Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay.

Minutes are adopted.

Item number one of new business today.

Councilman Eatman.

Approval of disbursement from District One Improvement Funds for YMCA total five thousand dollars.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Real quick.

This is just an uh partnership with Council Lanier, Councillor Council Woman Howard, and myself, and YMCA and Sports Illustrated to fund the basketball league at YMCA, which is gonna sponsor 300 kids to play basketball for free.

Wow at Benjamin Wars YMCA.

Any questions or comments?

Motion.

Second, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item is approved.

Thank you all.

Three um item number two, approval dispersal from district one improvement funds.

Dream Big Academy, total one thousand dollars, Councilman Eatman.

That's simple.

We've got a new uh charter school in our district.

Um they just opened their doors up last week and were there to welcome students there, and this is just a help them out.

Motion working Dream Big Academy, where is I dream big academy is on Skillman College's campus.

How many kids will I have?

Uh they got 220 kids right now with a waiting list.

Okay, there's a motion and a second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item is approved.

Item number three, Ms.

Standridge, general fund budget revision number 16.

Good afternoon, Council.

This budget revision is coming in two separate parts.

Um the first part is usage of diversion training tech funds for the Tuscles of Police Department for a variety of different um of different technology needs from their uh cyber unit.

There's some um information in there for their canine unit.

Obviously, uh Chief is here to talk about any details of equipment that's needed.

The total amount to move in is 77,333, of which they have about a little bit over 79,000 in that fund to be able to use, so it fits well within.

Okay, Chief, you want to come up and tell us what you get?

Yes, sir.

And the reason why I put the larger draw, I'm trying to do less draw so y'all have to approve them as we go throughout the year.

Um, some of our bigger items is the X-ray machine for our bomb unit.

Um, what we have is outdated, not the standard, so we're gonna make sure that that's 48,000.

Um, a drone mapping software, uh 3D printer and filament.

We uh print a lot of our own parts for our drones and also our vehicle installs, light covers and all that we print in our shop.

So we produce those in-house because they're cheaper for us to print.

Um you have two different trainings, canine handler training and a dispatch training, and also a mapping uh system and location system for our canines.

Okay, so any questions or comments through motion?

Motion second.

So there's a there's a second part to this.

Sorry, the second part to this uh budget revision that was part number one.

Part number two is um with uh councillor Eatman's district improvement fund request amount.

Uh prior to uh the council changeover, uh Mr.

Wilson had spent the the entire balance of the district one improvement fund amount, and so in order to be able to fund the six thousand dollars, there is um a there is about six thousand two hundred left in the district one reserve amount, and so in order to activate that and bring it into the current year, we need a budget revision to do that.

What's a reserve amount?

So if you know so district improvement funds uh roll over, they accumulate.

Um it's amounts that have rolled over, yes, sir.

So so every year, if you don't spend your balance, it kind of gets set aside into your reserve accounts.

The reserve amount is required, it's required to be activated by a budget revision and sends to the general fund that requires city council to do so.

Okay, and these two items are bound together not from any commonality, but just because they form a single budget amendment.

Yes, sir.

Okay, that's fairly in the next couple of weeks.

Could you let us know if we have anything?

It's hard to keep up.

I absolutely can't the end of the year.

Sure.

Mr.

Crowe, Ms.

Howard, any other questions?

Any other questions?

All around, drinks all around.

Motion all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item is approved.

Uh Ms.

Sandridge, elevate budget revision number four.

This budget revision is requested uh due to the item that was briefed to you by Jeff Powell in Projects Committee.

This is the award of the FAA grant for the runway extension.

It is 25,710,664 dollars, and so we are booking the receipt uh or the receivable for that grant award and then activating the project expenditure amount.

Motion so when do we get the money?

So FAA will be on a drawdown basis on a reimbursement drawdown basis.

All right.

All right, we have a motion of second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item is approved.

I've got nothing there because we've got somebody give us a drum roll.

