Alright, thank you for joining us today.

Is Wednesday, May 13th?

This is the 1 p.m.

Budget and Special Projects Committee meeting.

Item one, I call this meeting to order two, uh discussion with representatives from the Mayor's Office and Human Resources regarding the fiscal impact of compensation pay equity and or uh and personnel in the current budget year for the proposed 2026-2027.

Who we got?

Erica, if you look at the work, personnel director, perfect human resources.

Oh, Mike is joining us at the table.

You know, I usually just like to lurk in the back.

This is your first time to the table.

In a while, yeah.

And only that were you introduced yourself?

Sorry, Alicia Ryder Human Resources.

Angela Bradley, human resources.

I could take that.

Thank you.

Okay, well, thank you for welcoming us.

The agenda item was clear, and we've got a lot of the details specific to that.

But I think we're gonna start off with an overview.

We're gonna kind of present as a team, we're trying to have a conversation, some back and forth.

So we may differ ones of us jump in.

Uh but let's go back to the other slide, and just to talk about the overview.

Um, kind of why we're here.

You know, the mayor presented uh his budget and talked about um things that he had done adding some positions and previous positions, and so there were questions about that in rightly.

So really our report today is based on the fair council and mayor priority of operational efficiency.

There have been um discussions about available resources about how the city uh budgets for employees and positions, and really what we're trying to do is align the capacity to do the work uh with the with our budget, and so in some cases, uh so we looked at uh we'll go through the methodology here in a little bit, but we were basically trying to align what are we budgeting to do and our ability to do that, and to the extent that we were budgeting for more than we've had the ability to deliver on, we could realign those resources, and that's what was reflected in the mayor's budget to do.

Um so let's go ahead and talk through um the uh this is kind of the overview of uh Chair Gilbert read it well.

We'll have to rehash it.

These are the things we're gonna cover uh in the presentation.

Um I'll turn it over to Erica to talk through uh the frozen positions that were uh proposed in the budget and why.

So as we went through our process of looking at primarily uh vacant positions, well, all vacant positions uh that were currently open in all the departments.

We centered in on about 260 vacancies and looked at those each individually based on some criteria, focusing on you know what were service levels in those areas.

We did not want any position freezes that we proposed to have any negative impact to service levels.

Um, we looked at what was the department's perspective, and after we identified what we thought might be some position for discussion, we did meet with all the affected department heads and kind of worked alongside them to come to final agreement on what those position freezes would be overall.

Uh we centered in on 41 positions that we proposed to be frozen in FY27, and then some in FY28 as well.

Some additional ones in FYI for the same.

It would be frozen potentially two years, not additional positions.

Same positions, some max of 41.

Correct.

Yeah, so criteria that we looked at as we identified those vacancies was were there multiple vacancies within the same position or job titles, uh, the length of the vacancy.

There were some positions that have been vacant for more than two years, more than 18 months, and so we had some further conversation about those.

We also looked at, if you looked over about a three-year period.

What was the max number of those positions that had been filled over that period of time?

So, for instance, there were 10 positions that were budgeted, but over that period of three years, only six had ever been filled, and so there were four that were historically always vacant.

And so we talked about those with the department heads, and then we also looked at recruitment status.

So on any given day, a vacant position might have an offer that's out that has been accepted or in the process, and so we excluded any that were in that stage of the recruiting uh process.

So I think that mirrors what you're saying is it mirrors we're not trying to cut services, we haven't filled this position, or with most of the having this position, this is a lower number.

It's not a service we're doing, it's a budget that is a slot we're not filling, so it really emphasizes that we're not uh cutting service by doing that.

So after our meetings with department heads, we came up with the following uh positions to be frozen based on departments and kind of the funding and savings.

So this graphic shows what departments had positions frozen for FY27, whether or not it was general fund savings, or if they're funded had funding implications in other enterprise funds, and then what that total cost savings would be from a just another just kind of graphic of the number of positions that were impacted in each department.

I think we're on that wrong slide.

No, the ads, the line.

No, we've got one more slide.

Oh no, but she didn't.

Okay, all right.

Um, so sorry about that.

We've got a little difference in what I have, and it's on your screen.

Uh, position ads.

I think that was another question that was asked.

Um, so for FY27, there were positions that were requested in the budget, and that were uh part of the mayor's presentation, and so we're showing the variance there.