Good afternoon.

The May 15th Special Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting will come to order just 2.03 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the role.

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

Three present to excused.

And Clerk, your computer may have the volume on.

With that, we have three items on today's agenda.

We will be done in 56 minutes because unfortunately I am not getting to benefit from the same staffing that I've been traditionally used to with Sound Transit, and so I'll be working directly with Sound Transit to move some of my amendments forward for next week as we are in the enterprise initiative.

So we have three items on today's agenda.

We have the confirmation of Dwight Dively as director of finance as the finance director, and then we have a briefing on two annual budget-related bills, the 2025 exceptions ordinance and the 2026 carry forward ordinance.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now open the remote public comment period.

Do we have anyone in person?

We do not.

And we have two online.

Correct.

Wonderful.

So up first is Alberto Alvarez and then David.

Alberto, as you are promoted, please feel free to take it away.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

In addition to your personal business deals improved by your political office.

You all take money from our budget as a salary.

Taxes we all pay.

Council has a legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment and to protect our freedom of speech.

Using no racial slurs or discriminatory language.

Howard Gale voiced his opinion.

Council then issued threats to ban him from public comment for merely criticizing arrogant politicians like some of you today.

You should write an apology.

And council must stop the rules that allow vindictive members to ban people for statements they don't like.

You all may not like it.

But that is the truth needed to maintain personal freedoms and our power to hold government accountable.

Thank you all and have a good day.

Thank you, Alberto.

Always good to hear from you.

Up next is David.

David, when you are let in, star six to unmute and then take it away as you at your convenience.

Hi, is my mic working?

Yes, it is.

And if your name is not David, please state it for the record.

My name is not David.

It is the feminine.

My name is Davita Ingram.

Fantastic.

Welcome, David.

Hi.

Thank you so much.

Um, I am calling because I am part of the embrace caucus.

And if it's if it is appropriate, I think we wanted to share open comment about up zone for the comprehensive plan.

Is that appropriate?

And may I repeat?

We're gonna pause and reset your time.

Can you state that question?

Items are supposed to uh relate to items on the agenda today, or at least within the purview of the finance, native communities and uh tribal governments and native communities committee.

Did you say you were trying to respond to the company plan?

I'm happy to see the selection.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for joining us today.

Either way about it.

Always good to hear your voice.

With that, that concludes public comment.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers present.

And so we will move on to the first item of business today.

Clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

Item one, appointments three, four, six, eight appointment of Dwight D.

Dively as director of finance of the Office of City Finance for a term December 31st, 2029.

To December 31st, 2029.

Briefing discussion of possible vote.

Fantastic.

Welcome back, Mr.

Dively.

Welcome back, Mr.

Ellerbrook.

Great to have you here at committee.

And clerk, it seems like we might need to mute a participant.

Here we are with appointment 03468.

Dwight Dively to be the director of our finance director in lay people's terms, like me.

We just call it a comp troller, but here we have a different name.

Uh and you are unique in the sense that there are two separate directors within the FA within the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, where we have our finance section and then we have the rest of FAS.

It's a unique breed with FAS, but that is why, in my opinion, Department of Finance Administrative Services is the backbone of our city.

We wouldn't be here without them.

With that, we've submitted questions to you.

You replied with answers.

Those are attached to the agenda today.

I'll open it up to the both of you if you want to make some introductory remarks, and then I'll I'll open it up to my colleagues, and then I'll follow up on some of these questions.

Sure, for the record, Mark Ellerbrook, Deputy Director for City Operations.

I don't have a lot of additional introductory remarks.

I introduced um Dwight Dively earlier, and I don't have anything I think to add to the record as far as his qualifications.

We are excited uh to have him be our nominated director for the Office of City Finance.

And thank you for the record, Dwight Dively, the nominee to be the finance director.

I've had the opportunity to talk with each of the three council members who are here today.

Um we had a very quick introduction at the last meeting, and I would I really have nothing else to add other than happy to respond to any questions you may have.

And you are a unique candidate in the sense that you taught half the city how to do budgeting.

So we're we're really excited and lucky to have you, colleagues.

I want to open it up to you for questions, and then I'll follow up with a few of mine if there's still time.

Councilmember Kettle.

I'll say professor one last time.