Mayor.

Thank you.

This one is your discussion.

Okay.

I know I didn't have anything to discuss.

That's all we can say.

That's why I'm saying sure you did.

Not yet.

I want to hear what just presented.

Sure, you have to discuss.

Thank you, Mr.

Busby.

Come on up.

We don't have our big uh our big one out.

Well, there should be the slides should pop up here in a second.

There we go.

So this is my honor and privilege to present my 20th budget to the city council as mayor of Tuscaloosa.

My 24th budget, if you count my time being on the city council.

So I've had nearly a quarter of a century of experience and work, hopefully making a positive difference in the city of Tuscaloosa.

This budget this year is being focused on Tuscaloosa first, as you see on the screen above.

And we really had three goals going into this budget.

First was to navigate the impacts of SSUT.

The second was to try to, in navigating those impacts, mitigate the impact to our departments and to the agencies that we fund.

And lastly, is to invest into RSA.

And you will see those themes reoccurring in my presentation of the general fund budget.

Since we've already presented the water and sewer budget two weeks ago, we'll not be touching on the water and sewer budget today, but certainly we'll be we'll be go outlining that with you during the upcoming budget hearings.

Before I get started, I want to thank first our accounting and finance team in particular, uh Miss Carly Standridge, Miss Savannah Hornsby, and Mr.

London Jenkins.

Um they do so much work.

I spend about two and a half months with them preparing for this moment to present the budget to you.

Um but they're doing all the real hard leg work, um, the incredible work that has to be done, the detailed analysis, the auditing of our findings, and our ultimately our recommendations.

I can't say enough about the job that they do.

Um you and and in fact, the public will have an opportunity to see my budget recommendation by going to Tuscaloosa.com forward slash 26 budget.

We are emailing to you a PDF copy of my detailed budget so that you will have that and you will get printed books next week.

Um we knowing the council wanted the budget early by law, I have until the last I believe to August 30th to present my budget.

Knowing you wanted it a week or so early, we're presenting it today.

We did wait as long as we could to get some more revenue numbers in, which I think will be beneficial.

Um again, the budget will be sent to you via link, and you will also get the printed copy next week.

So let's jump into the budget.

Oh, one last thing.

I want to thank Mike Wright for being here.

Um Mike, I think you and I I know for a large portion of those budgets.

I worked with Mike.

Mike is our former CFO.

He also has a distinction of being the highest paid intern ever at the city of Tuscaloosa.

Still still has that record.

Mike, it's good to see you.

Um Mike Wright taught me so much about governmental accounting and finance.

Um I learned so much from him, and certainly the success we have today is because of the leadership he provided this city for decades.

I also want to thank our department heads too.

Um they don't they do so much work getting us to the point of presenting the budget.

Um we put a lot of pressure on them to maintain their budgets, and they're certainly in here today, and I want to thank them.

So let's jump in.

First, I want to just highlight the financial strength of the city.

Um I can tell you the city's strong, but me telling you is not as effective as the affirmation of having it from Moody's and Fitch.

And as many of you who are on the ratings agency trip back in June know earning this is not because we showed up, it's because of the fantastic work of our staff and the due diligence of this city council.

This city is elite in its financial street strength.

Again, elite, and no, you know, no amount of clickbait, no amount of social media rumor can replace what Moody's and Fitch designate us.

And you should be very, very proud of that.

The budget that you see will revolve around our four core beliefs, and for the sake of time, I will not go through it, but in terms of my recommendations, we're measuring against those four core beliefs that I ran on as a candidate for mayor for the past 20 years.

That's what the people elected me to do, and we try in our budget to make that belief that covenant we made with the people a reality.

So today's budget is a 208.3 million general fund budget and 31.4 million elevate.

Now combined, since they're elevate's technically general fund, the combined amount is 239.8 million operating general fund budget.

So 31.4 and elevate, 208.3 on the general fund side.

