Good morning, everyone.

Uh I will now call the budget and government efficiency committee to order.

A quorum is now present, consisting of myself, Vice Chair Kate, Council Members Montgomery and Moreno, and we also have our IBA, Andrea Tevlin, our CFO Rolanda Charval, Brett Bartellotta from the City Attorney's Office, and Chris Olston from the IBA.

First, um, is there a motion to approve or amend the committee record of actions from the March 6th hearing?

Great.

We have a motion by Councilmember Kate, Vice Chair Kate, and a second by Councilmember Montgomery.

Uh all in favor?

Aye.

Great.

That motion passes unanimously.

We will now proceed with non-agenda public comment.

This portion of the agenda provides an opportunity for members of the public to address the committee on items of interest not on the agenda.

We have one member of the public who wishes to speak.

She will be given uh three minutes.

Good morning, Martha Welch.

I missed the five that we have in 1915.

Used to have budget to say how much you budget how much they get department.

Used to have that all the time.

I don't like this, what you do right now, performance only, only it's half the uh uh picture.

Now I know that uh we had in 16 we had uh no books for the library.

What kind of city is this because part of the uh it's private or something like that.

And the city doesn't like the job because um uh how about the books?

Um um New York of the book is uh that it's hard to get the books for that also.

And also um have I'm public and I like to know how much you spend every budget and how you spend it because it's not efficient because if you don't tell us how much money you spend in every uh department, you should say how much park is how much and everything used to painters and everything.

It shows uh it shows you're hiding something to me because you don't say how much you spend in every department.

And if you don't say this, it's you're hiding something if you ask me.

If something's not not right, something's not working here right now, it doesn't work because if you don't tell us um how much budget for every department, how we know that it's really working, and how we know we have workers and everything, or if it is all private.

And if it's private, let's say it's private and and do that because I am right now, I've heard on the news it takes months and years to get something fixed right now.

It's not working right, also.

It shows that the roads and the sidewalks and everything else shows up, and then we don't see a budget for all this stuff, and so we should see a budget with real money on there so we know it works uh somehow.

Thank you.

Uh do we have any committee member, mayor, IBA or city attorney comments today?

Yes, um Councilmember Montgomery.

Thank you, Chair Bree.

I just want to kind of make a sweeping statement because uh three out of the five items that we'll be hearing today have underrepresentations in the EEO.

And so instead of kind of going through a litany of questions for each item, I just want to make sort of a broad statement that um I did uh notice that going through the documents and that um I have noticed that uh for the time that I have been here.

Um I have not seen a compliant EEO statement as of yet.

Um and I think that you know, going into budget season, um I'm dedicated to figuring out ways that we can make this a priority for the city because we can say that it's a priority, but what we see on paper shows that it's just not.

Um, and so um I'm very dedicated to this.

I think it's a way to uh uplift uh people in our city, uh bring folks, talented folks from without outside of our city into our city.

I think we have a great opportunity here, um, but we just have to figure out how we're gonna comply with municipal code because we're charged to do that.

Um, so I just want to make a broad uh statement about that without kind of going into questions for each.

Um, that I'm very dedicated to this, and I'm very disappointed to continue to see these reports.

Um, I know that it won't happen overnight, but I just think that we need to be working toward progress, and in order to do that, we have to make it a priority.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Um, yeah, we all know the city gives out hundreds of millions of dollars a year in contracts.

We play a really significant role in our local economy, and um the benefits of that need to help every community.

So thank you very much.

Um do we have any requests for continuance today?

No, no requests for continuance.

Um, as we have no consent agenda items will now proceed.

Uh, we are taking items out of order today, and we'll begin with the informational agenda with item number five to review a report from the finance department regarding um vacancy factor.

So welcome, and if you could all please um introduce yourselves.

If I may, I would like to just make a few introductory comments.

Uh we understand uh that this is really an important issue for the committee chair, uh councilmember Bree and for the rest of the council members.

Um this is a complex issue that involves many departments.

Uh we met with with Andrea and her team uh to try to figure out how to uh approach this, and we thought it was important for us to maybe start with an introduction, more of the mechanics of how the vacancy factor works.

Uh, now that the budget uh processes really um well it began a few months back, but uh now that we are getting ready for uh the release of the budget and the budget review.

So this is not by no means a comprehensive uh a report on vacancies, but it's really more of an introduction, and we would like to take any feedback from the committee in terms of next steps and what additional information you would like to receive.