Next time I'll have to say director, but uh um I just want to thank you for coming back.

Thank you for your responses.

Thank you for meeting with me.

Um obviously clearly uh qualified for the position, and uh part of me is the only question I have is that with the immense job ahead of you.

Uh, why would you want to take it?

But uh but uh outside of that um that's it.

Actually, you know, from a public service, like you know, what brings you with that daunting task that we have in front of you and your colleague who's sitting behind you, uh, our budget director, you know, what has brought you here?

This what's the calling to take on this immense task?

So I've spent essentially my entire professional career in public service, and it matters a lot to me.

Um, the opportunity to serve our residents, to make their services better, to improve the finances of an organization, um, is really what I care about professionally.

Uh and so when I had the opportunity that the mayor offered me to come back to the city, back to the same job I started 32 years ago.

Uh, was pretty easy to say yes.

Uh I was looking for some new challenges.

I was looking uh to come back to a community I have lived in now for a very long time, and to see what I can do in a few years uh to you know improve the services that we provide to our residents, and so that's that's the attraction of the job to me.

Um, as I have been here now for about three and a half months, uh just learning some of the things that I think are opportunities to improve those services, improve how we deliver, um, has made me even more confident that um try, you know, take taking this job, assuming I'm confirmed, uh, is a great opportunity, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Well, thank you for that.

And I will just say, as I looked at the clock about an hour ago, I was having a very brief conversation with the executive Saharalai.

And King County's loss is Seattle's gain, and so there you go.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, Acting Director Diley, for your willingness to serve the city of Seattle anew again in this role in this capacity.

And I really appreciate our uh our conversation that we had earlier.

Um, and it's great to get to know you a little more.

Uh have a great reputation, I think, in our community and in government, uh, and so it was great for me to personally get a chance to meet you and learn learn a little bit more about you, your background, your own journey, um, why you raise your hand for for this this job.

Uh I'm not a psychologist, I don't know.

Don't care.

I'm just glad you did.

Because uh, because I learned a lot from that conversation about all those things.

Uh, and we and then we dove deep into a few peculiar aspects of policy and the budget and finance and structuring bonds and all kinds of stuff, uh, but um so thank you for uh empowering me.

Uh I I feel in that meeting, I feel confident in your ability to lead the city well in this regard.

I think we're incredibly lucky to have you as well.

So welcome back.

And uh thanks the mayor's office, Mr.

Ellerby, Brooke, excuse me, uh, for putting them forward and yeah, excited to move them forward at your discretion, Chair.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And thank you.

I just will say I've been very privileged throughout my career.

I've had a lot of opportunities, a lot of other people never have.

And this is another one of an opportunity that uh I can come back and do some work that I think is very important and hope to you know make the city better for it.

I and uh just in my few months getting to work with you on Seattle Employee, Seattle Seattle City Employee Retirement Services Board, as well as the forecast uh office.

It has been really wonderful to get to work with you.

A fresh set of eyes on infrastructure that you helped create 30 years ago.

Was it 30 years ago?

32s.

No one's counting.

Um, but it's it's really great to get to see you to watch you see something that you had at hand in building.

It grew on its own, and now you're back and you've had more experience, you've seen different things, and now you're back to where you started, and it's um it's just been really fun to watch you take a very focused look at what is going well and what needs to be changed.

And so that wasn't one of the questions that I asked you in the packet, but I'll ask you now.

Like, what are we doing well, and what do we need to improve upon?

Well, since you started with the retirement system, I would just note that the I don't know, competence, the quality of analysis, particularly on investments that exist at the retirement system today is vastly better than when I left 16 years ago.

So probably everything that I've encountered, uh, the thing that is most improved is the retirement system, and you know, much for the benefit of all the people who depend on it for their retirement checks.

So that I think is something that's just truly remarkably better.

Um I would say uh we alternate a little bit here, um, some things that need improvement.

So I noted I think in the answers to the questions that you sent that I hear constantly that this is a federated government, and I must have missed that part of the city charter when I reviewed it because I don't see anything about a federation.

We are a government.

We need to be a government.

And that means there needs to be some consistency, there needs to be some quality assurance that is done centrally.

And there are a variety of things that I have seen where we are so decentralized, and there hasn't been, in my opinion, adequate central oversight for a long time that we have some things that we really need to improve.

