Good afternoon. My name is Aisha Chugtai and I am the chair of the budget committee. I'm going to call to order our regular meeting for Monday, August 24th, 2026. Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation. These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community. Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast. We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments. At this time, I'll ask the clerk to call the role so we can verify the presence of the quorum. >> Council member Payne is absent. Wsley is absent. Rainville >> present. >> Vita >> present. >> Warren >> present. >> Osman is absent. Stevenson >> present. >> Chavez >> present. >> Whiting >> present. Chowry >> present. >> Pomosisano is absent. Vice chair Schaefer >> present. >> And chair Chugai >> present. >> That is nine members present. Let the record reflect that we have a quorum. I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today. So please make sure to sign in to participate in discussion. If you are having any trouble with speaker management, our clerks at the end of the dis will be more than happy to help. Um, we have one item on our consent agenda today, which is to receive and file the mayor's 2027 recommended budget. This is our formal receipt of the recommended budget and the budget committee's first step in our process leading up to the adoption of the budget in December. We will discuss the budget process in much more depth uh in future meetings when we receive a presentation of the budget and presentations diving into the details of each department's proposed 2027 budget. Um is there any discussion on what I have outlined so far? Um I'll recognize council member Chavez. >> Uh thank you chair Chuck. I'm wondering if it now is an appropriate time to ask a question about the item. Uh, sure. Go ahead. What's your question? >> Uh, thank you, Chuck Tai. I just want would like for us to get an update on the conversations with the Minneapolis Park and Recreational Board given that it's very much being highlighted right now a lot in the media and the concerns of what it would mean for green spaces, rec centers, parkways, and trails when it comes to the mayor's proposed budget. Um, I don't see someone who would be appropriately equipped to answer the question right now. I know the discussion right now lives between the mayor's office and the administration of the uh Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. I I know that we have finance staff present. Um, and the the crux of the conversation is living between the electeds right now to be honest. And so, um, I don't see someone here from the mayor's office who's able to address your question. I think you are bringing up an important one. If you're okay with it, can we note it for administration response so we can get a clear understanding of where things are um, as it relates to the MPB levy. Um, before we continue, I'll note that we've been joined by Vice President Osman. Um, and let me check Q to see if there are any further questions. I'm not seeing any. I'll ask the clerk to file the mayor's recommended budget. Um, the next item on our agenda is receiving a presentation on the Capital Long Range Improvement Committee's annual report. For this, I will invite the chair of the Capital Long Range Improvement Committee, John Bernstein, to join us and begin this presentation. Thank you and welcome. >> Good afternoon. I'm John Bernstein and I am the chair of the Capitol Long Range Improvement Committee, otherwise known as Click. I'm going to give you a brief presentation highlighting highlighting the click report which was published about six weeks ago. Hopefully, you've all had a chance to review it. When I'm finished, I would be happy to take questions. Since many of you are fairly new to the city council, let me start with a brief primer on what click is and what click does. When fully staffed, we are 33 members. That's two appointees from each ward and each council member and a seven seven atlarge mayoral appointees. This results in a geographically diverse diverse uh committee across the city. However, there is an unwritten rule. While it's okay for an individual member to advocate for a project within their ward, it is a generally accepted notion that we are all um trying to do what's best for the city overall. We are a citizen advisory committee, so our recommendations are non-binding. Click considers and prioritizes capital budget requests, better known as CBRS, and those are submitted by various city departments. Click does not originate or propose capital projects. We may, however, suggest the city consider a specific project when we get public input about an unmet need. And a great example of this from a few years ago was the North Side Greenway, which was a group of citizens that came to us in a very wellorganized manner. Here's how the click process fits within the overall capital budget process. From January to March of each year, city departments develop budgets, write and submit capital budget requests. From March to June, the click process occurs. And then in July, Kick presents to the mayor and the mayor develops a budget. In August, the mayor's budget is released. And then in the fall, the city council continues um the budget process. And finally, in December, the budget is passed. Now, a little more detail on the click process. Click meets weekly from March to June each year. CBRS are completed by city departments and are made available at the end of March. April is what we call the information gathering period and that's when we hear um presentations on all 130 plus projects from uh the various city departments that uh develop them and that's typically two full days of presentations. In May, we divide into two task forces and begin drafting comments and members complete their individual ratings on each project. And then in June, the full committee finalizes comments and funding of projects is completed based on aggregated ratings. And finally, in July, the report is published and the executive committee presents it to the mayor. This year, Click reviewed and ranked 134 projects. Those projects totaled a little over $1 billion in various city funds, plus additional money from other funding sources, largely federal, state, and county. Click is recommending projects which total roughly 775 million in city funds. And let me just point out with city funds, that's not just debt. That's all sources of funds. And that's over the six-year window from 27 to 32. In order to accomplish this, the committee met 13 times and held three public meetings for a total of more than 40 hours. This does not include many more hours spent by each member reading and reviewing more than 130 CBRS and the preparation necessary to make those meetings effective. Click's role is to assess how each project fits with the city's goals as stated in the current long range plan. The committee prioritizes projects based on the city's goals as well as other factors and then matches them with a budget. Our report and the comments it contains pertain to that process in the issues that result. Click does not make recommendations nor comment about broader policy issues. And as a result, click's recommendation should not be interpreted as commentary on policy except as narrowly relates as it narrowly relates to our role. As I just described, long range planning is a challenging process. It can be difficult to estimate the cost of a project six years in advance. In some cases, it is also difficult to anticipate needs six years in advance. And those needs can change and unexpected projects can arise. Ideally, each project would be planned six years in advance and move up in the queue each year. But life doesn't work like that. With the understanding that this process by its nature is sometimes messy, I'd like to give an example of a project that presented difficulties for the committee this year and how we chose to address it. The example I'm going to use is the Community Safety Training and Wellness Center, also known by its CBR code PSD23. At at the moment, it's unclear where the site will be and what the design of the building will be. That uncertainty makes the timing of the project and estimating the costs difficult. The request for this project was $9.5 million in the two near-term years, 27 and 28. That amount represents about 10% of the annual net debt bond budget in each of those years. The committee chose to address this problem several ways. We are recommending funding the design and project management phase of this project. That's a total of $775,000 split evenly over 27 and 28. And I would note that that amount includes $600,000 of previously authorized but unspent funds for this project. The remaining balance of the request has been pushed out to 28 and 29, which we believe is a more realistic timeline for the project. Each year, we try to balance the annual net debt bond allocations, also known as NDB, to within plus or - 2 to 3% and the six-year total to within plus or minus 5%. This year, we stayed very close to that goal for the six-year total, but did not for the yearly allocations. So, I'd like to explain why. Several years ago, click remended a very large recommended a very large increase to the net debt bond budget of about 50% over the six-year period. At that time, we asked the finance department to provide us the maximum amount that could be spent without needing a property tax increase as click works within the budget you all set with respect to property taxes. While that has been a positive change, there has been an unintended consequence that we would like to see remedied. Previous to this change, the net debt bond allocations could be characterized as gently rising over the six-year time frame. Since the large increase to the net debt bond budget, the opposite has been the case and the ali annual allocations decrease. These are the maximum net debt bond numbers that were provided to us this year. And as you can see, these allocations generally decrease over the six-year period. If we look at this from the perspective of a very conservative in annual inflation rate of 2% over the next six years, you can see how unrealistic these numbers are. Focusing on 2032, the roughly 82 million allocation will need to be about 92 million in that year to have the same buying power that $82 million has today. Additionally, large and expensive projects are often scheduled in the out years of the window. This becomes more difficult when those allocations are lower and as a result impacts flexibility to make recommendations that are congruent with good long-range planning. The committee understands that the city uses a conservative approach to its financial projections, particularly as it pertains to debt issuance. Additionally, click understands the importance of the prudent use of debt and maintaining the city's exemplary credit rating. The committee also believes that it is important to balance those goals against realistic capital budgeting and declining NDB allocations do not seem very realistic. Finally, it is important to note that increasing the increasing the allocations in the out years of the six-year window does not commit the city to issuing that amount of debt. Each year, bonds are only issued for the current year of the plan. The goal should be realistic planning with the understanding that unforeseen and/or extraordinary circumstances may require a change to those plans. We understand that there is a natural tension between conservative fiscal planning, debt issuance, and realistic long-range capital budgeting. So, our ask is that the city return to the previously gently rising trend line for NDB allocations over the six-year window. In that vein, our funding recommendations nudge the allocations in that direction. We did this for all of the reasons I just described and because it fits with recommending funding for certain projects. In particular, PSD22, the Minneapolis Animal Control and Care Facility, also known as the MAC. Everything I've talked about so far relates to the net debt bond budget and the projects that are funded from that source. Click also reviews several of the enterprise funds. As you may all know, enterprise funds are considered are closed systems where the re revenue generated from the asset can only be reinvested in that same asset either by directly spending or using the revenue to service the debt on bonds issued. A common misinterpretation of enterprise funds is that they are self-funding, so there isn't a need to scrutinize them. While this may be technically accurate, it is important to remember that the users of the asset are funding it through the fees that they pay. Click reviews the proformas for enterprise funds to understand the impact of capital budget requests on future rate increases. I want to emphasize that click does not make rate recommendations. Rather, we assess the reasonleness of expected future rate increases that result from undertaking the proposed projects. Next, I want to again bring your attention to the fact that the park board continues to effectively circumvent the click process by submitting projects that exactly match the funding they will receive from the city because of the neighborhood parks and streets ordinance, also known as NPP20. The text in quotes comes directly from chapter 35 of the Minneapolis code of ordinances which codifies click and its role. As you can see in the bold text which is emphasis we added the park board is clearly one of the departments that is required to use the click process. Additionally, in the second paragraph where we have again added emphasis, the capital program shall include all sources and uses of financial resources used to acquire, replace or increase the use of the life of the city's assets. The ordinance cited above makes two things clear. First, even as a semi-autonomous body, the park board is subject to the capital project review process outlined in chapter 35. And second, all capital projects, regardless of the funding source, must be presented as part of this review process. Unfortunately, the park board continues to submit projects that exactly match the MPP $20 that they will receive from the city. This effectively makes clicks work with respect to the park board nothing more than a rubber stamp. Over the past 10 years, the park board's response to this has been that the MPPP20 funds can only be used for neighborhood parks and as st as stated in the ordinance. While this is true, it is also true, as I have shown you in chapter 35, that the park board should be participating in the click process in the same way that every other city department making capital requests does. The park board also holds holds the position that the MP NP20 ordinance narrowly defines how neighborhood pro park projects should be prioritized and therefore submitting additional projects could upset that prioritization. While that is true, while it is true that the MPP20 ordinance narrowly defines how projects must be prioritized, it is also true that clicks recommendations are advisory and in no way restrict the park board from making the final decisions. It does seem possible that portions of the MPP20 ordinance and chapter 35 may contradict one another. However, chapter 35 also makes clear click's responsibilities. The committee shall not duplicate evaluation and/or ranking tasks performed by other processes managed by city, state, or federal laws, ordinances, or regulations. It seems that a modification to MPP20 may be appropriate, whether that is an amendment or a clearer interpretation that allows the park board to seriously consider clicks advisory recommendations without vi violating the prioritization set out in NPP20. It is worth noting that several years ago when there was a large increase to the net debt bond budget, as I mentioned earlier, many projects received additional funding and projects were recommended that might not have otherwise received funding. This was not possible with the park board because they submit projects that exactly match the MPP20 funding that they are scheduled to receive. As a result of all of this, click chose to recommend funding for parkboard projects in a single lump sum that represents the funding they will they will receive through the MPP20 ordinance. This more closely aligns with the lack of discretion that is available to click with respect to these projects. Our request is that the city and park board work to resolve the conflicts that may exist between chapter 35 and the MPP20 ordinance in a way that aligns the capital budget process between both organizations so that the click process can return to being fully effective with respect to parkboard capital projects. Finally, I'd like to review the potential impact on click from the proposed boards and commissions reform. The committee is very concerned that some of these proposals could reduce our ability to issue robust capital recommendations to the mayor and city council each year. We acknowledge the need for reform all among all of the city's boards and commissions, but it appears that it is being done with a single consideration, standardization. So, I'm going to go through some of the issues. Tier 2 status. We believe it is important that click be established as a tier 2 body. This will allow the committee to continue to be established and guided by city ordinance. I would note that tier 2 status normally means that a body is not advisory. We do think the clicks recommendations recommendations should continue to be advisory. There is a proposal to