Of that, 82.8 million is designated to public safety.

39% of this budget, nearly 40% is dedicated to public safety.

7.1 million is dedicated to the Tuscaloosa City schools.

I don't know of a city in Alabama that puts more direct funding.

I'm not talking about pass-through taxes.

I'm not talking about taxes that were put into place via ordinance.

I'm talking about discretionary funding to their school system than what this council has done for the Tuscaloosa City Schools.

60.2 million is investing into infrastructure and 2.5 million into new employee investment, which we'll go into.

People like Aisha Henderson that you see here.

One of the nearly 1400 quiet heroes of the city that show up every single day and do a fantastic job taking care of our facilities here.

Also, in this budget, you're going to see an investment into AI technology.

The main technology platform that you're going to see us request is Peregrine Technology.

You'll be briefed on this.

We already have this technology within TPD.

We want to move it into other departments of the city as well.

We're one of the first municipal governments in the state to adopt this type of technology.

We believe it's more than just potentially creating cost savings.

The benefit is how effective we can be.

Again, I'm gonna not going to take away from the operations department's presentation to you on this, but I believe you'll be truly impressed with what we're leaning into to meet our standard of excellence every single day.

The budget also includes 4.9 million into RSA conversion, certainly the number one task.

In 2021 in preparation of fiscal 22, we began planning for RSA conversion.

And so this time next year will be the budget we'll be adopting that will include our police officers and our firefighters into the retirement system of Alabama.

My budget is putting 4.9 million into the public safety fund to help us transition into the retirement systems of Alabama.

This is probably one of the more difficult uh things we had to achieve in this budget because of many of the anemic revenue line items that you'll see a little bit later on.

Another thing in this budget that you should be proud of is that through Elevate grants and partnerships, we have uh secured 116.4 million since elevate was passed in additional dollars.

We're nearly at a dollar per dollar match of elevate dollars collected and the matches that have come to it.

This city council and the city council in 2019.

If we did not pass Elevate, we would not be in the position to do the many things that we talk about, such as savings center, but also the airport earlier and what Jeff Powell was talking about.

So it just gives you an example that elevate, we've been able to leverage on the airport, and I'm rough numbers.

I think our budget is three million.

We're gonna get how much back?

26.

If we didn't have elevate, we couldn't have accomplished those types of things for the city of Tuscaloosa.

Um you will also see that we have our unassigned fund balances have grown tremendously since 2020, they have grown 129%.

So on the general fund unassigned, we have 34.7 million with water and sewer 28.8 million.

In terms of uncommitted revenues and public safety fund, we have 5 million.

That's in preparation for the RSA conversion with Elevate over 5 million, River District 6.4, and general fund RFFI over 16 million.

So again, strong reserves validated by Fitch and Moody's.

So in terms of looking at this budget, by the way, that's Baby Edith, who's a folk hero around this place at Burrell Odom Park.

When you take a look at the budget highlights, one of the things you will see is that we have been able to soften the anticipated budget cuts.

We have been able to do that through the outstanding work of our team within accounting and finance.

I charged them early on in the process to find as many ways as possible to navigate the impacts of SSUT and meeting the challenge of RSA, and they have delivered, and you will see that in more detail as we go through the budget hearing process.

We've also been fortunate to have some increased revenue generation in some line items.

We were not anticipating as much growth.

One of the things that this council has done, and I hope we'll continue to do is we always budget conservatively.

We never budget revenues at a high growth number.

And so when we do get a little bit of growth, that does help us at the end of the year.

And it is because of two reasons.

Number one is the current issue with the Arts Council.

So the funding for the Arts Council is that we funded the Arts Council through Para.

That money will be taken out and funded to the Arts Council directly.

The second is that the city has is taking has took over Snow Hinton Park, Calton Park, Borrel Oden Park, Queen City Park, JC Park, and Springbrook Park.

So we've deducted the cost of taking over those parks.

Paras cost, what para said it costs them to take over those parks.