So that would be an example of something that I think is not as good as it should be and needs to be improved.

And you know, in a time of great uncertainty right now, is a huge improvement over when I left, where um when I had the finance department the last eight years, we also had the budget function within it, and we did the revenue forecast, and then of course the council needed to essentially do its own, and you know, usually we pretty much agreed, but that created um a whole bunch more work, and having one forecast, I think is a big improvement.

And then la last to balance out the things that need to be improved.

Um, as I mentioned in my uh responses to your questions, I think our risk management function is badly underutilized.

Um the staff has been cut, the uh things that I think are core to risk management for an organization of our size aren't there.

Um the generic terminology for that is enterprise risk management, where you look across the whole organization, you identify the risks you face, you try to identify ways to mitigate those risks, uh, you actually have resources if you need to to help a department mitigate risks, and we don't do any of that.

Um, some departments do individually, but centrally we don't, and many departments don't have the resources to do it.

And the consequence is we just write checks.

Uh when things go wrong, we just pay.

And that's not ideal.

So that's another area that I really want to work on in the next few years to see if we can make improvements.

You started answering my next question already.

Thank you.

Which is, you know, getting to your prepared answer here.

What are your specific goals for the office?

And before I go there, I just want to agree with you about the Seattle City Employee Retirement Systems Board and the function there, where 10 years ago we were in a bad place.

We were in a very bad place 10 years ago, and the work that Jason and Leola have done over the course of this last decade has really improved the financial conditions of our retirement system, and it's incredible to get to watch them do such good work.

Granted, we need to we need another decade of their work to get back to a good level.

Um, and as well the forecast council, our forecast office here.

I think it is good as an independent office, and in our discussions, the two of us, there we need a little, we need some more parameters there.

We need a we need a little bit more framework.

Um, what I say is, you know, we're in 2026, we are six years out of the pandemic.

A lot of things happened during the pandemic, and we were all working remote, and now that we're back in person, we are able to see what changed and what additional parameters need to be, what guidelines, what framework needs to be created, and just something that I've appreciated about working with you is that we don't necessarily talk before we come into a meeting, but we are looking at the same problems and having the same reactions.

You've been doing this a little bit longer than me, and so I'm getting to learn how you approach things, and what I'm heartened by is that we're approaching them in pretty similar ways.

Risk man.

So now I'll get back to allowing you to answer question number two.

What are your specific goals for the Office of Finance over the next three years, and I'll just state that I agree with you on the risk management side.

I can't, I don't know if it's there have been many executive sessions where we have talked about payouts um for things that we have not done well at the city, and I've been very frank, I've been very frustrated with the city's response to the things that we are faced with.

And so I'll I'll turn it back over to you for question number two.

What are your specific goals for this office?

Well, I've touched on several of them.

So I'll focus on the last one that I mentioned, which is uh moving toward best practices throughout finance.

So in some areas, I think we are either there or very close to being there.

There are other ones, and I've used an example here of payment uh acceptance, where it feels to me like we're somewhere back in the 1990s.

Uh, and just coincidentally, yesterday I had a conversation with a couple of my senior leaders about we should be able to accept electronic payments for taxes.

Uh and you may be familiar, the city is part of a group of cities that's called File Local, and it allows businesses to file their BO taxes in multiple jurisdictions at the same time.

And that works great if you're uh small or medium-sized business, but if you're one of our larger businesses, the the system is limited and you essentially can't use it.

And so we tell those businesses you need to write us a check.

And in this day and age to say that you know, if you're gonna write us uh if you're if you're gonna pay taxes in the amount of multiple millions of dollars, the form we want is a check, doesn't feel like best practice to me.

And so we identified yesterday that it actually should not be very difficult to change that.

Uh so that's a that's a simple example, but it's an easily understood example of where we've just kind of been stuck and we haven't looked at how we do things, and so I really want us to continue to improve and become an example of a government that is very flexible in how it uh accepts payments and how it makes payments, so that we act just like a contemporary business.

Are you telling me you do not have a check on you right now?

I do not.

Am I the only one in this room with a check on me right now?

The millennial wins the day.

All right, a geriatric millennial.

I do remember when the only thing we got was checks when I was working for central staff, and everyone would get them on Thursday afternoon.

