The Wilmington City Council held a special budget work session on February 6, 2026, from 8:30 AM to 12:27 PM at the Skyline Center. The session focused on three main topics: an update on agency funding, a strategy discussion for the Capital Improvement Program (CIP), and a follow-up on adopting a living-wage pay philosophy based on 60% of Area Median Income (AMI). No formal votes were taken; the session was intended to provide direction to staff for the FY27 budget.
Are you here? Here we're allowed. Are you here? Here's the member of the are you here? I am mayor pro town. Here we have four. Now that's recognizing all to me. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, uh, members of council. We are appreciative of the time this morning to go over a couple of additional topics that will help inform our FY27 budget. The first one will be an agency funding update, and then we will talk about our capital improvement program and the strategies around how to complete that. And then we'll have a bit of a refresh and then a follow-up with some additional information related to pay philosophy and the living wage that we are hoping to move towards for our pay scales. So with that, I will turn it over to Rachel Schuler, our housing and neighborhood services director, who will talk about agency funding. Good morning. Thank you. So the human services grant program. It was previously known as the public services funding. A lot of different names, but it is the competitive grants process for nonprofits that have been a part of the city's uh budget for decades. Other communities throughout the state have similar programs, though the funding sources and their sort of process and review process vary. Locally, the funding for these nonprofits have been general funds, and it is a way that the city really has leveraged some of our federal dollars. We have a an allocation that we're able to use of community development block grants that's set aside for public services. And so this is a way to again leverage that and leverage the impact of the community to help implement the strategic plan. Shown on the right are the funding that has happened. Oh, I'm sorry, over the past few years. The awards for each program has ranged from about 12 to 45,000, with most averaging around 20,000. Shown here is just a reference for the strategic plan priorities. Uh you can see where these grants have sort of fit into the existing strategic plan. This is the first time we've been we will be doing outside agency funding with the new strategic plan though. Currently, this is the process shown here. Staff did propose some changes to the review process last summer to add in additional review steps with council in mind. But this is generally how it's been happening. So starts staff starts with a target budget and receives applications for a range of programs. These applications are reviewed by staff currently, um, though the process did vary over the summer. And program awards are part of the manager's budget, which is later adopted. Over time, the scope of services of these programs has really broadened, and applications have moved somewhat away from maybe some of the the target core goals. There have also been some other catalysts for changes. Um as mentioned, the adopted strategic plan. So as mentioned, the adopted strategic plan, um, as well as near incompletion of the greater downtown plan with that both have uh implication implementation strategies that could be supported by these funds. Uh incorporating community feedback both from community survey as well as comments received from residents. Uh we've heard things ranging from recreation hours, workforce development, and other needs for our vulnerable populations. Start with a total and instead of backing into the awards. And I'll go through that proposal process, what that would look like in a second. And then again, instead of having this open application where we're really seeing what the community is reacting to, we would recommend having specific RFPs for the service delivery that the city is looking for with our priorities. And then finally, one of the other recommendations is adding the review and recommendations by the community relations advisory committee, the C RAC. It's restarting, and it's what we've seen in other communities where they have that participation from some of the residents to be able to have that first vetting so that they can review these applications and proposals and make that recommendation through staff to council. And this would be really elevating staff out of just the day-to-day and putting that into that council-appointed committee. So if this is to move forward, this is what the new process would look like. Uh highlighted in red are some of the bigger changes in the process. Again, putting the RFP and review process following the adoption of the budget. This will likely delay awards into the fall, but due to the new model that's being proposed, staff would also recommend extending the agreements to be longer multi-year funding structure. We're currently on a two-year cycle, and so adding this longer term sort of funding agreement, service agreements, we could look at additional years.