It's Para's actual cost estimate.

Our costs are more because our standard of those parks being maintained are higher.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later with Freeman Park.

So those are some of the major highlights within the budget.

So let me go through some other things of significance.

With environmental services, we're recommending a $1 increase per month.

I can't say enough about Chris Megs and our ESD department.

Individuals like Casey Wallace that you see there do a fantastic job every single day.

Environmental services is one of the best deals that we provide to taxpayers of Tuscaloosa.

We customers say $295 per year, but of how we subsidize the cost of environmental services.

That makes up that $295 per year.

Those two things allow us to keep the ESD rates low on homeowners in Tuscaloosa.

So let's go through some general fund highlights.

One of the things again that I like to point out because it's one of the few times that we really get a chance to brag, is when you look at the city sales tax rate versus our peers.

This is where we stand with our peers.

This is non-tickric debt because tick rick is a flow through in our general fund.

This gives you a sense of where we stand with our peers.

We're right in that median.

As you can see, we're not Madison, and but we're certainly not doting.

So we're right there in that median part.

Much of that is going to be elevate related with the elevate projects that we have brought online.

In terms of pay increases, we're recommending a two-step movement for all public safety, all sworn public safety.

So two steps, if every person is able to achieve the two steps, it would be a total of a 5% increase for police officers and firefighters.

For non-public safety, it's a total of 4.5%.

It's a one-step movement, which is 1.5%, and a 3% COLA.

So again, assuming everyone can have full step movement, it would be five percent for police and fire, and four and a half for public safety.

The chart that you see here gives you an idea of what we've done, what we've invested for our employees over the last 10 years.

When you look at our investments into employee wages, this chart gives you an idea of where we stand versus the national wage index and the national inflation index.

So if you look at the gray line and the black lines, that's inflation and wage, and then you can see where our non-exempt employees are exempt employees of public safety have fared.

Um the last few years, especially under this city council, you can see that we have certainly far exceeded those national averages.

And you ultimately see a little later on that 64% of our budget is salary and benefits.

So 64 cents out of every dollar that we spend at the city of Tuscaloosa is invested into our employees.

Um there is bad news.

We do have a significant health insurance increase, but there is a there is a partial silver lining to this.

At the beginning of the summer, we were notified by Blue Cross Blue Shield that we would have 11% rate increase.

Partially, the their recommendation to us was partially based off the claims from last year.

We had a couple of very significant health insurance claims were self-insured.

That was one reason.

Two is the uncertainty of tariffs on prescription drug prices and the impact of that.

So the overall health insurance impact is 8.3%.

We were able to negotiate down to about 8.3%.

So what does that mean for our employees?

If you're an employee under option one and you're only taking the your own health insurance, it would be 11.43 cents per pay period, $9.56 if you're under option two.

If you go all the way to the end to the far right, you're an employee with family, it's $23.8 every two weeks for 20%.

It's actually 24 times a year.

There's two weeks where it's not taken from city employee paychecks, and if you have option two, it'd be $19.18.

Yes, sir.

And $20 increase?

Yes.

Okay, it's not the total.

It's per increase per paycheck for 24 of the 26 pay periods that we have annually.

So where do our revenues come from?

44% of the city's general fund revenues are going to be sales and use taxes.

14% come from business licenses, 12% comes from property tax, 5% from lodging tax, 5% from the indirect reimbursement from water and sewer, indirect cost reimbursement from water and sewer, 4% from commercial and rental license, 2% from environmental services fees, and 2% for the reimbursement from elevate to fund that subsidy that you saw earlier for environmental services.

Now the other includes things such as grant and interest income, building permits, bank excise tax, transfer, road and bridge, and cost reimbursements.

So you can see that where we pay the bills is business licenses and sales taxes.

I mean, excuse me, yeah, business licenses and sales and use taxes.

That's where we paid the bills at the city of Tuscaloosa.

Now within these revenues, so you have these revenues here.