And if you were a member of the credit union, you could rush down to the credit union and you could cash your check on Thursday.

And so there was no business conducted in the city from about two o'clock to four o'clock on Friday afternoon, because everyone was in line at the credit union.

So many things have changed, and so many things have stayed the same.

Well, with that, um, my last question that's not on the prepared questions and answers.

I really want to thank you for taking your responses were very diligent, very thoughtful.

I can tell that you took a lot of time and that you were you took this, you were very respectful in the way that you were you approached this.

I really really appreciate that.

Something that Deborah Warez has taught me time and time again is that it is important to lead to leave.

Even you know, I'm one of the youngest people in this room right now, and I'm the only one with the check in my pocket, just for the record.

Oh, Bob's got one too.

All right, I'm not the only one.

Um the leading to leave, you know, even in my short time on this earth, I'm not gonna be here forever, I'm not gonna be on counsel forever.

You are a seasoned professional, and so what is your take for this office and more generally on the philosophy of leading to leave.

So I have always been a believer in developing your team so that if you're not there for whatever reason, they don't miss you.

And that's still my philosophy.

Now, some executives, some mayors that I've worked for have really not been interested in saying that, hey, I want you to have your replacement already available when you decide to leave, because they want to do their own thing, and that's obviously their right.

But I also think that it's important that you give people the opportunity to develop, to grow, to prepare for their next job if they want it.

Um, I've worked with many uh deputy directors and other senior people who really do not want a promotion.

They're very comfortable with the job they have, and that they don't aspire to be the finance director or the city light superintendent or whatever it happens to be, and that's great.

But for those who do aspire to those things, I think you uh as a leader have an obligation to help them meet those goals.

So one of the things is I'm working with my senior leaders is finding out who is interested potentially in moving up in a few years uh when I retire.

Uh could be sooner, depending on what the mayor decides.

But uh always recognizing that you serve at the will of the of the mayor.

So I I will definitely do that.

I've done that in the past with many of the organizations I've led and with I think considerable success.

There have been uh some really great people who have been able to step up either into a role I leave or into a different role because they've had the opportunity to develop and grow, and I'm very committed to that.

Wonderful.

That's great.

I mean, that that is the type of leadership that we're looking for in the city.

I really appreciate that.

Colleagues, any final questions before I turn it over to Director Dively and Mark for final comments.

Seeing none and oh, Councilmember Holland, Council President Hollingsworth has been here since public comment.

I am sorry for not saying that earlier.

Uh so she's been here the whole time.

And any last, I we'll turn it over to you for final remarks.

There's nothing else I can add.

In the interest of time, I have nothing else I can add either.

Well, we're really excited to have you.

It's been a pleasure to work with you so far, and I look forward to the rest of our working time together.

With that, I move to confirm appointment 3468.

Dwight Dively is director of finance.

There, a second.

Thank you.

Has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment three four six eight.

Last comments.

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on confirmation of appointment three four six eight?

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Councilmember Saka.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Hi.

Four in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you.

The committee recommendation that council confirm the appointment of Dwight Dively as director of finance will be full forwarded to the full council.

Really appreciate you taking the time on this Friday afternoon.

We'll see you next time.

Happy to do so.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

With that, will the clerk please read the second and third item into the record?

You can read the short title so you don't have to read the whole darn thing.

Item two, CB 121-208, an ordinance amending ordinance 127-156, which adopted the 2025 budget, including the 2025 to 2030 capital improvement program.

And item three, CB 121-209, an ordinance amending ordinance 127 362, which adopted the 2026 budget, including the 2026 to 2031 capital improvement program for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, this will be the first of two briefings before we take a vote.

So there's not a vote today.

This is simply for briefing.

Uh and we've got one PowerPoint that does both bills.

It's quite straightforward.

I'll turn it over to Director Panucci and Edden for introductory comments, and then let's roll through the PowerPoint.

Over to you.

Good afternoon, Chair Strauss, Council Members, Ali Panucci, City Budget Director.

Good afternoon, Ed and Sisage, Council Central Staff.

So I am here to brief you on two budget bills, two sort of standard routine budget bills.

Um Council Bill 121208, the budget exceptions bill, and Council Bill 121 209, the annual carry forward bill.

This is a slide we include in every every slide.