reduce the membership of click from 33 to 23. We believe that click has been well served by its current structure. Specifically, the geographic representation in the form of each of you having two appointees from your ward for a total of 26 and the mayor having seven at large appointees. Having two appointees from each ward serves several purposes. First, as I mentioned earlier, this work is demanding and fairly intense for about four months each spring. Having two appointees from each ward helps ensure that each ward is always represented at meetings. Additionally, it provides multiple perspectives from each ward. The larger committee size can also provide additional forms of diversity beyond the obvious areas. There is also professional background, life experience, and primary mode of transportation among many others. Having committee members who view proposed projects through different lenses results in a more robust final report. Reducing the size of the committee has the potential to limit diversity and in turn impact the current strength and quality of the final report. I don't know if you if you are aware of this, but the clerk's office would not allow any new appointees this year to fill the existing vacancies on the committee. That resulted in four of you and your constituents having only one representative on the committee and two of you and your constituents having no representatives requiring appointees with specific professional backgrounds. Under this proposal, eight appointments would be made by the finance department for specific professional experience such as municipal finance and city planning. Click has always operated as a group of engaged residents and users of the city's infrastructure. We tend to look at projects from a broad perspective and only get into the details when warranted. Having appointees with specific expertise will change that practice. The city already employs these types of professionals in the finance department and public works and they are heavily involved in generating the projects that are presented to click. The committee is most effective when members view these projects through a different lens than city staff. Additionally, the budget office is heavily involved in the click process and has plenty of voice. Allowing the finance department to appoint one-third of click's membership runs the risk of giving them undue influence on the committee. Finally, as many of you already know, recruiting folks to serve on click can be challenging because of the significant commitment required to serve. Having such narrow requirements for these eight seats will make recruitment even more challenging. Term limits. If folks were lining up to serve on click, this would probably be a reasonable change. However, that is not the case and it is generally accepted that it's about a three-year learning curve before a new member fully understands the click process. Additionally, all of us serve at the pleasure of you, our respective appointing authorities for two-year terms. Given all of this, imposing term limits seems unwise. Quorum should be calculated as 50% plus one of the seated members of the committee not based on the full capacity of the committee. This is the standard practice at the state level as well. Uh finally there's a proposal to prohibit city employees from serving. We are all required to go through ethics training and take an oath of office. My question to the clerk is what about that system do you not trust such that you need to exclude any group of people from serving including city employees? Additionally, click has a process whereby any member is expected to recuse themselves if they believe they have a conflict of interest. We currently have two thoughtful, productive members of click who would no longer be allowed to serve if this reform occurs. And with that, I'd be happy to take your questions. Thank you for this presentation uh Chair Bernstein and I will ask my colleagues if um there are any questions on your annual report and perhaps ah um I'll first recognize council member Warren. >> Thank you so much for that. Chair, how do how do we know which wards lack the representation? you mentioned that in your report and so I'm just curious of how we look into that specific information. >> Yeah, thank you for that question. Um that information is right there. So in your case, you have no representation for W five, but this is on page um eight of the clar click report that shows the membership from this year. >> Excellent. Thank you so much for this. I greatly appreciate it. Wow. And so just to make sure we're we're all I I'll just summarize this table here. Um it feels as though um Ward five has no representatives. Ward 12 has no representatives and W 4 has one vacant um representative and then there's some atlarge seats that are open. But just looking at the W four and W five examples, um you know, the the north side should have four representatives and they have one on click and I would imagine that has an impact as you were describing uh really succinctly. Maybe you can speak to that. >> Yeah, I would just add that wards 6, 8, and 11 also have only one representative. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Sorry, I skipped over that. Skipped over that. So yeah, I mean for all the reasons I stated, you know, I think this committee has been well served by being um as large as it has as it has been. Um I've served on this committee for 20 years. So I try to be very cognizant of not being the old white guy who's digging in his heels and just doesn't want change be, you know, for the sake of change and ask the question about okay, so here's a proposed change. Does that make things better or worse? And in this case, I really do think that having 33 people um has served this committee very well. And under the proposal, I didn't make that clear. You each get you would each have one appointee and the mayor would have two and they get to 23 by using those eight specialized people. >> Gotcha. Um thank you. And then next I'll recognize council member Vita. >> Thank you. Um I I just want to make sure that things are clarified here with the number of members. People have to apply for this. This is not an issue of it's not always the case where a council member is not like actively working. People have to want to serve on this and then you receive applications and you go through uh those applications and appoint people. So, I think we should start out by because it it's coming off kind of um defensive like council members aren't doing their job. Some of these council members, you acknowledged in the beginning of your presentation that there are new council members here and this has not been an easy year for some of these new council members. And I know that a click the click um is a priority for a lot of people. But when you get down here and you're just trying to find your way, you it's it's a learning curve and you have to figure out how to do this. And this isn't the only committee. These new council members get bombarded with lots of applications and lots of committees that they need to fill. And I would say the main thing is you have to have people willing to apply to be on these committees. So it's not always that people aren't appointed. Sometimes people aren't interested and it takes a lot of time to get people interested. I would say especially in something like click. This is a big committee with a lot of people on it. Everyone is not up for personalities and you know the finances and the the the things that come along with this project. I will just say um for me you know I'm lucky that I have a person who was willing to serve on this committee. But it it's not easy. It's not one that you put up and start searching and people are like oo I want to get on that one. is is quite the opposite. You have to sell it to people unless they kind of geek out about this kind of stuff. >> That's exactly why imposing term limits makes no sense. But let me just back up for a second. My purpose in putting this up is not to try to embarrass any council members. >> Well, it seemed that way. >> Well, so let me explain. What I stated was that the clerk's office cut off any recruitment for this year for these vacancies. So even if somebody who has vacancies here had wanted to do something about it, the clerk's office said no. >> Exactly. >> So that that what I'm calling out is the clerk's office because it strikes me that this is an attempt to get where they're trying to go, which is 23 members. And as it turns out, that's exactly what we had this year is 23 members. So they stopped recruitment so they could keep it right where it is and not have a big kurfuffle over having to reduce a committee from 33 to 23 which doesn't seem like that's playing by the rules. >> I mean I think that's I I think that's great but I also do think again there are people who are new here that don't understand that dynamic. There are vacancies and there's a cut off and that is it's not a vacancy it's a cut like there's a pause. So like for me if it wasn't to shame people it should say pause not vacant because you can't fill it. It's not open. It's not available for you to put anyone in that seat right now except for the first one like the people who are not assigned to one person but the other ones are paused for now and not vacant. I wouldn't debate semantics with you, but I would point out that I I would hope that um now I'm assuming that most of you had no idea that this was the case, but knowing it now, I I'm assuming that your role in the city is such that you can appoint somebody regardless of what the clerk's saying. Um this is this really helpful but I you know and before we continue with Q and there's several members getting in Q chair so just for your awareness um there I think there will be a lot more questions um I'll I'll just quickly apologize though um when when I was going through the the chart that that uh Mr. Bernstein had put up. My intention was to help reiterate the point that he was making which is um some communities have less representation and it is at no fault of the appointing council member. It it's a structural change that's happened that is that happens to be dis um disproportionately felt in certain parts of our city and it shouldn't be that way. Um, >> can I just add, sorry, can I just add too that I completely acknowledge what you're saying that um a new council member is literally drinking from the fire hose and in this day and age and what's going on in this city, you have lots of priorities and filling um uh citizen advisory boards. It naturally is not going to be at the top of that list and it may take some time to get those filled. So, this was in no way intended to call out city council people. I would also say that um as you pointed out um this is something that's really tough to recruit to and I think you are one of the things you can do is use city staff and um others in your ward to try to help you find people because it is tough to find people. Most people when you ask them to serve on click are the first question is what's click. That was my question 20 years ago. I had no idea what it was when my council member asked me to serve on it. And then you get people on it and they don't really understand what they've signed up for and some of them stick with it and some of them don't because it was too demanding or not what they thought it was going to be. So fair points. Um all right, we've got five uh council members in queue right now. I'll recognize Council Member Chowry, followed by Council Member Stevenson. >> Thank you, Madame Chair, and thank you, chair, for your presentation. Um, I think first off, just kind of starting with the I guess I'll go backwards with what was in your presentation. Starting with the appointments, I appreciate you bringing light to it because as a council member with um two openings, I've been looking for the opportunity to offer that to W 12 constituents. And we are currently in a process of recruiting for boards and commissions. It's August 1st to August 30th. And then on the page, you can see what the current openings are for to apply for. and there is not openings available for the capital long range improvement committee and I think that's really important to state because as you shared in your presentation click begins its work in April >> March >> March yes >> and our next appointments is usually in March right we open up in spring to do spring appointments and recruitments so that is an open question for this body and I would ask council leadership our president and our vice president to work with their clerk's office to figure out when can council members actually recruit for their vacancies because I do have a number of people, neighborhood associations, community members that come to my office hours about budget that I would like to recruit into the W 12 positions. But as a council member, the there hasn't been like a notice or a place where it's been identified where we would be able to do that. And that's I'm a I'm a returning council member and I could imagine for new council members how that would be difficult. I'll also just share to our leadership. I think this is a place where there is a lack of training to new council members and bringing us all to a standardized place um on boards and commissions. It's a very important thing that we have to do. But kind of thinking back to my orientation um three years ago and then this year uh for what was offered to new council members, I never was offered a training on boards and commissions. It's just kind of something you have to figure out. And these are powerful and important advisory positions that we have to point people to. And I also do think um commenting on the other things that you mentioned uh in in the ordinance, it would be helpful to get clarity from council president, council vice president or leadership. When are we going to be taking up the ordinance related to the capital long range improvement committee? Because I don't I don't know when our calendar is set to take it. um because we'll obviously have to prepare for these considerations that are there. I'll comment it's really important to me that we do have um this type of way for constituents and community members to participate in a participatory budgeting format that we do have. I think it's integral and I I think we create a lot of barriers if we require professional finance staff. Um quite frankly, you count out working people who don't have that background from several positions without it. And so that's my initial reaction. Um council president, do you have information regarding my question? >> I'm going to have to take all of this feedback to the clerk and talk through where it currently stands as far as its timeline to be brought forward. And I'm going to raise the issue of whether or not um we can be doing active recruitment right now. >> Yeah. And I mean, I think we should figure out how we can do that. And if if there's an ordinance that I'm missing or piece of code, I don't know, that dictates that. I think it would be important to get clarity because I would certainly love the opportunity um to fill the vacancies that are available ahead of the next click process. >> I I can share a little bit of information on this. I know that the budget office is in conversations with the clerk's office about having recruitment in November for this very reason. can also tell you that this the back and some of the things that I pointed out I think you'll find at least under the current um state of the proposal may no longer be an issue. The last I heard um the clerk's office is planning to make click tier 2 but the reality is this has been going on for um 18 to 24 months and it's been changing. So that's why I brought all of it forward in case it changes again. Um and on the recruitment, you know, I I started by saying that I understand that there's a need to standardize um this the what I believe was once 70 commissions and boards in the city, right? But when um the only goal is standardization and there's no consideration of anything else, that can result in some things that don't match up with common sense very well. >> Great. Um I still have a few more questions if that's all right. >> Please go ahead. Um, I think it'll be helpful for our clerk's office to prepare something regarding our conversation here. It's good to hear that there's a recruitment plan in November. Uh, but there are a number of other outstanding things that we should talk about. Um, I haven't had a chance to hear from the clerk's office in regards to boards and commissions. So, a presentation, a briefing, anything of that matter would be great. And uh that's just feedback to leadership to speak to the department. In terms of the rest of the presentation, I did want to ask about the net debt um bond. So could you could you um kind of maybe in more simplified version explain what policy change caused the dip that we're seeing? And then what are you suggesting in order to remedy um what we're seeing to go back to that gently rising pro projection? >> Sure. So um I think it was it's either three or four years ago now. The years kind of blend together when you get old like me. um that we went to the U budget office and asked them how much the net debt bond budget could be increased without getting anywhere near a a property tax increase because as I mentioned click tries to stay away from policy that you guys should be setting. Um and so in that year we ended up increasing the net debt bond budget with the approval of um the budget office by roughly 50% over the six-year window. um as a result of that that obviously moved um those budget numbers closer to what could is is risk of having to raise property taxes, right? So, they're approaching I I don't want to put words in their mouth, but my presumption is that they're the the people in the budget office or the finance department that are tasked with figuring this out try to stay very conservative and not do anything that um would uh compromise the city's currently um stellar credit rating, which of course means the city borrows at the cheapest rates possible on the market. Um that would be something you would not want to do. Um but as a result that conservative approach in having those numbers um you know they're a little bit non-committal right when you're 100 roughly $100 million in the in the front years of the window and cutting it to 70 to 75 million in the out years um that that it's just not a a reasonable way to approach this. I mean as I tried to show just on inflation alone it's those numbers aren't going to work. So, we're just trying to and again, I think the most important thing to remember is that there's no commitment here, right? I mean, it's a projection. The only thing that's being committed to is the first year of the window. That's what's going to get bonded for. So, in this case, 2027. >> Thank you. Those are my questions. >> Awesome. Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Council Member Stevenson, followed by Council Member Vice Chair Schaeer. >> Thank you. Um, I wanted to thank uh, Council Member Vita and Mr. Bernstein for raising the the vacancy issue. That's been something that people in my ward have reached out to me wanting to have my vacancy filled and I've not been able to fill it. Uh, my member on Click came to me very early on in my term and told me another thing, which is that Click uh, in her mind is not very diverse um, outside of professional diversity. And so having these vacancies that we're not able to fill has harmed our ability to uh make Click look like the city that we represent. So, um I do think uh a little clarity from leadership and from the clerks on how we can address uh filling these vacancies because we're not serving the city as well as we could slash should be if we were able to fill these um people from our board who who can bring different perspectives than are already represented. Um so anyways, just wanted to say thank you to the both of you for that um and thank you for the presentation. I would just acknowledge that it is is 100% true that on on more typical types of diversity measures, we are not diverse. We are um too male and too white and too old. I think I bring up that average a lot. Maybe age doesn't matter so much. Um but so but that's an interesting problem, right? Because there's 14 people that are making appointments to a board that's kind of hard to find people for. And so it it requires coordination by all of you to change that. >> Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Vice Chair Schaefer, followed by Council Member Warren. >> Yes. I had a question around the gently decreasing um plan. And you know, your preferred, you talked about how it's better to have it increasing, but yet I see your proposal is gently decreasing at all as well as the proposed. Um, so can you speak a little bit to that? >> Sure. Um, you know, we're not privy to all of those numbers and shouldn't be. That's not our job. That's the finance department's job. Um, so one of the things, so I use the word nudge. So our proposal is declines less than what was given to us. But the other thing that we try to keep in mind is what the total for the six-year window is. And if we were to try to rearrange the we can't really pull money out of the early years because there's all sorts of projects that are in the queue that would suddenly not be able to be funded. It's a little late for that. So the only way to fix this is to push up the outy years. Well, if we do that so that it's gently in uh increasing, it's going to make the total for the sixth years much higher than it currently is. And that could in fact run into the problem that the finance department is trying to avoid, which is getting too close to uh a number that's going to impact the debt capacity of the city or something else along those lines. So we try to stay within 5% of the total. Um and we're at about 5 a half this year. So that would be the five the 561 that we're proposing over the six-year window in that last column against the 532 that was given to us or 533 rounded. >> Okay, that is helpful. Um, is this unusual to have I mean, how long have we been in this pattern of um, gent, you know, having the six-year window decrease? >> So, it's relatively recent, and it comes out of this, you know, major increase to to the net debt bond budget, which, you know, it's true that does put us closer to limits than we were in the past by roughly 50%. Right? So, um, it's it's a legitimate concern. I just think it could be balanced better. Um, like I said, I've served on the committee for a long time. So, I was on the committee when the '08 crisis happened and, you know, all bets were off then. Um, those budgets got cut dramatically. I don't remember the exact numbers, but was probably not gently increasing for a couple of years back then, but otherwise, previous to this big increase in the net debt bond budget, most years it was gently increasing. >> Okay, that's helpful. Then, can I have a couple questions around some specific questions within your report? one was trail condition markers um and that you had been having difficulty in Can you speak a little bit to what that request was and was that coming from public works or is that an MPB request? I wasn't sure um if that trail condition marker was directed at uh was that a public works or was that an MPB? >> It was public works. You know, part of the problem there is sometimes the the relationship between this public works and the park board is not entirely clear about who's responsible for what whether we're talking about streets or or trails. But um so to the extent the park board should be a part of that then that's who it's directed at to but our understanding is for the most part that's public works. So the trail metrics we're talking about is um you know for the city streets they use um pavement condition index better known as PCI which is a well-known well accepted metrics that uses a 100point scale just like we all experienced in school that tells you the condition of a road and the overall condition of the city streets. It's very easy to understand 80%. Okay, you got a B minus, right? um they don't have a system like that for trails and using that exact system on trails wouldn't make sense because um you have bikers, walkers, inline skaters, skateboarders that are using those trails. So imperfections in the trail that might not matter on a road could matter dramatically on a trail. As an example, a crack in a trail that runs along the trail longitudinally, that could take somebody out on a bike if it's the right width, right, to grab a wheel and take them down or a skater or something like that. Probably doesn't matter on a road that is a 1-in crack in the road from the perspective of a of a car. So, we're asking the uh public works to develop a trail metric that takes all of this into consideration and creates an inventory of the condition of the trails across the city. Um I I think it would be helpful for the click committee to reach out to the park board because um there has been some detail done. I mean many of those trails are on parkland and they have invested in trying to have some analysis of um those that were closer to failing. I don't know if it would be an official, you know, trail condition marker to the level click might anticipate, but I think you could get some great insight into what data they currently had. And that would have happened within the last two to three years, I think. Um, just because um we needed to have an idea of where to invest. They needed to have an idea on where to invest um the limited dollars as we all um do. But that might be just a follow-up item um for the click. Um, and of course, could you speak just a little bit more? I mean, you go into detail in the report about our pavement falling behind. Um, can you with your long history on this board speak a little bit to where we are currently, where we have been, um, and what you foresee maybe happening in the next years? >> Yeah, that's a really important question. There is a brief comment that, um, I did not highlight today because I already went pretty long as it is, but thank you for bringing it up. Um, there's a long long history to this. If you ask public works, they can give you a chart that goes back at least 30 years that shows you the overall PCI for the city. It used to be somewhere in the 80% range. Um, starting sometime in the '9s, that has declined down into the 60% range. There's lots of reasons for it. Um, some would say climate change. I am certainly a believer in clim climate change. I'm not sure that that has had enough of an impact yet to have moved those numbers that much. Um the cut to LGA spending that happened in the early 2000s um under Pente had an impact on this. Um, and so the the city's response to this was MPP20, the NE neighborhood parks and streets infrastructure ordinance that was passed in 2016, which was the the the idea behind that was to give a a boost to both um parks and streets. And so it commits a certain amount of money each year to those two items. It's roughly, I want to say, $20 million a year for streets. Um, I'm speaking personally now, not the committee. I don't know if people would agree with me or not. I personally don't like these kinds of ordinances, not because I'm not for fixing streets and parks, but because they create unintended inflexibility. Um, and that's what's happened here. Um, an unintended consequence of this ordinance is that now PSD projects like the community uh wellness and training center, which is a a big bullet to swallow, right? $20 million is really tough to fund because as I mentioned it takes up 10% of the budget in in two of its years. So all of those types of projects that are big dollar projects, fire fire stations, police stations, anything along those lines is really tough to fund because $20 million comes off the top streets every year and there's nothing and that's by ordinance. So unless you're going to change the ordinance, there's nothing you can do about that. Um the other issue is that we're 10 years into that ordinance and um at best the PCI for the city has held steady, maybe declined a little bit. So it's not working right. I mean we're not getting back to where we once were. So it begs a much larger question um which is how is the city going to keep up with maintaining its current infrastructure? Um uh and that's the comment that we made to public works which it goes far beyond public works. It goes to this level too to you guys as well. But we ask public works to look into other ways to get creative to figure out how to maintain the infrastructure that the city has. You know, it's more challenging in a northern city, right? I mean, there's no question, climate change or not, that there's lots of freezing and thawing that makes roads fall into disrepair much more quickly than other parts of the country. >> Thank you. Um, next I'll recognize council member Chavez, followed by council member Vto. >> Thank you, chair. Uh, Chuck Tai, just wanted since we're talking about the ordinance of click, the capital long range improvement committee reform ordinance was introduced on February 19th, given its first reading, and then referred to committee the whole. It's being authored by council member Pomosano and then on March 3rd it was referred to staff. So maybe that's a good starting point as well. >> Gotcha. Um and finally I'll recognize council member Vita. >> Thank you chair. Um I just had a question. you. So you're you're saying that you don't think that neighborhood parks is like working out in the way that is helping the city. The I think the goal of neighborhood parks was to like create equity throughout the park system so that buildings could be fixed. So like infrastructure wasn't falling apart in North Minneapolis, but it was looking good in other parts of the city, right? like I'm I'm certain that that was what they gathered around. And then I recently worked on something around parkways because certainly the parkways were terrible in some parts of the city. And then you had like Kings Highway took all the money years ago and was fixed and people were sticking post-it notes on my door on Theo Worth Parkway when I was a parks commissioner. Right. So like um I I guess I'm trying to understand what do you think an alternative to be with that to be for that if we don't have the ability to pull that money and use that equity metrics for like the park structures the park ways. What do you see as an alternative to what what the ordinance says right now? >> So let me just be clear. I'm not saying what you just said. I'm not saying that neighborhood parks are very important and I I think that the equity metrics that the park board has developed are are probably nationleading and are great and they that should continue to happen. But they're leaning on that as the reason for not coming to us with their entire budget. We see no projects that are funded by any other source than those MPP20 $20. And they're saying, "We can't give you any more than the projects that we're going to fund with the dollars we're getting because we have this system we have to follow. And if you tell us we should do number five as number three, now we have a problem." And our response is, we acknowledge that you've got this system you've got to use, but nothing we do um is binding. It's advisory. You can take it under advisement and decide, okay, maybe there's they found something here and we should adjust things a little bit, or maybe they shouldn't. Um, and I guess part of this is, like I said, trying to align the MP what the MP20 ordinance says about all of that with um, what chapter 35 says click is supposed to do. I think there is actually some contradiction there, right? That it says that we're not supposed to duplicate somebody else's evaluation process. So, there's no point in us saying, "Yep, Parkboard has said here's the equity metrics. Here's what they ought to do. Stamp, go ahead." There's no point in that. but rather having there be enough flexibility so that they can take what we say under advisement and maybe make adjustments and maybe not. >> So you're not saying you want to change the ordinance. You're saying you want to talk to the park board. >> I mean essentially you want to meet with the park board and have an opportunity to discuss like what their future is because I thought I heard you say the ordinance. >> Yeah, I did. I I think there's a conflict between that ordinance and chapter 35 that that that defines click's role. So, I think it's beyond click. It's up to you guys or or the mayor to have a discussion with the park board and see if there's a way to figure out how to adjust that conflict. And that might be as simple as um the city attorney's office and the the attorney for the park board may be able to come up with a different interpretation and you don't have to touch any ordinances just interpret it slightly differently than it's being interpreted now. I mean honestly right most committees uh most departments don't really like budgeting right so to the extent that you can provide the projects you want and not go under any scrutiny why wouldn't you do that right and so that's what they're doing they're using these arguments to to further a position that they like but you know it's not serving the click process well >> I'm so confused I'm I'm going to set up a meeting with you sir >> I would be more than happy to meet with not only you but any any of you that want to discuss anything that I'm talking about or just want more of a primer, I'm I'm more than happy to do that with any of you. >> I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Thank you. Finally, I'll recognize Council Member Whiting. >> Thank you, Chair Chugai, and thank you for the presentation. It's really helpful as someone that is brand new to this process and and really trying to get kind of into the weeds of what this is. And so, thank you for the work and to the members of our of our click team or committee. Uh it's a lot and in reading through the report one, thank you for putting it together. It's helpful uh to kind of go through that to actually get your wrap your head around uh this work. Uh just kind of questions related to um how you prioritize and make uh recommendations. Uh I'm looking at a few and I was I was looking at the oh goodness the kind of in the individual sections of like the the capital projects uh particularly for like the property services capital projects um and then looking at clicks recommendations of the dollar dollar amounts allocated to those uh when a click recommendation is let's use for example north side community safety center um has a higher rating than South Minneapolis Community Safety Center, but zero dollars were allocated to the north side community safety center, whereas there's the $3 million allocated the like why you would think, you know, logically that if it's zero dollars allocated, it would have a lower recommendation than one that has a higher recommendation, but no dollars are allocated to it. Can you just kind of explain where that exists or why it exists? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. Um, so we'll back up. When we have 33 members, each individual member rates individually all 134 projects. The budget office takes those numbers and aggregates them into an aggregate score. And that's what you're seeing in the report is the aggregate score that reflects what all 30 well this year 23 of us thought. Having said that, if you look at that, um, it goes out to onetenth of a point, right? Because there's a whole bunch of these. If you look, the way our process works is we start by picking a cuto off score and saying if you're above this score, you're funded. If you're below this score, you're not funded. That tends, depending on the year, that tends to be somewhere in the 150 to 160 range out of a total point um system of 300. But the reality is that some of those projects are separated by tents, which are not meaningful, right? Nobody's scoring on tenths. It's just the way the numbers worked out. So, um I'm really glad you brought this up because there's been a an impression in the past um by uh the city council, not this city council, um past ones that um if you don't like one of our recommendations, you can just drop down the list to the next one and say, "Oh, well, that's the next one that we should put in." It's not how it works. Um it's a combination of a whole bunch of things. It's the score for sure. The reality is sometimes it's what fits with the budget. We have a hole in 2028 and there's $2 million that we need to spend to get to the maximum and there's a project that needs $2 million in 2028, but it's 10 points below the cutoff. There's a motion made and that gets in because of that. So, it's a there's a whole bunch of pieces to this that you know, it's classic sausage making. >> Yeah, that that's really helpful. Thank you. And I guess the the only other one is more a more specific question related to the Southside Community Safety Center. Um it one I thought we were done funding it. I think that is maybe my question. I see there's a $3 million allocation for 2027. Um what do you know what that allocation is for? I can't see that the details on here and maybe that's an email I can note to staff but >> sorry which project again? >> Yeah. So, if we go into >> Southside. >> Yeah. So, property services capital projects. Um, it should be PSD31, I believe. >> I'm going to pull it up here. >> Thank you. So, here it is. Um, it's probably not going to tell me exactly why. >> Mhm. >> Um, there's additional funding requested. I can tell you that this often happens. Um, and I'm not throwing anybody under the bus. You know, doing this kind of stuff is uncertain work, right? Costs go. You know, I I gave you this example with inflation at 2%. If you talk to public works, I'm confident they'll tell you that the inflation rate on the some of the work they do is well over 2%. Right. And so it could be something as simple as that. Some unanticipated needs. So here it is. Here's the $3 million in 2027. >> Yeah. But sorry, I can't give you any more detail than than that. Public works, I'm sure, can that is helpful. Thank you. >> Um, council member, um, I can the CFO address this question around why the >> there's a $3 million allocation in 2028 for the community or the Southside safety center. >> Yeah. And it looks like it says like the bulk of it is in construction costs, >> I think. >> But but the council member does bring up an important point that the the council has decided not to move forward with this project. So, how come it's in the capital budget? >> That's the core of the question here. >> Well, this was a a request for >> not for you, for staff. So, sorry, >> the chair, council member Whiting. The reason for the $3 million extra is just simply because they need more revenues based on the estimate that they arrived at for the South Community Safety Center. Um, there's no specific reason as to what uh, you know, they're not technically building a certain specific item with $3 million. just for the general purpose of the overall building. >> Thank you. >> Perfect. Thank you. And so and that's additional construction costs than were anticipated it looks like based on the estimates. >> Correct. Or or potential soft costs such as it infrastructure or furniture. >> Helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you. And I'm sorry. Um I mixed up South Minneapolis Community Safety Center with Training and Wellness Center in my head. So >> yeah, a lot of different names for >> Yep. I'm caught up now. Um I'm not seeing anyone else in Q. So I um want to thank you, Chair Bernstein, again for being here today. Um I will I will note this is the most robust conversation we've had about the click annual report. Um in my memory, we've spent uh about an hour in discussion here and it's been very very robust. So, I want to thank the members of the committee for being so incredibly engaged um here today and and want to extend um a heartfelt thank you to you and to um all 23 currently uh members of the capital long-range improvement committee for your work and your deliberation this year. >> Thank you. And I agree. I think this is easily the most robust conversation we've had about this while I've been chair. And I'd also like to very briefly recognize the um folks in the budget office and the finance department that support the work we do. They do a really great job. >> Thank you. >> Um with that, I will ask the clerk to file this report. We've got three more items to get through on our agenda today. Um so our next item is receiving a presentation on the 2026 second quarter financial status report on select city funds. for this. I will invite our city controller, George Hardgrove, to begin the presentation. Welcome and thank you. >> Um, yes. Thanks, uh, Chair Chugai and city council members. Give me a sec. Excuse me. I'll get the presentation going. Okay. So, to start off with, um, we'll, um, uh, kind of switch to the operating budget here, which, uh, um, I have, uh, deputy controller Lang here as well, too, that'll cover some of the general funds, but this is mainly about the about the about the operating budget. So anyway, just to kind of go over the overview of the presentation, um just remind the city council that um that uh this is a point in time report as of June 30th or so. The figures are unudedited. We have one audit a year. Um so the fourth quarter eventually becomes audited. Um so it is subject to change as the year progresses and finance um certainly would invite anyone to you know come and uh check in if you know if uh if uh you need the latest information or anything like that as the numbers uh do tend to change especially for things like payroll and things like that because people are hired and and uh people leave the city and things like that that can cause the forecast to change throughout the year. So, our agenda today um we'll cover some uh key uh key items, key uh takeaways, some of the most important things. Uh we'll go through uh spend quite a bit of time on the general fund today. We'll also cover some of the other funds that you see here, the special revenue funds, internal service funds, uh enterprise funds, and then finally uh to conclude, we'll uh I'd like to go through the our uh planning worksheet for our general fund uh balance and then uh the budgetary control report as well too that's contained in our annual financial policy. So, some of the key uh takeaways today, um uh I'd start off with just saying um not much has changed since I was here um on May 4th to talk about the city finances. We did give a little preview of uh 2026 at the time. Um it's fairly similar now. It's within about $2 million our forecast. Um so, we continue to spend down the general fund. Um we're uh projected to spend down about $49 million. will certainly cover that in more detail. And then we think at year end we'll have to restrict about 2.2 million of public safety aid. Uh our I'm happy to say that our self- insurance fund continues to improve. Expect that um to go uh up about $23 million at year end in terms of our assets. And then we're hopeful uh barring any unexpected uh legal cases or things like that that the liabilities may may drop at the end of the year. But uh but uh we'll uh start working on that uh uh late this year. Um as I mentioned before, the general fund does show a spend down of about $49 million. Uh we talked about the public safety aid. Um departments over budget that we project the end of the year are all in the public safety area of the city, the police department, fire, 911, and the office of uh community safety. And then finally, um if you look at our the book value of our cash and investments, um as of June 30th, it was about 1.02 billion dollar, that's about a 7% decrease from or about $71 million decrease from last year at this time. And again, that kind of mirrors the general fund uh draw down. And then uh moving on to talk about um some of our fund balances in a little bit more detail. Um you know some of the issues that we see um and also in terms of our net position and uh just just to just to kind of explain um fund balance is really like equity um like uh in the private sector that would be like stock or retained earnings. So that's a little different than net position where we um add in our net investment and capital assets, but they're um in some ways kind of related uh related measures. So finally, our self- insurance fund. Um it does have a negative about $135 million um negative uh net uh net position at as of last year. We do think that'll go improve by at least $23 million and we'll look at the liabilities on that. Uh moving on, our engineering materials and testing lab and public works is slightly under the target of by about a couple hundred thousand for its uh net position. They should have about 400,000. It's about 200,000. I do believe they're looking at the rates there as well. And then we have a new area this year for 2026. That's our traffic camera citation area. That's a special revenue fund. We believe that at year end we'll show a deficit of about $141,000 or so. Although the hope is that that the revenues will improve as we uh undertake collection procedures for uh some of the citations that we're having to you know trouble getting people to pay those as well too. So we do tend to I do believe we're going to step that up. Uh the next one is the CPAD Enterprise River Terminal. That's always been on my detailed report kind of towards the end of the of the package that we send out, but I did feel that I should move that into the presentation at this time. That does have a negative net cash balance of about $4 million or so. And the net position has started to go negative now cuz uh it has a cash deficit that's more than the value of the land itself, too. So, um, that's certainly something that we're talking to our CPAD area about that as well, too. And then finally, I did talk about the general fund. We're projecting a net fund balance at the end of the year of about $88 million. That's about $22 million under our uh policy. So, about uh 13 14% or so versus our policy of 17%. >> Mr. Hardgrow, before you continue, can you just tell us what this River Terminal Enterprise Fund is? >> Um, yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Chair Chug Tai. I believe it's related to it's a upper harbor terminal. Um I think it's like leased out. We get lease revenue for it, but it does have some cost to it too, like property tax we have to pay as well as um like uh property maintenance cost and things, maintenance, things like that. So, it's uh I believe it's I think it's where the amphitheater is is going. I see Jane shaking her head. So, yeah. Yeah. All right. So, moving on. Uh, just in terms of external review, um, as of last year, at the end of the summer, the city, um, retained its AAA bond rating for all three major rating agencies. Um, we met with the rating agencies, uh, last week. Um, we do, uh, believe, uh, our CFO office will issue a announcement very soon on that. We're just waiting for the rating agencies to make everything, the summaries public at this time. So, um we should uh get that that should all be public very shortly. Now, um in terms of our annual audit, um we uh did receive a good audit opinion, a clean audit. Um there was I happy to report there's no serious audit findings. That's a a little unusual at least in my career. There's two different types of audit findings. There's one that's called a significant deficiency. We have a few of those and a few verbal ones. But then there's a worse one called material weaknesses. and I'm happy to say um we don't have any this year. If we can get by another year with that, then we'll move into like a lowrisk audit for the federal government. So, um we're working on that. And then finally, the 2025 AFER was issued on time uh before the end of June around June 25th or so. And then, uh a big issue uh for us in finance here, especially on the federal grant end, is our uh is these OM um potential rule changes. We're very concerned about that. Um it just seems to us that it would uh lessen the objectivity of the federal government awarding grants and introduce more uh political elements into that. Um it does appear that the Senate the federal senate did um in their initial uh bill um to fund the federal government has um put those on hold, but that's just their proposal. So we continue to monitor that. The city um made sure we uh contribute, you know, send comments to the OM director out in Washington. And at this point, I'll invite uh Deputy Lang, Deputy Controller Lang to the podium, and you'll talk a little bit more about the general fund. >> Thank you very much, Controller Hargo, and good afternoon, city council. Uh yeah, my name is Rob Lang. I'm the deputy controller. Um and I monitor and report on the general fund, which we'll be going through. So to start uh cash balance, we are um projected to end the year at $126 million in the general fund. This is about a $49 million decrease. On that um related note, the fund balance, which is assets less liabilities, equals your fund balance, almost like net worth, um is going from 137 million down to $88 million projected. Uh around May 4th, we projected about 87 million. So this is about in the same projections as we presented um at the last report the 17% minimum fund balance requirement. So we are to maintain a 17% of the 2026 budgeted expenditures less transfers and a couple internal service charges. At the end of 2025 we were above our minimum policy. At the end of 2026, we are forecasting that will be about 14% or about $22 million under our financial policy. And why is that important? Well, the general fund provides us the most uh ability to quickly and nimly react to situations throughout the city. And when the general fund is above its minimum policy, we are more able to react in that way. Uh when it's under the policy, um we have to use those funds generally to keep operations continuing. So it is important to continue to look at this policy and move forward. So general fund revenues here we have the primary revenues we have budget the projected 2026 balance and then over and under budget. So property taxes we are projected to be $9.3 million under budget. I will say that this is about a 97.5% collection rate which is an improvement um from the last two years. So, we are seeing collection increase. Additionally, I will say that about $7 million of non-collection, that's about 2% is in our contingency budget. So, the net amount is about $2.3 million that we're not collecting. That was part of the budgeted um process. Service charges were $3.5 million favorable. This mostly relates to the work public uh public works does um for charges for services to both internal and external clients. Very similar to last year. franchise fees. We have had 10% growth forecasted um year-over-year from 25 to 26. However, the budgets a little bit more than our current growth is that we're seeing licenses and permits. There's two main drivers for this $7 million decrease. Driver one, building permits. We have seen from 22 to 23 where we had a bit of a high, a decrease in the building permits issued and therefore the revenue associated with it. Second part, um, Operation Metro Surge. Um, we as a city decided that there were certain license fees that we wanted to, uh, not collect to help those businesses. Moving on down to other revenues, uh, $2.4 million unfavorable. Primary driver here is interest. We have less cash than we thought we might have at this point when we created the 26 budget. Less cash, less interest. Here on this slide, I just want to highlight the different revenues that we do collect and in particular just highlighting that property taxes is about 50% of the general fund revenues. Uh the other portion state aid is about 17th of the general fund revenues we collect. So as we try to rightsize our budget, we have to be mindful of where our revenues are that we that are that they come from. So let's flip over to the other side. General fund expenditures. Here again we have the 26 budget 26 projected and the overunder development health and livability. This includes CPED health department regulatory services. We're under budget uh by about $6.7 million. This is mostly a timing of projects when we're actually going to expend on certain projects for this. So, usually in a normal year, this would be something we'd look at that might be considered for a rollover into future years, but we'll have to keep an eye, especially as we