Some of these revenues are restrictive.

And so one of the things I'd like to do is take a look at the discretionary revenues.

These are the revenues for for better for the most part, you have complete ability to fund any way that you see fit as a city council.

So we've taken a look at these discretionary revenues, it paints a picture of you know what are our opportunities in the upcoming fiscal year.

So if you take the discretionary revenues and our budget versus what we believe we will collect, we will have 6.1 million additional dollars.

We're going to go through these tax line items in a second, but one of the first things I'd like to point out is look how anemic sales taxes are.

Sales and use taxes are anemic.

And I think it's a I think there's no doubt that is a direct impact of SSUT.

Less than 1% growth in a city that's growing as fast as the city of Tuscaloosa.

And also when you think about the inflationary impact as well.

So that is again another cause for concern, certainly a validation that we're on the right track.

Look at the anemic growth at the bottom of county sales tax.

So we're very fortunate that we had growth in SSUT, which certainly doesn't outpace our loss.

Growth in business license and gross growth in Avalorum.

Lodging tax was up compared to last year.

That also includes short-term rental.

It's embedded in that line item.

But those are the major revenue line items that we really have full destruction to make investments across the city.

So sales tax.

Over the last four years, we project less than one percent average annual growth.

This year's growth is 0.93%, not even 1% growth.

That's if we collect 47.5 million, which we believe we'll collect.

Again, very anemic growth on the city sales tax side, our largest revenue generator in our general fund.

The county tax, as you can see, is actually we're budgeting a less than what we project we will collect because of the anemic rate.

And you see again its growth rate since 2023 is about 2%.

Now mind you, this didn't just impact the city, it impacts the city schools because they get 20% share of the three cent countywide sales tax.

It impacts the Tuscaloosa County Road Improvement Commission because it gets 10% of the three cent countywide sales tax.

Are the other ones who would be impacted by that?

Again, another validation.

What we've been talking about of SSUT is certainly impacting the traditional sales tax collections.

The good news is we saw really fantastic growth in business license, and since 2023, we're averaging about 5% growth.

So good news on that front.

Property taxes is your most stable revenue line item.

We're projecting this year some growth in that line item with an overall we estimate 3% annual growth in property taxes over the last four years.

Lodging tax, this does include short-term rentals.

We're projecting a little bit of growth in 26 based off what we project we will collect in 25.

This is one we will continue to watch and monitor.

We are really seeing tremendous growth within the short-term rental.

Short-term rental is growing steadily, I think at a rate of 39%.

So when you look on the expenditure side, my budget includes 22% of total general fund into the police department, fire and rescue 17%.

In terms of other larger departments, IT at four, environmental services at six, public works at six, agencies, the agencies like Paris, school system, etc.

at seven, and construction facilities and ground that's at seven.

So you can see that you know clearly our focus at the city of Tuscaloosa begins with public safety.

When you look at expenditures of all types, the biggest part of the budget includes for salaries and benefits.

64 cents out of every dollar we spend is invested into our employees.

The other things that you see in the pie chart, agencies, debt service or the other big expenditures within the recommended budget to you.

One of the things that this council created back in 22.

We started with 23, but that you actually created this in 22.

We knew that we were moving towards RSA conversion, and we wanted to create essentially sinking fund to be able to help soften that.

This is what we project that we will have at the end of next year at 13.3 million that will help us then make that first year transition into our say right now.

That first year projected costs in the RSA is above eight million dollars, nine million to go into this this upcoming 27.

I think we have third.

Is it 13?

Yeah, I think it's 13.

So we're we're working towards that conversion, and again, that was part of that 4.9 million that I showed you earlier in that slide.

One things I like to do is take a look at how does this compare.

I started this presentation today with you know my 20th budget presentation to the city council in 2007.

60 percent of my budget was salary and benefits.

Today it's 64 percent.

Um a large portion of that four percent increase is gonna be directly related to elevate and elevate funding the new projects that have come on.