I just do want to say that I am backed up by a team of 30 analysts and leads and many finance managers and staff throughout the city that helped prepare this legislation, and I couldn't do this work without them.

The first bill, the budget exceptions ordinance, is a uh what has become a standard piece of budget legislation for many years, at least as long as I've been working at the city on and off.

Um, and it provides retroactive budget authority from when spending from the previous year did not align with the adopted budget.

This year there is a total request uh for budget exceptions of 8.1 million dollars.

This table summarizes the asks by department.

The first column is the department, the second column shows the budget of the revised budget, so how much budget authority was in the budget control level.

The next column shows the exception.

So that is the amount that was overspent in that budget control level compared to the adopted budget, and then the final column provides a brief X uh explanation of that.

Um, in many cases, what happens here is there is spending that is sort of outside of the control.

So for example, um our medical claims came in higher than projected at the end of the year, and it exceeded what budget authority there is there by about 5.9 million dollars.

So that's a bigger piece, um, and it comes out of the health care fund.

Then you have like a $2,000 technical accounting error in the Seattle Department of Transportation.

So these are mostly technical making for accounting uh correcting accounting errors that came in after the books closed for the year.

Another example is like city light revenues came in, um exceeded projections.

They pay taxes on those revenues to the city.

That was higher than expected, so that is another exception.

Um so these are relatively routine.

There is a detailed memo from your council central staff as well attached.

I don't know, Edin, if you want to add anything.

No, just that, yeah, there's a little bit of additional detail in the memo if you want to go through each line item and describes exactly what it is for each one.

Okay.

Anything that you want to, this is your time, Edn.

If you want to jump in on this one, anything that we need to take away from this this bill CB121208.

I think Director Panucci has covered it.

Um yeah, they eliminating exceptions or minimizing them is the goal every year.

Um, and so if we can get to that point, um, there's many ways we could explore to get there.

Um, you know, some of them being expanding director authority of transfers, for example, um, you know, additional budget management practices, um, things like that, something we can look into as best practices to minimize these.

Um, but we have a fiscally challenging process.

It's a little more challenging than a lot of other cities, it's more complex, and so this is pretty typical of the city for a big city like this.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'll just add I'll continue to work with council central staff and the budget chair to identify opportunities to make changes that would help avoid exceptions.

And I know Chair Strauss, you and I have already had some conversations about things we might want to work on together over the next couple of years.

So I appreciate that sort of ongoing collaboration.

Fantastic.

And Director Pinucci, if uh you could remind me in our work in our previous lives where we were trying to get these numbers down, even five or six years ago, is it correct that the exceptions were in the tens of millions of dollars and we're now below 10 million dollars?

It's been a in an We've been on the trajectory in the correct direction.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Um, yeah, in the past, I actually included a table of a history of uh budget exception ordinances by the department, and you know, and from 2018 to 2021, it's been tens of millions, so 13 million and up to 30 million in each year.

Um last year was by far the lowest in 2024 at 1.8 million, um, and this year, mostly because of those healthcare costs, um, it has gone up to eight million, um, you know, almost six million of that is the healthcare costs, and those are just unavoidable.

Um, and there's fund balance of 131 million dollars to cover that.

So, the uh chart that you have on page two of three of your memo is very helpful.

Correct.

Oh, yes, thank you.

Fantastic, great work, Ed.

Colleagues, any questions on 121208?

With that, we're gonna move on to the next slide, which is the next bill.

Director Panucci, back to you.

Great.

So moving on to the next bill, this is the 2025 carry forward ordinance.

So this is a request to carry forward appropriations from the previous year into the 2026 budget.

Um, there's a total of 138 million dollars of carry forward requests.

Uh, generally speaking, um, capital appropriations automatically carry forward until fully expended or abandoned.

Operational appropriations lapse at the end of each fiscal year.

Oftentimes there is work that was funded in one budget year.

The work wasn't completed, but is still anticipated, desired commitments have been made.

And so this is a request to carry that money forward into the next budget year, so that work can be completed.

This slide summarizes the majority of the carry-forward requests, but there are many items.

I'm not going to go through each line item in the ordinance.

There's about 16 million dollars of general fund carry-forward request, a few of the big ones, about five million dollars of that is for the Office of Planning and Community Development's Equitable Development Initiative Awards.