have low fund balance, the viability of these. Uh, moving on down to public works, $6.2 million over budget. Very similar story to 2025. They are collecting about 6.2 two to 6.3 million more in charges for services as well as some state revenue uh offsetting to a netneutral amount. Public safety $26.4 million unfavorable over budget. We'll get into the individual departments here shortly. And then finally all other expenses $1.6 million over budget. That mostly is just the contingency fund. We have $14 million contingency which we don't apply costs to directly. We apply those to the departments. So that's the 14 million contingency offset by the settlement agreement that we'll see on the next pages that has about $3.4 million of unbudgeted expenditures to uh satisfy the settlement agreement from prior years. I also want to highlight here um the various department groupings that drive most of the expenditures and here you'll see that public safety is over 50% of what the general fund pays for. Uh after that would be CPAD and health is another large driver. Uh the important takeaway here is that if public safety as the bigger part of the general fund are unfavorable on the budget, we get into the situation we currently are in with um fund balance. Whereas if like a legislative department was unfavorable, we might not necessarily be in the situation we're seeing. On this slide, I want to highlight the trends that I have been seeing on the expenditures to budget over the years. So, uh, on the last bar here, you'll see in green is the average of the last three years and in blue is this year's, um, spend to budget. In particular, of the last three years average, we spent about 94% of our budgeted expenditures. It's gone up from 90% to 94 to 97. And now we're seeing here at this year 101.8% 8% of our budget expenditures uh primarily driven by our our largest grouping public safety. And the big slide, it's a little blurry, I apologize. Uh I wanted to put this slide in front of you as this shows every single department in the general fund, its budget, um its year-to- date actuals, its year-end projected, and finally in blue, that is the overunder on the budget. So before we get into the red, let's talk about the black. Uh we'll see here that um p excluding public safety, every other department in the city is currently forecasted to be under budget. Um I will also say that on the very last column, they're not under budget by a lot. You'll see most of them, they're 99% of budget, 98% of budget. Only three of these departments are under 90% budget utilization. Um and and that's due to it's it's a hard budget year for a lot of the departments right now. Um they're having to do their normal work with a little bit less. And so uh I just want to express a gratitude to all these department heads that are in uh these departments for the work that they've been doing to maintain just being under budget and the sacrifices they've had to make in their departments to do this. Moving on down, um let's talk about some of the public safety departments we have here. So, fire department, $6.2 million over budget, same thing as the prior 5 years overtime. Um there is about $1.1 million in contractual as well driving this um for equipment and things of that nature. Office of Community Safety is a little over budget. $71,000 is projected to be over budget. primary driver here a little bit. They had some unemployment compensation. There's some fringe um elections and there was some costs in 25 that didn't actually get realized until 26 driving this uh small over budget in the office of community safety police. We are forecasting $21.6 million over budget similar to prior year. Uh it's vastly overtime. I will say about four million of it is is contractual as well. Uh, one thing I want to say about overtime is that in 2025 they spent about $32 million in overtime. We're forecasting right now about 2122 million in overtime. So there has been a decrease in that cost uh despite the fact that we did have operation metro surge. Um, some of that driver is of course um critical uh C csot I can't think of the acronym name for it right now. that that cost uh two times the rate and in 26 we don't have that. So that is part of the driver but some of that also is just um additional review of these overtimes. 911 um they are now joining the list um for the first time in a very long time when talking to the department head. Unfortunately this is also overtime. A little bit different of a reason though. Um, for 911, we have a new leave, paid family medical leave, and this department in particular has a bit higher of a utilization of this leave, and we still need people to answer the phones. So, we have overtime costs negatively impacting 911, resulting in a half million projected overspend. And then the last one I want to discuss is uh the settlement agreement that is $3.4 million. And this is uh unbudgeted contracts to uh satisfy the settlement agreement. With that, I will pass this back over to George Hardgrove. Thank you. >> Yeah, thanks uh Deputy Controller Lang. Um yeah, I'll talk about a little bit about some of the other uh funds um non-general fund. Um the first one is special revenue funds. What are special revenue funds? They're generally funds that have to be restricted um due to external restrictions um that that are that are are given to the city um you know when we when we accept the money. Uh for example, the downtown assets fund is one. There's many state laws that uh that uh dictate kind of how that how that can be spent. Um we have and obviously that funds the convention center. We have the police forfeite fund, a neighborhood and community relations fund. Uh regulatory services grant funds is a major one. Uh CPAD as well has special revenue funds. Um just looking at kind of the big picture here. Um we project at year end 2026 we'll have about 380 million or so in fund balance and about 334 335 million in cash. Um that's a decrease of about 30 million um from the 2025 year end. A lot of that's in the downtown special um assets fund um that that's uh we've increased the uh transfers to the general fund. So that's had an effect there. In addition, um CPED has um has projects underway um that sometimes has to rely on balances from the past. You know, these are things like affordable housing, economic development type projects. And if you look at the detail here, this shows the the balance. You know the first line on every area is the cash balance. The second line is our fund balance. Um so you can see the 2025 actual in the middle column and then we project it but it'll be end at the 2026. You can see again um decreases in the in the downtown assets. You know that's the first three uh three funds mentioned here. Convention center, target center, downtown assets. very little change on the rest of them other than um other than CPAD where you can see about 11 million decrease caused by moving forward on multi-year projects as well too. Then we're moving on to our internal service fund uh family. Um these are these are funds that uh fund departments that primarily sell their services internally. Uh examples of that are the engine materials and testing lab that we talked about earlier, our fleet area, our property services area, our public works stores that maintains uh store rooms with uh materials, uh our IT area, self- insurance fund are certainly some of the bigger ones that we have in this case. Um, we're projecting at the end of the next year a net position of $49 million or so and then at the end of 2026 have about $263 million in cash and our self- insurance fund is the biggest driver of the difference between those two amounts given the large liabilities there. However, um this is about a $23 million improvement since 2025. Um, again, if we uh if we look at the actual funds themselves, you can see very little change except the very last line there next to the total. You can see the self- insurance fund about $23 million up um as we uh as we as we continue to build cash reserves there as well. And then of course that'll reduce um our uh our net position at the end to get that closer I should say increase it actually get us closer to zero from a negative a negative standpoint. And then uh moving on we also have enterprise funds. I know John from uh you know from the click group talked a little bit about this in terms of their capital projects which uh you know these are capital intensive areas in general. Again, these funds sell uh goods and services outside of the city primarily. Um certainly a lot of there's a lot of those in public works, solid waste, parking, uh storm water, water, you know, things like that. And of course, CPAD we talked about a little bit. That's that river terminal project that's considered an enterprise fund. That that's really the only one that CPED has. And you can see here it's a little bit more stable. um at the end of 26 projecting a net position of about 127 million and cash of about 126 million or so roughly a decrease of 17 or 18 million from the 2025 year end. If you look at some of the details here um you can see as I mentioned um or I should say the storm water is uh going down uh generally due to to funding capital projects. Um otherwise um most the rest of them have held pretty steady. Um you can certainly see our solid waste area as well too is decreasing somewhat as as their costs have increased and uh and there is um some uncertainty there too in terms of what's going to happen to the herk plant and things like that. So we continue to watch that fairly carefully. So moving on, we'll take just one last look at the general fund before we conclude the presentation here. I want to just walk through our planning worksheet. We did a two-year version last year that had 20 2025 on it. Now I've taken off 2025 and we're just looking at 2026. So you can see last time I was here from the May meeting, we were projecting about 140 141 million or so as the fund balance. Um the auditors asked us to move the North Commons the $3 million payment back into 25. So for our financial statements, that's the figure that matches our AFER that I mentioned earlier, 137 million or so, roughly about 21% of the target. And then we just look at the forecasted revenues. Um you can see that's about 691 million. Then we have expenses forecasted about 740 million that uh deputy controller Lang went through. We do project we'll have to restrict about 2.2 million in public safety aid. So that's about a $51 million um reduction or so in the unassigned fund balance. And you compare that to the target. Um we calculate that at about 110 million. That would give us the 17%. So you can see at the end of the year um we'll be about $24 million under the target right around 86 million of unrestricted general fund balance which would equate to about 13% or so. So less than our 17% target. Just going through some of the major categories. Why does that go down? Uh some of it was a planned use of fund balance and budgeting. That was about 9.2 million. And then we have overspending um by departments that deputy controller Lang went through. That's about $13 million. We have less revenue than budget. That's about 145 million. Uh but I will say about 7 million of that was planned because we know we're not going to get all the property tax. We did uh plan for about a 2% um delinquency factor there, but still, you know, it's um it's just money we're not going to get from the original um the original allocation of the or the original estimate for the property tax. And then um there was another about $12 million appropriated out of the general fund balance um as we uh you know, I say earlier this year or so. So that got us that those total up to about the $49 million and it's going down. And then lastly, um this is the budgetary control report that um financial policy 1.3 that the council adopted at the end of December of last year. Um it asked our uh the controllers's office to come with a report showing um departments over budget and the general fund. And so you can see the as deputy controller Lang mentioned the fire department about 6 million over office community safety about 71,000. Police did get a little better from last time, about 21.7 million. 911 about 550,000 over budget. And then finally, our settlement costs that weren't budgeted at all for 26, that's about 3.4 million or so. And then finally, there's one last department, public works. They're going over 6.3 million in expense, but they also are planning on bringing in 6.7 million more in revenue. This is generally work for others and so they have to incur the expense in order to bill it out. So cashwise they're actually improving the general fund by about a little less than $400,000. So with that that concludes our uh presentation today. Uh Deputy Couture Lang and myself are can stand on for any questions at this point. Thank you. >> Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Hardgrove and Mr. Lang. Um, are there any questions from colleagues? I will first recognize council member Vita. >> Thank you, Sher Chuck Tai. I just had one quick question. Thank you for the presentation. Always grateful for your uh presentations. You said that 911 is um over and it's primarily around the paid family leave. Is that affecting other departments too? even even if they're not over. Is that um something that is affecting other departments also? >> Um yes, thank you council member Vita. Um it is. However, the difference between say finance or HR or attorney's office or any other department in the general fund that might have somebody go on paid family medical leave is that uh we can reorganize that work. either someone else might be able to take it on or their manager might just work overtime but their their salary and so that's not going to impact the general fund budget for 911 and fire and police things like paid family medical leave adversely impact the the fund balance because we need to have someone there and they're not salaried they would get overtime for that. >> Thank you. And so it's being worked out in other departments. people are being moved around or so we're not going to be expecting some huge expenses at the end of the year for those departments. >> Those expenses are considered in my forecast that I have monthly meetings with the department heads and as part of that we go through um their their labor force and we have discussions of well this person might be going on leave. Do you plan on backfilling them? Yes. All right. Let's put that into our forecast that we're going to have a a 8week 10 week um backfill. So, uh, to answer, no, I don't think you're going to see a significant jump in, uh, other department expenses related to paid family medical leave as it's already baked into the forecast. >> Okay. And but this this could continue to happen with like 911 and um fire and police because people are entitled to this timeout and we have to have someone I mean it's only going to be an option of overtime in these in these three departments. >> That is correct. It is not something I necessarily think will go away. I think it's something that we have to anticipate for and um consider in our budgeting process that we're now engaged in. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Council Member Rainville followed by Council Member Chowry. >> Thank you, Chair. Uh just go back to uh so first of all, thank you for your presentation. It's very thorough uh somewhat easy to understand. you do speak a little different vocabulary than I do, but uh to be really specific and and I don't think you have this answer today, but I'm I'm curious. It will help us in our budgeting here on the council. Uh fire and police paid family uh medical leave. Uh you had talked about 911, and that's easy to understand, but how is it impacting our fire and police departments? If if you don't have an answer off the top of your head, I understand. and maybe you know down the road or so we got someone stepping forward. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Uh thank you very much. I'd like to introduce Luke from the fire department. >> Yeah. >> Thank you madam chair and members of the committee. I'm Luke Scardali. I'm the finance director for fire council member Rainville. Um so that leave is not impacting fire as greatly as maybe we anticipated or as um as as thought at least not yet. We are still most greatly impacted by PTSD leave. That is a significant there are probably four times as many members out on that leave than on the family medical leave. Uh thank you. Is it even possible to put a number on PTSD family paid family just a rough number uh for fire and police that we could anticipate? So, Madame Chair, Council Member Rainville, do you mean numbers in terms of dollars or number of individuals? >> The overtime expense. >> So, the overtime expense, it's it's difficult to quantify here on the spot. We could do some analysis, but just as a um to put it in perspective, we have roughly 25 people out on PTSD leave right now. And so we run three shifts. Um 20 two 24-hour shifts or 48 hour shifts. So if you say there's eight or nine people on each shift out on leave, and we have to backfill each of those people, um roughly backfilling one individual in the fire department for a 24-hour shift is $1,500. So eight a day, that's $12,000 a day. So you can kind of take that number and you know extrapolate it out um to be you know quite a significant expense and that that that's creating quite a strain on the department obviously we see that um in the financial statements >> right and thank you and I'm not asking for a a hard number today but just eventually in a couple weeks as we go through our budget process we have to understand what type of overtime is going to be anticipated ative whether it's fire, police, or 911. So we can factor that into our decision making. >> Madame Chair, Council Rainville, yes, we can certainly put something together for that that kind of gives a projection um based on where we've been the last two or three years with PTSD leave. We don't see it slowing down. Um I also feel it's important to uh to state that we have gotten reimbursements from the state for our PTSD leave. Now, they don't reimburse us for the back fill, but they do reimburse us for the members who are out on leave. And this year, we have gotten 1.8 million in reimbursements. That's not reflected in the 6.2 million. It actually falls into a revenue category, but it is a direct reimbursement of individuals who are out on leave. So, that does provide a little bit of relief in my eyes off of that $6.2 million number. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Council Member Chowry. >> Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, you're just about to sit down. I was just going to ask you, when do those reimbursements usually come into effect? >> Madam Chair, Council Member Chowry. Um, so the state has been picking up the pace on those. Excuse me. um they had been lagging quite a bit like we were getting a reimbursement 12 to 18 months after the time frame but they've picked up to the point where the we have gotten a couple reimbursements this year that have caught them up to I believe the end of 25 or close the end of 25. So, we would still be looking at reimbursements um all the way up through this point in 26. And um based on where those numbers have been running recently, that's probably about a million dollars. >> Okay. Now, that's assuming the state continues to have money to fund those reimbursements because, you know, at some point um I'm this is a this is a a leave that's running pretty hot probably throughout the entire state and and we're not aware of how many how much in terms of amount of funding that the state has to continue to fulfill that. >> And then do they reimburse? It it sounds like they don't reimburse all at once. like what's the caden in cadence in which they reimburse? >> Madam chair, council member Chowry. Um so human resources actually in charge of filing for these reimbursements and I believe we file for them in either in six months increments or maybe a little bit longer. Um, as I said, at first the state was relatively slow in providing reimbursements, but they have picked up um the pace here in 2026 and so we're a little more confident that their reimbursements are coming in a little more timely fashion. >> Okay, thank you so much. >> Thank you. I had a couple of questions. Um, in regards to uh the general fund expenditures, the ones in red, we covered 911 pretty thoroughly and we covered fire. So, I was wondering at uh um for OCS, could you detail a little bit more of what were the costs that were not um planned for and that led to that overage? >> Absolutely. Um thank you very much, Council Member Chandry. Uh so, on page seven of the detailed report is um an explanation of each one of the ones that are over budget. um couple paragraphs on this. And so for Office of Community Safety in particular, um the forecasted overspend is due primarily to unemployment compensation payout. Um and remember, we're talking about $71,000 here. So, uh a compensation payout like that for a couple tens of thousands eats into that. Additionally, they had higher health insurance costs. Um we budget uh kind of a blended rate when it comes to health insurance, which is very expensive for the city. uh whether you're a family or an individual can have that impact. And so if you wait more towards family um that's going to start eating into your budget and all of a sudden you have to supplement your budget to offset uh insurance costs. So that's part of it as well. And then finally there was costs committed um which I don't have the number in front of me right now. I can get that for you. um that was uh committed to be spent in 25 but was spent in 26 um and so ended up hitting their 26 budget negatively. And um there's not necessarily too much wiggle room in the Office of Community Safety to uh budget in order to help factor that in or to offset that I should say. >> Okay, got it. Thank you so much. And then um I'm looking at the page seven, but I'm also asking just so we can have a more public conversation about it. For MPD, you mentioned um overtime, of course, but then also contractual services. What were those contractual services? >> So, the the list of of accounts that are over budget on contractual services is actually pretty long for police, uh unfortunately. So um you know as I have here I can list the few that I I identified as one of the larger ones. >> Um and so you know we have telephone IT services, vehicle maintenance, utilities, operating supplies, equipment training, other professional services. At the end of the day, um there is perhaps some trueing up of some of their contractual services within uh for what we budget and provide them. And then on the same side, looking to see what's necessary to be spent on and coming to uh something that can align closer to the resources the city has. >> Okay, great. And then moving out of the general fund, I wanted to ask you to define uh what that you you said it was like this is like a bad thing for an audit for the auditor to find the state auditor. Could you define what a m what material weaknesses are? >> Sure. >> Sure. Um yeah, a good example of that um yeah, thank you uh Chair Chug Chai and uh and council member Chowder. A good example of that is an issue we've had at the convention center. They have a software program called Momentous that runs convention center and as part of that there as um as thirdparty software providers have kind of uh evolved um the auditing standards require that they get a what's called a sock one type two report where the auditors go in and make sure that um you know these uh these third party software um companies you know are following the proper internal controls this it's that the system's secure they're not like safety off a scent or something here and there. >> So, the first year that we found out about this, we didn't do any compensating, you know, work or anything like that. And we got what was called a material weakness finding, just saying, you know, hey, you're doing business with you need to get the software company to give us the report cuz we don't really know, you know, is it is the software good? And and so after that, um, Deputy Controller Lang, um, and his staff did some what's called, um, you know, did did our own like audits of the of the software to try to prove that, yeah, it does appear to be working. And so the auditors like took that into account and said, "Okay, we'll give you a lesser finding this year called a significant deficiency." And so they decreased it because we did extra work. Um but um unfortunately that doesn't get us out of the audit findings alto together. It just decreased the severity of it. Um but uh but that hopefully that's a good example kind of of the differences between these two different types of audit findings. >> Yeah, that's really helpful. And then you had mentioned the OM rules that is supposed to those aren't in effect. Those go into effect later in the fall, right? We don't know what to contend with. So, how how are we yeah, how is your departments kind of anticipating what could happen? What's the work being done? >> Uh, yeah, Chair Chugai, uh, Council Member Chowdery. Yeah, very good question. Um, yeah, the original plan by the Office of Management Budget at the federal level was to implement those starting in October. >> That may or may not happen. Like I said in the continuing resolution in the Senate, they did uh I think it was bipartisan. They did uh you know ask the OM to hold off on those rule changes. The House version does not have that in there. So the way I take it is that it may or may not be suspended depending on who wins out there in Washington or so. And so it still could take effect in um October. However, if that occurs, I I suspect there'll be significant litigation across the country. Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you so much. Those are my questions. >> Thank you, council member. Next, I will recognize Vice Chair Schaefer. Yes, I got a several there. They might feel a little random, but um I'll just go run through them here. Can you spec talk a little bit about the settlement agreement and why it was unbudgeted in 2026, and if that is the first year that we have had the settlement agreement budgeted for? Yeah. Um, invite Miss Denzek, deputy CFO. >> Welcome, Mr. Denza. If you'll begin with introducing yourself, please. >> Sure. Jane Denza, deputy CFO. Um, through the chair, vice chair Schaefer. Um, I jumped up here because I uh was here when we when we made those original decisions. So when we first um were starting to implement the settlement agreement back in 23 or so >> we had a really healthy fund balance and we had a lot of uncertainty around what exactly would be required by the terms of the settlement agreement and so we established a process of allowing for legally required spending um to happen from the fund balance. So, for example, the ALIFA contract is a known expense that will end once the settlement agreement has concluded. So, in an effort to keep that off the property tax levy, we had this process of paying for it through fund balance. So, that's some of what you're seeing in that table today. You'll notice in the mayor's recommended budget for 2027, we're moving away from that process for greater transparency to give you all an opportunity to vote on that um and to encourage the departments to bring forward more long range plans there. So, we're moving away from that process um hopefully in 2027. But for now, there are one-time expenses for things like trainings um getting through backlogs of um you know, police misconduct investigations and things like that that are comprising that dollar amount. >> Okay. So, for 2027, um we'll I'll look in there and find find that number. Um, and can you speak to like do you have a plan for how many years a settlement agreement will be forecasted out? I mean, can we kind of budget yearbyear so that we have an idea of how much we're spending and so that we can appropriate. I'm sure there'll be spikes in that in that investment through the years and planning appropriately for that. >> Yeah. Through the chair. I'll just speak to the finance part of this because I'm sure attorneys u maybe would want to weigh in on the the whole length of it. But I think for finance, we would anticipate asking departments involved in that implementation to uh reforcast annually through the budget process. What do you what expenses do you think you're going to need going forward? And can you um pivot any existing resources towards that work? So I think you shall you should anticipate seeing that annually from finance. Okay. And then it I mean I I think it could be helpful for us as a city to have the long range view. Um if we're just starting to look at it annually, that's a great start, but I think we also need to think about, you know, we've got the list of tasks. What is the appropriate playout of all of that dollar amount and where and when? Um so thank you. That's very helpful. Um can you speak to the trends in the self- insurance fund and give me a little more history around that? If I remember right, we were down. We're negatively, but we've been up 23 million this year in comparison to where we were. Is that what I understood you? And then can you can you speak to what the trends is that normal? Has that not been normal? >> Um, yeah. Uh, chair Chug Tai, uh, vice chair Schaefer. Um, yeah, in my two years here at the city, we started off with like a negative net position of about 80 million or so. I think going before that, um, a lot of this, you know, really came into focus with the George Floyd incident and things like that where there was significant liability. Um, since then, um, as I've talked to, uh, um, our our associates in the city attorney's office, I mean, there has been some inflation there. You know, we're kind of worried about jury awards. You never really know what'll be awarded at the time. That's caused things to go up. And so, um, even though we've been accumulating a lot of cash, um, we do have, you know, certainly a list of, you know, potential, uh, litigation, uh, estimates and things like what may what may or may not happen. And so, that did increase the liabilities, but as I mentioned earlier, we're hoping that, um, you know, this is just a hope right now, but that maybe those liabilities will start to decrease, and we're still building cash, so we can get that closer to zero. I will say it does meet the short-term policy. I mean, the financial policy doesn't require us to fully cover any potential loss. And um certainly we I mean it's not like we're going to lose every case or things like that as well, too. So, um over time, like I say, we're hoping that the that the liabilities, you know, maybe come down a little bit as well, too. >> Can you speak to Thank you very much. Can you speak to how these years of overtime are going to be affecting our future pensions for the city? >> That's a great question. >> Uh, thank you very much. Um, council member Schaefer, uh, I cannot speak to that um, very well. We'd have to come back with a a better analysis for you. There are certain there's there's a lot of pension calculations when it comes into these things, including how much um you earned during the year, but there is caps to these. Um so I think you'd be better served if we responded um at a later date. >> Yep. Thank you. Here's a little specific one. You said we had lost 7 million in permit and license um decreases. I'm just curious if you could speak to how much of that is, you know, less building permits and then how much of that was actually what we waved um because of impacts of operation metro surge if even if you had a rough estimate. Mhm. So that $7 million number is accumulation of a couple different revenue lines that I have on the detailed report on page nine. Um and so we do have business licenses and permits that's showing about $2.4 $4 million under budget and that is the line that we would capture a lot of the Operation Metro Surge um loss on there. And if I remember the uh resolution correctly, it was a $4 million um forgiveness or repayment back of those of those license fees. Um and so that's where that would be captured. So approximately I'm seeing about 2 2.4 4 million roughly. And then the other part of that though was um non-b businessiness license and permits. And here I'm showing 4.6 million. And this is where building permits land. And this is where we're seeing that portion of it. So I would approximately say about 2.5 million related to operation metro surge and about 4 million roughly for uh by business licenses. >> Okay. So about 23 building permits, I apolog for building permits and like plumbing permits and other things that are associated with that permitting. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> great. And I know that's been an area of um Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. Um that one was answered. >> That was my main questions. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Um, next I'll recognize Council Member Stevenson, followed by Council Member Chavez. >> Thank you. Um, I had a question about the departments that had underspent. Do you have any I'm looking here at arts and cultural affairs, uh, racial equity, inclusion, and belonging, and the neighborhood safety. Do you have any ideas what's going on with those? >> Thank you very much, Council Member Stevenson. Um, so we do have a workpaper showing each line um that they're not going to be spending on and uh I believe it might be more useful if I respond back um at a later date with a bit more detail for you on their underspending. Unfortunately, I focus more heavily on the overspending in my mind right now. >> Great. Thank you. Um and then council member Stevens and just for some context the neighborhood safety department's uh under spending um the the explanation that I have received from the office of community safety on this matter is it's related to um the the invoicing cycles um for the bulk of their contractual services which makes up the bulk of their budget. Um I think it's worth digging into more just to understand how much of that is the case versus where um where the department is just under spending over and over and over again. Um and then uh arts and cultural affairs has a similar contract related to the vibrant storefronts initiative. Um that could be the cause of it. But >> in writing a response would be helpful. Um but just wanted to quickly add some context >> and I will say that that is generally when you see these large budget savings it's mostly due to exactly um what was mentioned uh it's related to the timing of cash flows um with the idea being some of them might be rolled over into the future um if that was a possibility but yes >> awesome. Next I'll recognize council member Chavez. >> Thank you Chuck. I have a question. Going back to the license fee forgiveness, I think you mentioned $2.4 million. Is that correct? Or how much? >> Uh, that's how much I have here on my um line for all of the license fees and business because that resolution wasn't specific to every single business from my understanding. Um, so there the net effect that I'm having that I'm I'm forecasting anyways is about the 2.4. Correct. >> Okay. So then there will be around 1.6 6 million left >> at the end of the year or >> can can you >> My understanding is that these were automatic. >> Yeah. >> And we allocated $4 million towards this and it was automatic. The business didn't really have to do much. If they qualified, they qualified. >> So, I guess my question is, well, I have a lot of questions. If it was automatic, I'm guess why was there money left over? >> Uh, I will have to um get back to you on that. Uh, this is a year-long forecast. So, this forecast is assuming all transactions have taken place. Um, and so at the end of the year, we would have this $2.4 million shortfall, which you're then recognizing the 1.6 million variance from the resolution. Um, so I can revert back to my forecast for you and tell you where that offset is. >> Yep. And then my question is well my understanding is if there is going to be money left over here the goal was to help small businesses and one of the things that wasn't included that was advocating for was the forgivable loans of small businesses. This is nothing to do with you but I'm bringing it up right now. If we are having money that was not used allocated for license fees and we were advocating for forgivable loans for small businesses that are still being impacted by the occupation that happened in our city by the federal government. I guess this is a question for CPAD. I know CPAD's not here but why have we been alerted that there is still money left from this resiliency fund when businesses are still on the verge of collapsing? So that's a flag for CPE. I hope I can get an answer, but there are literally businesses that are going to close because they still cannot pay their rent. They still not can they cannot be above water. There's seems to be millions of dollars left in this fund. It went to license fees. I thought I thought they were all I thought it was all gone. I'm confused, but that's helpful. >> It might just be helpful to note here. Uh Mr. Can you speak to my understanding of the the the numbers that you presented around license fees is that you're demonstrating here's the revenue we were supposed to collect. Here's money we were supposed to take in and we didn't get it. >> That is correct. >> And we didn't get it for different reasons. So there isn't is there money like left over? or is it is it just essentially money that isn't coming in but was supposed but we'd initially planned on it. >> The uh thank you very much. Uh this does show that from our original budget and um the resolutions that's taken place, we have a budget showing what we want to collect. We are not collecting that amount um because of certain actions that have taken place. So for this instance, we had a plan for the city for the full year and that plan has now changed and now we have a shortfall. Uh and that's eating into our fund balance resulting in this um $88 million balance. So at the end of the day, if we decide another resolution to spend from here based off this forecast, you're eating into the $88 million fund balance with every new action. >> Okay. So I guess I have more questions now. So we allocated $4 million for these licency forgiveness. That's separate from now also $2.4 million that is also going over. I guess now I'm more confused >> separate pieces of information. Right. So there's what we've budgeted with the small business resiliency fund. We should disregard that for the purposes of this conversation because here what we're looking at is a completely different set of information that's telling us, hey, because we forgave a bunch of uh money that like $2 million $2.5 million worth of fees, we now don't have $2.5 million worth of revenue that we planned on having. >> Yes. But my question is, we forgave already $4 million of license fees, correct? And then we also are not going to be able to collect an additional $2.5 million that is being mentioned because now well I the question is very clear. What is that $2.5 million that we're not going to be able to collect? Is it because we forgave $2.5 million but we actually allocated $4 million for that? So there's confusion up here now. >> Absolutely. I'm sorry for the confusion, city council members. Um, so this forecast does include, if you'll see here in the budget, I mean, there's uh $15 million of budgeted license fees. And so it's an aggregate account of multiple different business licenses within here. And as part of the forecast we're looking at of why we're not collecting all $15 million, a portion of that is because of this resolution. Now, these can be offset by other revenues coming in from the business licenses fees, but this in particular is the primary driver of why we're not collecting all 15 million is because we decided not to. >> Okay. And then how much of the $4 million was actually used then? >> Uh, but we will have to get back to you on how much of $4 million is used to date. >> Great. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Excellent. Um, I am I have myself in Q last and just wanted to note a couple of questions. You're welcome to respond to them in writing. That's okay. Um, for the $3.4 $4 million for the settlement agreement. The the the um the report itself has like a really really specific number, so I'm sure it's coming from somewhere, but the explanation has the most broad language about a settlement agreement existing. And so I'm just wondering what that $3.4 million was spent on since it's such a specific number. Mhm. >> Um and then the second one was around the $4.1 million for MPD contractual services overspending. Um I mean these are all similar categories that have been brought up in the past. Still awaiting a response from MBD about their spending from 2025. I do see some concerning categories listed here like vehicle maintenance. Um and and there was another one because just the rumor mill is very active in this institution as we know and I've heard some really concerning things about what that could be. So it would be really helpful to get a very detailed and direct accounting as to where this overspend is coming from. And the thing I would really appreciate your help with is if you can usher along getting a response from MPD. I've tried asking. I'm still waiting to hear back. Perhaps if you ask, you might be more successful in getting an answer because I haven't been. Um, I'm not seeing anyone else in Q, so I will direct the clerk to file that report and we'll continue to item number four. Thank you both very much. >> Yeah, thank you. All right. Item number four is a presentation on the second quarter administrative FTE additions. For this, I will invite Bethlehem uh work to begin this presentation. Um members, as the presentation is getting pulled up, I will note um we have captioners until 4:30 p.m. Um and I I understand we're going to end up running late. We have a pretty full agenda today. So just if anyone here has a a deadline by which they need to leave here, if you could just teams me to let me know so we can have clarity about quorum and plan accordingly. Please begin. >> Thank you. Um, good afternoon, Chair Taktai and members of the budget committee. My name is Bethlehem Hollowwork and I am a budget and evaluation analyst with the finance and property services department. Um, I'm here to present on the 2026 second quarter FTE administrative ads that were included in the summary memo within the limbs file. Um so as mentioned during our Q1 presentation in May and shown in this slide there this quarterly report is provided in accordance with financial policy 1.5.3 and this requirement supports greater transparency around administrative changes to the city's budgeted FTE count. In quarter 2 of this year eight FTEEs were added administratively as shown on this slide when I hit next. Um, and I'll briefly summarize these by department. Um, I do want to note that administrative adjustments may increase a department's FTE count or it may simply reflect a change in funding source. Um, so for example, moving an existing grant funded position to the general fund does not change the department's overall FTE count. However, we still track and report these funding changes as shown in the emergency management example, which I'll start with. Um, so the emergency management department added two positions to the general fund that were previously supported by grant funding. This change better aligns the use of gr of this grant with its intended intended purpose. And to ensure the action remained budget neutral, the department moved an eligible project from the general fund to the grant. This does not increase the budget FTE count in the department overall. Next, the health department. Um, three FTEES were added administratively, one position in the special revenue fund and two positions in the general fund. The position in the special revenue fund is offset by grant revenues and funding for the two general fund positions were originally budgeted for in contractual services in 2026 with the attention intention to formally establish these positions. This action shifts the existing funding from the department's non-personnel budget to its personnel budget. And lastly, public works added three positions in a special revenue fund, and these positions are also fully offset by grant revenue. In addition to the administrative ads, um, two departments, the office of city clerk and the police department reduced their FTE count administratively, and these changes supported organizational and administrative adjustments intended to better meet the department's operational needs. short and sweet presentation. That concludes my presentation and I will stand for any questions. >> Thank you for this presentation. Um short and sweet, not a very small number of administrative umly added positions as well. So it makes a lot of sense. Um I will see if any council members have any questions on this item. I'm not seeing any. Um so thank you again for this presentation. I will ask the clerk to file that report. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Um that brings us to our final item which is a presentation regarding legislate the legislative budget processes. Um I will invite LRO director Andrew Hawkins to begin this presentation. All right. Um, Chair Shukai, uh, Chair Shuktai, Vice Chair Schaefer, members of the committee. My name is Andrew Hawkins. Uh, I'm here today in response to a staff direction that was given to LRO. Um on July 28th, the committee of the whole requested LRO conduct a review of comparable legislative budget processes um in comparable jurisdictions to identify any trends or best practices um and provide some examples for consideration. Um ultimately any specific legislative budget process uh should be reflective of the respective legislating body and designed to function effectively in each unique city environment. um with our first slide. Um although each city may begin and end its respective budget process um at different places in the calendar, we are able to isolate the core legislative budget processes um across examples to identify the overall timeline in each location. For the examples reviewed, general legislative budget processes range between one and two months. Um, in the case of Detroit, budget timelines were tightened uh due to the requirement that the city submit its budget through the state of Michigan Financial Review Commission, uh, which was created to monitor city compliance with the plan of adjustment, followed by a bankruptcy court ruling, um, in 2014. Um, one additional point of review was a length of time between the delivery of the mayor's proposed budget and council beginning department presentations. Um, this is considered to be pretty the common starting point across the legislative budget process. Um, this review noted that Seattle and Detroit had the shortest turnaround with presentations beginning just two days after the mayor uh delivered their proposed budget. Uh, Milwaukeeke's calendar showed eight days between mayor's proposed budget delivery um and department budget presentations commencing. Um, I will note just u relevant to our specific situation. Um, one of the unique um things that the city of Minneapolis has to accommodate for is the existence of an independent bet um and the additional parkboard um conversations um as they relate to the budget and the subsequent levy. Um so there like again with all of these timelines it's not necessarily going to be an apples to apples comparison because there's going to be unique environments that all of these cities have to operate in. Um additionally uh with the condensed processes um as lovely as the one to two month timelines seem um one thing that's definitely present there that I don't necessarily know we have reflected in our current process is there's a lot of coordination on the front end. Um, so as the as the mayor's budget is being created and proposed, um, there's a lot of information sharing that goes back and forth with council so that council's in a different position, um, when they receive the budget versus coming in somewhat cold, um, with a kind of bifurcated process as we, um, have in the city. Um looking at the the way that the legislative budget processes accommodate department hearings, um once department presentations have commenced, uh the approach taken by each city differs greatly. Uh Seattle utilize a condensed 4-day schedule to receive presentations from a select group of departments. This example is also notable uh because it's not only for its brevity, but because it's the only example that does not schedule budget hearings um for a majority of city departments. Milwaukeee's departmental budget hearings are held over two consecutive weeks, meeting each day at 9 uh 9:00 in the morning. Uh Detroit's budget hearings last slightly longer at 12 days um and are scheduled over um roughly a 3-week period. Um by comparison, in 2025, the city of Minneapolis also held department hearings across 12 separate days, but space those hearings uh dates out over a 5 to six week period. Um, next we'll move to information requests. Uh, during the legislative budget process, uh, the amount of information being requested, gathered, and delivered can be significant. Uh, the examples reviewed highlighted consistent use of a formal memo process to request information in advance of meetings or in response to a presentation from a specific department. While the memo process is by no means unique, the formalization observed in the examples provided uh useful transparency and allowed for additional insight into how a specific budget items were created, discussed, and proposed. Additionally, these processes outline clear roles for those involved in the legislative budget process, which works to support shared understanding and expectations related to what memos are utilized for, how they are routed, um, and who they are to. These processes also demonstrated that many distinct lines of communication can operate successfully throughout the budget process when there is shared understanding of roles. Next, we have the budget amendment process. Uh the budget amendment process is often the most contentious stage of the legislative budget cycle um and can require significant discussions, negotiations, and consideration. For the examples reviewed, the city's approach uh seems to fall on either side of the segmentation versus conglomeration decision. Uh Seattle had multiple examples that attempt the segmentation approach that divides the budget amendment process up into distinct stages. The first one of these is a use of what's referred to as the chair's balancing package um which provides an opportunity for the budget chair to bring forward an initial budget modification package that incorporates administrative changes and consensus items um amending the mayor's um initial proposed budget. By incorporating these initial modifications early in the budget process, the council is able to reduce the total number of proposed amendments that are needed at later stages. Uh for amendments that do occur at these later stages of the process, um Seattle utilizes amendment classification framework that attempts to reserve the most time for the items that have demonstrated um the greatest need for additional discussion. Um similarly, for any items that are going to fall into that consensus bucket, um they'll receive a reading, but generally um can be voted through on a consent um agenda. Um in in Milwaukee, the council has opted for the conglomeration approach to amendments and consolidated a majority of its proposed amendments um discussion into a single um presumably very long day. Um there are additional discussions that take place during the subsequent week following that date, but they've um to the best of their ability try to pack everything in. So they start at 9:00 and they would end at um sometime in the late hours of the evening or early morning the next day, I would assume. Um, next we're going to look at how legislative staff support um the legislative budget process and the decision-making bodies. Um, in this case, the city council. Um, in each of the three example cities, the legislative body leverages their professional research staff to assist with the legislative budget process. Uh, this support fell primarily into three distinct buckets: overview, outreach, and analysis. The overview