In terms of debt service, um, it was four percent in two thousand seven.

Pre-Elevate pre-Ticker, today it's seven percent.

If you take out Tickric, which is McAreit's Ferry Road, um, it is the same today as it was when I started learning under Mike Wright.

And so um I'm glad today we have the have Tickerick, we have Elevate.

We can continue to make the type of progress we've made in the city of Tuscaloosa.

So talking about Elevate, let me give you some highlights.

Um we talked about the partnerships earlier, those are the partners who have helped us really leverage Elevate into being transformational for this community.

In terms of Elevate's planning, one of the really thing really things we got right was we set aside 15% for operation and maintenance, and that has allowed us to be able to staff and maintain those elevate projects, whether it's Burrell Odom Park, Calton Park, the savings center in two years from now.

The elevate operation and maintenance fund gives us the ability to take care of the needs.

And here you see a breakdown that this year that 15%, um, this is what it will have to pay for.

Um 1.1 million in salaries, um, 101,000 towards TPD for salary and benefits, um, maintenance cost, utilities.

We transfer a portion of that into the river district fund to meet the needs of that fund, and then we will have 3.3 million in reserves.

Overall, elevate, we we believe or we project that we will have 23.9 million in sales taxes, 3.3 million in use tax, and another 4.3 million for other sources.

When you la less out the environmental services fee and the abatements, uh the total net revenues we project for elevate elevate will be 26.4 million.

Um, I want to brag and show you what some of the things Elevate does.

It gives us near universal pre-K that otherwise people in Tuscaloosa would not have.

And for your constituents, that is a $5,811 savings that if they were to enroll their children child into a pre-K program, they would have had to pay out that.

Um, that is one not only are we getting an education benefit, we're giving families a financial benefit.

And 85% of our young people that come in academically at risk, by the time they finish first grade, they'll be reading on grade level, which means they they will be reading to learn instead of learning to read by third grade.

Pre-K continues to be such a dynamic force in moving our school system forward.

I think that's why you continue to see our school system scores rise.

Pre-K is certainly the beginning foundational steps in making that happen.

We continue to fund summer learning.

Um, again, it is an essential part for our young people not to have summer learning loss, and every family that gets to participate, that is a $5,000 savings for them.

Um, for those of you know who understand what it costs to put your site child into a summer program when mom and dad are at school, it's expensive.

I mean, work it's expensive.

Um, this has helped to defer a lot of that cost for a lot of families in the city of Tuscaloosa.

And then this is my favorite dual enrollment.

You know, I always kind of and Mr.

Tiner's heard me talk about this a lot.

I always somebody would say, What are y'all doing for children?

I'm like, what are we not?

Pre-K summer learning program.

We're not even mentioning the athletic excellence program in here today, but that's certainly important.

But dual enrollment is another another thing that we have implemented that is making such a difference.

Every 10th, 11th, and 12th grader in our school system gets up to 12 free hours funded by the city of Tuscaloosa.

Now, here's the cool thing.

Thanks to the University of Alabama, um, because they have dropped the cost of their courses.

Um, students can take up to nine additional courses at no cost through the dual enrollment program through Elevate.

That's one year of one year of college paid for for free.

Eli Maddox better get ready.

Um I hope y'all keep it so he can use it.

Um by the way, just tuition, that's $12,000 of university volumes per semester for a year.

For a year.

What I'm saying, you're paying for the year of college, it's about $12,000.

Yeah, full-time student.

You talk about a tax benefit that we provide.

Shelton State.

I can't say enough about Dr.

Co.

in Shelton State.

Um if you take that 12 hours and go to Shelton State, they will take their 12 hours and match it.

That's 24 hours.

I think that gets you near a full year at Shelton State.

That's free.

I don't know, Mr.

Eatman, what that would be, but I imagine that's probably six thousand dollars.

Yeah.