There's also a $37 million request for the same program from out of the jumpstart payroll expense tax fund.

That is a program that funds projects that take some time to fully get out the door, but those commitments have been made to community-based projects.

And then there's $42 million sprinkled across many other funds.

Some the majority of that is again in the Office of Planning and Community Development for the Equitable Development Initiative program.

And then $17.5 million for the judgment and claims fund that you were just talking about with uh Director Dively.

This is for expected settlements that didn't settle last year, but we expect that those funds will still be needed.

So asking to carry those forward.

I am happy to answer any questions, or if Edn, you want to add in some more details.

Yes, Edn, we would love to have your analysis on this bill, please.

I also produce the memo for the carry forward that was sent to you all on Tuesday, and it covers pretty much all of these items and some other items that might be of particular interest to the council and explains pretty much most of the the bulk of the items, over 90% of the 136 million dollar ask.

And just a reminder, this is in addition to as Director Panucci said, stated earlier to the automatic carry forward, which so we adopted adopted in 2026 a $9 billion budget, automatically added $2.2 billion for capital projects, grant funded projects, um, grant funded programs and and um other operating expenditures that were um that have an on-lapsing capacity in terms of um if it's the funding for example is encumbered um and you know the EDI program.

Sorry, not participatory budgeting program is a good example of this.

Um, and then so on top of that, we add this authority of 136 million dollars for spending on for the same purposes as identified for each item.

Um in addition to that, it talks about uh the memo talks about additional um comprehensive bills that are coming, similar to this.

Um, so we have the supplemental coming up, um, mid-year and year end, and then uh two grant ordinances coming up as well, in addition to obviously the budget process.

So, wonderful.

And I know I've had a chance to speak to both of you about this bill, so I'll check it with colleagues.

I see Councilmember Kettle.

You were recognized.

Um thank you, Chair Strauss.

Uh Director Panucci, thank you for being here.

And of course, Mr.

Susich uh from central staff.

Um, my question is why about two is uh I really well first I appreciate the memo and I like seeing uh you know some of these details and you know for an area that we've been working in public safety is is you know addressing the scene between public safety, public health, housing, and human services, and one area in specific is community safety, and so um by having these listed and in these various pieces, um it's really helpful so then we can you know engage because I'm not I don't sit on that human services committee and so I just want to say thank you because I'll have my team work with Councilmember Rink's team and then and then and HSD on those as we you know work these various pieces and then to also like the unified care team ensuring that everything is set there.

I also really appreciate um this is like a you know to-do list for my team on the uh you know breaking out, you know.

I have nine entities that report to public safety, seven are listed here on uh OIG and OPA, I believe, are within uh SPD.

Um but running through these numbers, um just having a sense of you know the the other seven, um whether it's CARE, CPC, fire, law department, um, city attorney's office, and then separately uh Seattle Municipal Court and OEM, and then obviously SPD.

So would like to you know understand these better just to get a sense, and so I'll have my team check in with you on these as well.

Certainly happy to provide additional information, have a lot of stuff that I think.

A lot of it's a lot of it's probably straightforward, but you never know in terms of and it and also by provide some context, some insight on little things that I think that are little things add up as they say.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

What your question helped illustrate is that budgeting is not a September through November process, it is an all-year process where after we pass our budget, then the director and department start to implement.

This is we clean up from last year early in the year, and the budget office is already starting to develop the scenarios for next year's budget.

And so we're not even too June yet.

And so this is just an annual constant process, and the information that we have in these two bills right now helps inform the health of these departments and the health of our appropriations as we move into next year.

With that, I'll check Councilmember Saka or Council President Hollingsworth if you've got anything.

I'm seeing no's across the board.

I'll just say that we have more time on the schedule to dig in more deeply, so I'm gonna preserve our collective time today and reserve any uh questions for the next time we come to committee.

Thank you.

Any closing statements from either of you?

Fantastic.

Well, thank you for coming into a meeting on Friday.

We did make it a 40 minute meeting, which I appreciate.

And so, seeing as there's no further business before the committee, this concludes the Friday, May 15th meeting of the finance, native communities, and tribal governments committee.

As you know, next week the regularly scheduled meeting is canceled because we have had this special meeting today.

Thank you, colleagues, and see you next week.