human Resources) reported that the city invested over $39.9 million in employee compensation since July 2025, including implementation of a comprehensive classification and compensation study with no tax increase. The city is aligned with market and proposes a flat annual pay increase for FY27.
- A benefits survey with 1,151 responses (87% rated health benefits good or above) and a stay survey with 366 responses (28.1% cited benefits as top reason to stay) were reviewed. Health insurance costs $57 million annually; the city covers $48.3 million. No premium increases are proposed for medical, dental, or vision plans in FY27.
- Vacancy rates have declined to 401 (8.9%) full-time vacancies as of February 13, 2026. Councilor Jones requested impact analysis of vacancies on service delivery.
- Assistant City Manager Bradshaw presented OPEB (other post-employment benefits) options, noting a $210 million liability. Options include closing to new hires (saves $79 million over 15 years), moving eligibility to 20 years (saves $2.6 million), or moving to 25 years (saves $7.2 million). Councilor Jones expressed concern about cutting benefits for new hires. Mayor asked for benchmarking and real-life examples of how changes affect employees.
Targeted Staffing Study
- Ryan Bergman (City Manager's Office) and Aaron Baggerly (Matrix Consulting Group) presented a staffing study covering eight departments/divisions: Emergency Communications Center (ECC), Fleet Management, Fire Marshal, Code Enforcement, Building Safety, Solid Waste Services, Police, and Transportation (maintenance and traffic engineering).
- Immediate staffing gaps identified: ECC needs 22 positions (currently 130 budgeted; should be fully staffed soon), Fleet 3.5, Fire Marshal 14, Code Enforcement no new positions (realignment only), Building Safety 29.5 (71 budgeted), Solid Waste 21 (due to leaf collection transition), Police draft analysis suggests maximum addition of 89 sworn positions (920 budgeted) plus 12 civilian positions, Transportation 6.
- A three-year phased implementation proposes 52.5 new positions in FY27, 48 in FY28, 35.5 in FY29 (total 136 positions, excluding police pending data validation). A growth model projects 11% staffing increase over 10 years for these functions.
- Councilor Silver questioned recruitment strategy for specialized positions (building safety, fire marshal). Councilor Patton asked for dynamic models, suggested improving plan quality from development community, and exploring service delivery changes. She also inquired about police district shapes and technology gains. Chief Boyce confirmed ongoing redistricting and use of technology (report dictation, two-officer cars). City Manager noted the study aligns with strategic resource use.
Key Outcomes
- No votes were taken; the work session was informational.
- Next budget work sessions: March 9 (Raleigh Water, Stormwater, Parking), April 6 (Solid Waste Services, Grants, CIP), May 19 (proposed budget presentation to council).
- Staff will complete data validation for police staffing study by end of March, along with fire shift analysis. A dynamic growth model will be provided to the city.
- Compensation analysis for annual pay increase will be brought forward with FY27 budget. Council will consider OPEB changes as part of budget trade-off deliberations.
Meeting Transcript
Okay. Order. First item is just that Mayor Pro Tem Harrison is absent and excused. All right, and I will turn it over to Miss Sadia Sitar. All right. Well, good afternoon, Mayor and members of City Council, Sadia Sitar with Budget and Management Services. Super excited to kick off yet another budget season with all of you, our fourth together, at least for the most of us. We are kicking off our budget work session today with the engagement that we did as part of the upcoming budget process. Later on, our HR director, Sharnell Jones, will chat with all of you about compensation and benefits. And then after that, Assistant City Manager Ryan Bergman and our consultants at Matrix Inc. will chat with all of you with the targeted staffing study. So to kick us off as we dive into this budget work session, normally I would be the one who would be chatting with all of you about all things engagement. But this year I'm going to do things a little differently. I am going to give the opportunity to one of my fabulous analysts, Lauren Williams, who actually spearheaded this effort for the city this year, and she's done a fantastic job. So I'm going to bring Lauren on boat and let's get started. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Lauren Williams with the Department of Budget and Management Services. As you know, every year we try to involve residents in our budget process, and I'll be presenting the results of this year's engagement process with you today. So we'll start by going through the outbreak. Is it possible to move back? We cannot see them. It is very close. So we can only select the top third. Oh. That's a lot of things. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Cassidy. All right. Other duties as a sign. All right. So we're going to start by going through the outreach methods that we use to advertise the program. Then I'll take you through our budget listening sessions as well as the budget survey that we conducted and the resident feedback that we got from it. We'll conclude with uh next steps for the process. So in order to get the highest participation possible in our engagement program and build a budget that reflects the needs of as many Raleigh residents as possible, we worked with our communications department to create a comprehensive communication strategy for this campaign. So we got the word out in a variety of ways. You might want to move the microphone closer to yeah, your thank you. So we put a lot of intention in how these listening sessions are formatted. So we start with an education piece so that folks are all on an even footing when they're discussing the budget. We walk through topics like operating budgets, capital budgets, as well as enterprise funds. And then new this year, we had a second section uh budget games that was interactive for folks. So we started with guess the cost, which uh allowed residents to guess the cost of common municipal items like uh a fire truck or a mile of sidewalk, and then uh we ended up with a budget balancing exercise that put residents a chance to take a spin in our shoes and get a chance balancing expenses and revenues for a municipal budget. We closed the session with our core engagement questions that we ask folks. So, primarily we wanted to know where do people want to see increased funding for next year's budget, where do they want to see funding levels maintained, and where, if anywhere would they want to see funding levels reduced. So this is what we heard. Now, for all these questions, I want to emphasize that they were open-ended. So residents were given three open-ended questions, they typed the answers, and then budget and management services staff went in, read all of the responses, and categorized them here for easy viewing. So uh, and some folks did attend multiple sessions, however, we controlled for that in our responses, and they did not answer twice. So, for the first question that we asked residents where they would like to see additional funding in next year's budget.
openpublica.com