Five four six dollars.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Again, certainly, and and I'm sure you know this is it doesn't get talked about a lot.

It's not it's not newsworthy, right?

But because of what this council has done, and because we passed Elevate, if your child goes through dual enrollment, there's a six to twelve thousand dollar benefit.

If your child went through pre-K, it's a five thousand dollar benefit.

Summer learning, five thousand dollar benefit.

Um if you live in the city and have a garbage account, that's a 300 nearly a 300 benefit.

Um we've been able to do this through Elevate Tuscles among a lot of other things.

And this council that past council, people like Ms.

Howard, um, Mr.

Tiner, and everyone part of the 2019 council should feel very proud of us keeping our covenant with the people of Tuscaloosa and delivering for them what we promised.

And certainly the Savan Center.

What have we done for children?

The Savement Center will be phenomenal.

But now we've got to begin staffing up, and this comes with what you talked about last week, uh, Mr.

Busby, and you'll want to dig into during the the budget hearings.

This year we're recommending 196,207 dollars for two new staff positions.

Um that number will ramp up as we get into fiscal 27.

This is for fiscal year 26.

One new project that I've added, and frankly, um, when I met Mr.

Eatman out about a month ago at Freeman Park and Pool, um we toured the facility, we looked at it.

Um it doesn't meet the standard that this council has set at Calton Park and Hotum, Snow Hinton, and other places.

Benjamin Barnes YMCA.

Um we want to begin looking at planning and design about improvements to the pool and improvements to the park.

Um normally we would wait to the capital budget, but frankly, I don't think we can wait.

Um that's why we wanted to push the the windows.

It needs work, and um we're ready to push it through, and I appreciate Mr.

Eatman's leadership on that.

I suspect that if we move forward, we will probably have a capital recommendation in the spring.

And we're gonna begin looking at I think taking over the park as we've done with Calton and Burrell Odom and Snow Hen is probably something that will happen or will recommend that it happens.

The pool is another issue because that's a different management responsibility.

We also have um Mr.

Eatman, I'm putting a lot on you today.

We also have what to do with the vacant Benjamin Barnes YMCA, and how does that play into this as well?

Because they're they're nearly adjacent to each other across the street from each other.

It's exciting, but also we'll will take a lot of work.

We want to begin that planning and design process, and so we're asking that that be included into the budget from Elevate from the Elevate budget.

The other reminder is that one out of every five dollars that we spend in Elevate goes to public safety.

So we should again something to be very proud of.

You I know sometimes you may get criticism why they invest in this park or why do they invest in Savings Center?

You you all and I'll look what about ism is the best game you can play.

You did this, but what about that?

I mean, it's and and it's it's certainly it's always been that way.

But something that doesn't get talked about enough is one out of every five dollars in Elevate goes into doing the number one priority for all of us in this room, and that's keeping Tuscaloosa safe.

So that is the 26th budget presentation.

Um you will get more documents emailed to you than you probably want, but um the public itself can also see the same information at Tuscaloosa.com forward slash 26 budget.

Um I know that uh you probably do not have a lot of questions today, but will in the future.

Please know that Carly and Savannah, I'm sorry, Miss Standridge, Ms.

Hornsby, Mr.

Jenkins, they are going to be there to answer the questions.

I will be as well.

Mr.

Busby, that's the quickest one I've done in 20 years.

So at 30-something minutes, so um appreciate the opportunity and look forward to working with you and the council and look forward to you setting those dates for the budget hearing so we can get to work.

And we look forward to boring down into it.

Let's see, the PDFs are already sent to us.

We'll be sending those right afterwards, yes, sir.

Okay, and then the printed books are ready next week.

Next week.

Beginning of next week.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Great.

Then you and I and the finance committee members will work out a schedule for what I expect will be two two hour work sessions.

Um then we'll move towards September.

Uh members, any questions, comments?

Okay.

Not thank you.

Is there a motion?

Thank you, Mayor.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Motion.

Second.