Okay, good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the first hearings of the uh 2026 budget season with Board of Representatives Fiscal Committee.

Uh I my name is Eric Morrison.

I am uh co chair of fiscal committee, District 13, along with my Hi, I'm Andrew Zachary, co-chair of fiscal committee, district 14.

Welcome everyone.

Welcome.

Uh let's get started.

Uh first up.

We have uh operations administration.

Um director of operations, Matt Kenonis.

Why don't you kick us off, Matt?

Uh good evening, everyone.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, we are kicking off the presentations for operations with uh operations administration.

Um, for those that are less familiar with the budget, um, just introducing tonight the ops admin, which really just focuses on on my office, um, but not the entirety of the office of operations.

You'll receive those presentations from the various uh department heads uh over the course of this evening and and other nights that are scheduled.

So just a general kind of open invitation as you are uh getting more familiar with the budget.

Should you have any questions related to uh either the uh operations administration budget or any aspect of the Office of Operations, please feel free to reach out to to me or any of the uh department heads that you'll hear from uh through the course of this process.

In addition to the capital budget, um, which uh our department plays a significant role in facilitating and executing.

So uh just kind of throw that out there as an open invitation.

Um we had a few slides that uh we had uh uh sent to the uh board office.

So uh defer to you, Chair, if you want us to flip through those slides, or if you prefer to go through the pages or just have a general overview, uh what whatever your preference.

Let's go through the slide you provided.

Christina, can you share your screen, please?

Thank you very much.

Great.

So this is just a uh visual representation of the entirety of the Office of Operations.

Um so this is something that we did uh review in depth with the operations department in a previous committee meeting.

So I would uh refer committee members to that presentation uh for more detail, but for the purposes of just introducing the budget, just to uh serve as a refresher, these are the various uh departments and divisions that fall within the Office of Operations.

Jump to the next slide.

I can just speak to the operations administration budget.

Um so you can see here it is um uh a smaller uh department budget uh in comparison to the other uh departments that fall within our office of operations as uh the task of uh the administration is really facilitating the uh overall work and providing the leadership structure for the department.

Uh the primary driver for increases for uh this particular year over year is driven by uh a uh proposal for professional consultant helping support uh the sustainability um efforts uh that were uh outlined in the Board of Reps ordinance passed in 2025 in terms of the development of an educational program for the pursuit of moving from gas power to electric powered uh equipment.

Um we have uh sourced uh a couple of potential consultants to help serve as kind of the professional services for uh spearheading that uh marketing campaign in addition to uh potentially tapping into some subject matter experts uh who are familiar with transitioning uh municipalities or other uh uh cities uh across the nation to the efforts uh that this particular ordinance has dictated.

Um, in addition, we have uh it put some increases related to PPE, um, some of those driven from OSHA safety requirements.

You could see also highlighted as protective clothing and uniforms.

Uh for those that are following along through the budget book, the uh operations administration budget uh begins to be highlighted on page 199.

Um so flipping through that, you can see the various programs assigned to uh this particular uh department, um, the emergency events, uh special events, and then the ops admin budget itself.

Um don't know if there's a slide that follows this.

If there is, you could flip to the next one.

Yes, perfect.

Okay.

So this one just highlights the staffing structure that falls within uh the ops admin.

Um so you can see here uh there's really four personnel that are directly assigned to this particular uh department, myself, the deputy director of operations, uh the administrative assistant and the operations uh process specialist.

Uh in addition, we also uh directly manage the school construction program.

Um here we have uh listed our director of school construction, which is uh technically assigned and paid out of our budget, and we do provide the uh day-to-day supervision and management of that position, um, but it also is is charged back to the the board of education.

Um just highlighting that.

So as you can see, it's a it's a small uh department in comparison to some of those that you'll be reviewing through the course of your process, uh, really designed to provide that leadership structure for the overall work assigned to the office of operations and in terms of year over year, uh, as I highlighted, really the main driver for any type of increase is driven from that uh consultant um request to support the uh mandates from that uh board of refs ordinance.

So I can pause here, Chair, and just see if you have any questions or uh if there's questions from the committee or members at large.

Thank you, Director.

Any questions from members of the committee or members of the board.

Okay.

Matt, can you go into a little bit more detail about the um the professional consultant, please?

Yeah, absolutely.

So uh this was an ordinance that was passed uh under the uh prior uh board of representatives, with which uh mandated that the uh department um under the oversight of the director of operations begin to transition the city from uh gas power to electric powered uh equipment.

Um in doing so, it gave a uh timeline for that transition.

The first uh I would say mandate in terms of timeline occurs uh 18 months following uh when this ordinance was enacted, which is to develop an educational program for the public to help inform them of the mandate.

Um our intent is to leverage um uh some sort of uh professional services uh to implement.

We don't really retain um marketing professionals in terms of our um our staffing structure within the department.

Um so we think uh uh a modest investment towards that would lead to a more successful education campaign, uh, one that we would look to uh work closely with the board of reps on given the sustainability goals of of the board and uh the enact the fact that this was enacted through really their initiative.