category captures reports from these staff um that are intended to provide highle recap style analysis of larger budget documentation to highlight specific areas of focus or interest to the legislative body. Um often the materials provided uh historical context that helps answer the questions of how did we get here? Um next we have the the outreach category. Um staff support falling into the outreach category um ranged from providing increased transparency and awareness to members of the public um to legislative research staff helping organize community engagement and feedback um sessions on the proposed budget. Um, in the case of Detroit, um, legislative research staff attend, um, attended community budget input sessions in each ward, captured input from each session, and provided a report back to the council that captured the information from each ward, identified trends, and noted any historical changes um for the respective ward. Uh, that brings us to our final bucket, which is analysis. Um, this is unquestionably the largest bucket um of work for the legislative research staff across each example. analysis included independent review and presentation of department budgets, specific review of a proposed budget items background and scope, comparative needs assessments for particular program requests, fiscal impact analysis for proposed change items, and an analysis to uh to determine the um approximate levy capacity. Uh now we'll move into transparency and accountability measures outside of the budget process itself. um cities utilize a range of tools to exercise their oversight authority um and improve transparency and accountability related to the operating budget. One of these mechanisms is done through establishing recurring reports on budget items and programming. This allows council to monitor the status of approved budget items and identify potential issues or delays in implementation as soon as possible. Um, the city of Minneapolis has previously utilized a similar process to receive updates on budget items, but may benefit from formalizing additional timelines and data that's captured. Um, next we cover um, budget lookback. So, budget lookbacks are a beneficial tool to establish baselines and potential uh, performance metrics. often groups or programs may grow unchecked without any clear expectations or indicators um of what the impact of that growth may be. Um similarly, organizations and departments evolve over time. Identifying ways to categorize budget items to account for these changes um allows for more consistent historical data, comparative analysis, and future forecasting. That brings us to um options for consideration. As noted at the beginning of this presentation, what tools, processes, and structures are utilized for the legislative budget process are ultimately determined by that respective council. Um and based on what approach they believe is best suited to operate in their respective environments. The following lists were compiled by identifying any consistent trends across the examples reviewed and provide some highle categories for potential consideration. Um, some of these items have been or are currently are being utilized by the city but could benefit from additional discussions and or updates. Um, for our first uh the first slide and the first bucket we're going to look at, um, it looks like um, opportunities for a condensed budget schedule. As I noted previously, any cond any condensing of the budget schedule um on the legislative side requires a lot of coordination on the front end um to ensure that everybody has the same understanding of what information is going to be captured, what they're requesting um you know and kind of what things are going to look like when they get them rather than having to react in real time. Um, so this is something where again like like should the council want to consider this, there is that other side of the equation that would need to be part of the discussion where that's on the administration the administration side as far as like how adaptable they're going to be to um getting out in front of that as well to facilitate the condensed schedule on the council side. Um so some of the options that uh or some of the trends that were identified were again like scheduling department presentations um to begin following the delivery of the mayor's proposed budget. Um the justification behind this and the some of the cities reviewed was just that it avoids the information gap um that exists from the mayor presenting a budget and then having any delay um before departments begin their presentations since again in in the event of a gap people are going to fill it in with whatever makes sense to them at the time and then uh by the time the department presentations start um you can be dealing with like a misalignment of um information and people having different understandings of how we got to that point. Um in the case of I believe or Detroit um there's a formal kind of negotiation process and a me memo that goes out about limiting non-budget council committee agenda items um during legislative budget consideration period. So again it's um generally any presentations that could be bumped or delayed um are they they ask that the committees all agree to do that and so they hold condense um like committee hearings on essentially time-sensitive matters to ensure that they have as much time as possible for u the budget discussion. um utilizing morning and afternoon sessions. This is something again I think the city already is is doing but by formalizing that um and setting the expectation for when people are going to go um it allows you know people that are going to be in the afternoon to not have to um play the waiting game in the morning. Um and then um as I touched on earlier leveraging the segmented budget process so again that can be the chair's b through something that resembles a chair's balancing package um through the budget amendment classification process. Um but again just finding ways to identify sort of those consensus um or administrative items that everybody's in agreement on uh and move those along at an early stage of the process. Uh next we'll look at transit opportunities related to information capturing. Um so the first is just utilizing the questionnaire memos um to departments to provide initial information, answer remaining questions and inform uh specific presentations. Um so this is something again in in some form we are already doing if there's questions that stem from a presentation um almost similar to the uh questionnaires that we're utilizing for department um for appointed department heads this year um like there might could be an opportunity to build on that by getting some questions out in advance um not necessarily to negate the need for a presentation but more to inform the questions that are going to be asked at the presentation itself. Um, additionally, this establishing those standardized memo templates that create consistent medium to communicate with departments, um, budget staff, um, legislative research staff, etc. Um, leveraging professional staff as leaison to gather, analyze, and report on specific information. Um, I think even as we saw demonstrated today, there's a lot of, especially when it comes to the budget, there's a lot of information that lives in a lot of places. Um, and like tracking that down is often one of the most laborious parts of this entire process. So, I think that's an area where there's an opportunity to use legislative staff to help make sure that the right people are in the room or and you have all the input that you're going to need to make decisions. Um, and then again that determination of clearly defined roles um just to avoid any dup uh duplicative efforts like again as I as evidenced in the presentations today, you could get nine different answers um from nine different people on the same thing. Um and which is going to end up creating again confusion and like duplicative efforts on the part of the council trying to figure out what source of information is the correct one. Uh with respect to the amendment process um again adoption of amendment classification um to simply discussion um and and um review. Um so again amendments classified based on consensus expedit expedites the most agreeable. So if it's something that there's not going to be the need for a lot of discussion on um just moving that to a separate bucket that goes through on consent um reduces the overall time that um needs to be spent on everything. Um and similarly again um the ability to utilize legislative research and oversight's existing consultative process to support budget questions and amendment formulation. Um so again this provides a consistent similar to what we currently do. Um it's something that there might be an opportunity there um to leverage this process for again um answering any budget questions, helping out with again the information gathering um and support for the amendment process should there be interest. Um and then in Seattle's amendment process, each amendment is assigned to a central staff analyst um who's responsible for kind of gathering all the information and ensuring data is reflected correctly and and helping to shepherd that item along. Um so just wanted to note that there are some um examples that we can pull from elsewhere um to ensure that there's as much support as we can possibly provide. With that um that's the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions there might be. >> Thank you for that presentation. Um are there any questions? >> Council President Payne. >> Uh thank you Chair Chuck Tai. I was curious if you worked with uh the administration or a budget team on on this project just in terms of comparing and contrasting the other cities. It seems like uh there's a decent amount of condensing the timeline based on how much collaboration is happening ahead of the budget getting released. Uh how many of the recommendations that you identified would be applicable here I guess is the kind of the secondary question to that. you want to speak directly to >> I think that is a question for you so you should speak to it. Yeah. >> Um so I did have the opportunity to talk um with our budget staff. Obviously just the timeline of this um during a majority of this work they were busy with finalizing the mayor's proposed budget. Um but we I tried to stick to examples that at least had some degree of feasibility. Um you know in our environment um how much they're able to single-handedly drive the process forward I think is I'll defer to them on their capacity. Um but I think the underlying um idea behind it was that I mean it's it's doable in some cities like Detroit. It wasn't a choice. >> Um their budget schedule was condensed just due to the city's bankruptcy. Um but they but again as a result of that you know negative event it seems like they've pulled everything together in a way that's very organized and coordinated. Um as we've learned through I mean we just had discussion of you know consent decree related stuff. I mean sometimes it does take you know a a push from an external party to you know to move some of these things along but ideally we don't have to wait uh for something like that. >> Thank you. >> Thank you with that. Um oh finally Vice Chair Schaefer and then we will wrap. >> Yeah I thank you for the hard work in putting this forward. I know uh Chair Chugai and myself um directed this work. I think there's a lot of good ideas in here. Um, I guess I would just say, um, you know, if if you were to categorize them, you know, from your work, what would be your top three takeaways from what you learned? >> Um, absolutely. Um, through the chair, uh, I think the biggest one where there's always going to be the most consternation is the amendment process. Um there's a lot of different moving pieces and so I think the more that you know like we're able to help support the coordination of that ensure that the chair and vice chair have everything like once once you get it it merits review as opposed to what you get has to go back several times to be revised um and you know match up with the right format. So I think it's ensuring that like the finished products are are there and helping to drive the timelines. That's also another one that there was a good amount of effort put in like put in in each city to ensure that people understood that the timelines that were established and agreed upon weren't flexible. Um and so whether that means that they're going to vote um and everybody approves it and everybody agrees that they're all going to operate under the same rules um I think was one of the big takeaways um just to kind of again ensure that you know everybody has the same access, everybody's on the same playing field. Um and you know here's what we're going to do going forward. But then I think understanding what the impact of missing the deadlines is is also important where it's you know in most some of most of these cities they had a formal process where you know you could I don't want to call it an appeals process but you basically had to justify you know this came in late because of X. Um but I think that you know absent that it's everything you know everything does seem somewhat flexible then um if you know if at any point you can kind of just throw something in. Um, and so I think being more deliberate about how that process operates was one of the biggest takeaways, uh, I mean, to the point of Milwaukee, it seemed patently insane to me that they did it in one day. Um, but they are able to get through, um, you know, like almost all of their, um, their amendments. I can't say I'm recommending that we block off 24 hours to do so. But, um, but it reinforces that if for whatever reason you decide that's the approach, there are places that are making it work. Um the other one I think was um how we use um you know how we collect information from departments and being as deliberate as we can be about that. I know department presentations um and there's no shortage of opinions on you know like on what they should be how long they should be what we should ask what people want to share. Um and so I think that being you know deliberate with you know how that's approached with respect to Seattle's you know the four days and using you know not everybody has to present it's interesting. I think it definitely has some merit. The issue there I think is that they're further along in their process um where they've you know implemented enough of this and reformed it over time whereas where we're at I think that you know having those department presentations is really the first bite at the apple that everybody's getting um to you know to hear directly from them. So absent building in those frontend um communication pieces that need to that would need to exist during you know essentially the mayor's budget process it's tough to start shaving off um those presentations. And so I but so I think that that's an area where like some discussion between um the council and the administration might merit some agreement. Um as far as any other um processes um again those those are the big ones. It's uh yeah it's it's the the underlying thing that came through with a lot of this is that there's a lot of I mean even just today looking at the amount of people that are in this room to share budget related information there's a lot of moving pieces. Um, and I think tracking everything is of extremely laborious. And so, again, at the risk of like the eye of my team, it's something that's something that we're happy to help do. Um, and make sure that we're not losing sight of, you know, like like various things and that the right people are where they need to be. Um, and so just, you know, pulling together the organization part of it and being as supportive as we can is definitely something that we're here for. Um I mean that's the budget process is clearly across the three examples for um kind of our peer um like groups in the legislative research groups in those cities. It's a it's one of their biggest lifts during the year. And so I think it's you know like it's only fair if you know like we're providing as much as we can in that category as well. >> Okay. That's really helpful and um yeah, we're looking forward to seeing this unfold and I don't know if chair if you would like to speak to any of the community engagement specific information around that that you >> maybe that's still being >> I'll be really happy to do that on Thursday September 10th which is when we're going to adjourn this committee meeting. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you very much for your presentation and for addressing those questions, Director Hawkins. Um I'm not seeing any further discussion and I'll direct the I'll ask the clerk to file that report. Thank you. Um with that we've concluded all business to come before the committee this afternoon and without objection we are adjourned until our next meeting which is Thursday September 10th right as we return from ward week at 10:00 a.m. where we will begin receiving budget related presentations. This is where we'll cover um the community engagement aspects as well as just an overview of the entire budget process and timeline um for for council members in the public um for format. Um, we should anticipate receiving the budget overview presentation as well as the workforce optimization benchmarking report from the audit department and a bianual personnel report from the human resources department. We are now adjourned. Thank you everyone.