Good afternoon.

I would like to call the regular meeting of the Board of Estimate Apportionment for the final vote out for approval of the fiscal year 2027 annual operating plan.

Today is Tuesday, April 28th, 2026.

Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Mayor Spencer present.

Comptroller Bayanger.

President.

President Green?

President Aller Present.

Thank you.

We have just one item on the agenda presented for the first time today.

Item number one is a request from the budget director for approval of the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget and personnel schedules with proposed amendments.

And with this, we would submit a recommended board bill number one to the Board of Alderman as the budget for the city of St.

Louis for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026.

With this item, an approval of the proposed budget and personnel schedules, we would send this to the Board of Aldermen for their approval.

I'd like to now, first of all, I'm going to hand it over to Paul, but I first want to thank you for all the work that's gone into this.

And we're really grateful for not only all the work that's gone into the proposed budget as discussed last week, but the enormous effort that's gone into preparing these amendments over the last several weeks.

And I want to thank you for doing that work.

And so Paul, I'd like to hand it over to you to introduce the budget and proposed amendments.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

And Madam Comptroller and Madam President, I'm going to share my screen.

And hopefully that's come up on every on everybody so you can see it.

And I'll try to enlarge it.

I hope this one says here.

As mayor indicated, I have four uh items.

And the uh first one is actually a two-parter.

Uh what it proposes is utilizing uh 1A, it's utilizing funds within the health care trust fund to support the uh health divisions over site the intimate medical care unit.

And by doing that's for a million and twenty-five thousand dollars by using those available funds within that uh fund that frees up funds within the excess use tax fund, which gets us to one B, and those funds are appropriated to the could be appropriated to the Department of Human Services, professional services for the right to counsel program.

So that's one A and B.

Uh item number two.

Uh I may have mentioned this in my presentation last week on the uh summer youth jobs.

Uh, this is part of the the use tax piece of the public safety sales tax that's appropriated each year for summer youth jobs and after-school programs there with the with the funds available there.

Um there are sufficient monies to allocate uh funds for that summer youth program under SLATE, and that's a million dollars.

Item number three, uh, to address uh concerns over the continuation of the tiny homes program.

Uh this item number three would be appropriated a million dollars from available ARPA interest uh monies for that program.

And then item number four uh is a change in the general fund for the forestry division.

Uh it is adding five positions, two construction equipment operators, two heavy equipment operators, and the government services analyst.

Uh, an offsetting that increase or reduction in the per performance employees, which are the seasonal employees, as well as some reduction in contractual services, such that they offset this is at a request of the forestry division itself and how it manages its um uh weed and debris program.

So overall in the general fund, there would be uh net zero change and and total changes from all funds would be an increase of four million and fifty thousand dollars.

And that is the extent of the proposed uh amendments to the proposed budget.

Thank you, Paul.

Um, I want to first just say um I, you know, we have I, you know, we had identified these areas of importance uh and priority uh weeks ago.

Um we heard from many members of the public last week that um their priorities in many ways overlapped ours.

Um President Green, I know has done um uh an enormous amount of work advocating for these as well, um, uh not just over the last several weeks, but for months, years.

Um these are programs that um I think will do a lot of public good.

Uh I also want to recognize that this budget uh does a few other things.

One, it really balances um, you know, uh the uh services that we need to keep providing our citizens while recognizing um the raises that the police department passed.

Um excuse me, the police board passed about six weeks ago.

It also for the first time provides $2 million in funding for Code Blue, uh, which is an enormous lift and something that we saw last with this past winter, uh, even though this is a fraction of what we were able to put last winter, um, I believe will be uh very very helpful going into this year as we look for additional sources of revenue to help provide emergency shelter and transportation to our most vulnerable members of our community.

The right to council and the tiny homes um uh funding.

Um I know these were enormous lifts for you to maneuver through the budget, Paul.

Uh and um I think that both of those will be enormously helpful in providing uh care for residents that um are very vulnerable in within our city.

And I'm excited to uh to consider the forestry initiative that our forestry director and policy director here in the mayor's office have been working on for some time.

All said and done.

Um this has been an enormously challenging year.

Um, and I just want to thank everybody as as we've put this budget together and move forward with it here today.

With that, I'd like to turn it over uh to my colleagues on the board of ENA for um any discussion on the amendments as presented by budget director Paul Payne.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Director Payne.