City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

You picked the wrong spot, Trish.

I'm good.

Tiggy, how are you? All right, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Good evening and welcome, everyone.

Brie, take the roll call, please. Mayor King. Present.

Councilmember at-large Austin Councilmember Waller present Councilmember Baskin present Councilmember postma present Councilmember, Hallie Present Councilmember Obala present Councilmember Fisher present Mayor King we have a quorum Thank You Brie.

I am number one on the agenda is the adoption of our agenda So second all in favor aye opposed Motion carries. Item number two is approving our minutes from July 20th, 2016. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, do we have to vote? Oh, yeah, we probably do. I'm a remote person. Laura is by the Zoom, so yeah, every motion's going to have to be a... Not that I didn't like the other one. Thanks for that, Jason. Yeah, back to the adoption of the agenda.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Council Member Baskin.

Aye.

Council Member Postma. Aye. Council Member Helle. Aye.

SHOULD I VOTE NAY JUST TO KEEP IT INTERESTING? AYE.

COUNCILMEMBER OBALA. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER FISHER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER ATLARGE-AUSTIN. AYE. ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA PASSES.

THANKS, BRIE. NEXT ITEM IS APPROVING ADMINISTRATION FROM JULY 20, 2026 MEETING. SO MOVED.

SECOND.

BRIE.

COUNCILMEMBER WALLER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER BASKIN. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER POSMA. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HELLEY. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER OBALE. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER FISHER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER LARGE-AUSTIN. AYE. APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM JULY 20, 2026 PASSES.

THANK YOU. KEEPING IT ROLLING. NUMBER 3 IS OUR CONSENT AGENDA. LOOKING FOR A MOTION. SO MOVED.

SECOND.

THREE.

COUNCILMEMBER WALLER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER BASKIN.

AYE.

COUNCILMEMBER POSMA.

AYE.

Councilmember Helle. Aye. Councilmember Obala.

Aye.

Councilmember Fisher.

Aye.

Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Adoption of the consent agenda passes.

Thank you. Nothing under recognitions and awards. Item number five, we have a presentation from Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities. I had the opportunity to meet the delightful presenter. Today, Lily Hajazi-Sakai from League of, or I'm sorry, Coalition for the Security of Minnesota.

Informed this session, some of the themes that folks were talking about leading up to session, the beginning of session, that kind of led to what ended up being passed. So we continued with a divided government this past session. You know, we still have that 67-67 tie in the House. The DFL continues to maintain that one-seat majority in the Senate. And so ultimately that just... causes everything that is negotiated at the Capitol to be a four-way negotiation between the House GOP, the House DFL, the Senate DFL, and then the governor's office. A lot of the themes in this year were surrounded around fraud, guns, saving HCMC, school safety, and bonding. So this year was a bonding year. They didn't have to pass any supplemental budget bill, but the focus really was on getting a bonding bill passed. Our tasks at CGMC were really to protect LGA, get a bonding bill passed, lead line funding, which was in the bonding bill, and then resist that zoning and development preemption that we've seen since 2024. I'll get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty there in a second. A little bit about the February forecast. This really sets up the conversation of how much money the government can spend at the state level if they do any supplemental budgets or even during a budget year. what that budget will look like that they'll have to pass. As you can see, we did in this year had a little tiny bit of a surplus of 377 million, but ultimately there is a structural imbalance that the state has with its spending that's gonna need to be addressed in the next biennium. And we did see some of that kind of play into what was decided through the budgets that leadership agreed upon. Like I said, it was a non-budget year. There were fiscal challenges really with that limited amount of spending. We heard from legislators that, you know, please don't ask us for big ticket items unless it's in the bonding bill. And the focus was really on getting that bonding bill passed and any policy items. There was a threat in 2025 from the Senate legislature. Texas chair to cut LGA by 20 million. We thankfully defeated that last year, and so we are prepared to continue that conversation this year. Thankfully, there was no discussion of cutting LGA. A little bit about bonding. So there was a bonding bill in 2025. It was really small, it was local projects only, and bonding bills require 60% majority in order to pass, so there's a lot of trades off in order to get it passed. You know, I'll vote for it if you give my area something, that type of thing. The governor kicked off that conversation by putting out his budget proposal, which really focused on providing money to heavy state-owned assets, capital complex security, giving the PFA $99 million, BDPI, or the business development fund. public infrastructure program, 2.5 million. He put zero dollars set aside for local roads and bridges and then local projects set aside that 35 million that he said, you know, legislators, you can figure that out. That was just the beginning of the conversation. That's not ultimately what happened. So we got in there and we were really focused on making sure that bonding bill passed, especially when it came to the lead line replacement funding. So as you can see, some of our CGMC members spoke and testified in a few committees as well as our partners with LIUNA to emphasize the importance of funding some of the stuff in the bonding bill. We did get a bonding bill that passed. The number that ended up passing was about $1.24 billion from all sources. There was about 400 and some change million for PFA programs and local water and wastewater grants. 122 million of that was for grant and loan programs. Local bridges got 25 million. That's undesignated, so communities like yourselves can access those funds. Local roads got $47 million and then BDPI only got $2 million. Unfortunately, that's going to be like two projects. But unlike 2025, there were millions in local projects that were funded around the state. That brings me to, we made a separate section for the lead service lines because it's a huge thing. And I did look at the map. It doesn't seem like Austin has a ton of lead lines, but each community is different. I know like Brainerd has hundreds, but some communities have none. So it really depends. We wanted to really continue the momentum that came in 2023 when they invested $240 million around the state to replace those lead lines because we have to meet that 2037 EPA deadline to remove all of those lead service lines. In the initial inventory, they identified 87,000 lead lines statewide. There's still about 200,000 that still need to be identified. We anticipate that about 10% of those will be lead lines and need to be replaced. That total cost estimate was $1.5 billion, and our big push at CGMC was to really continue that momentum of getting those funds, because we're worried if there's not enough of the infusion of dollars for the lead line replacement, that it puts that construction season in peril, because folks that work on those lead lines will go to other states that are willing to invest more money to do those lead line replacements. Absolutely. Our original ask this year was 250 million. That didn't come to fruition, not the total amount. And then also I've provided staff here the presentation. And so if you want to look at the inventory map of where those lead lines are or are not, the U of M has a great map that you can access there. So as you can see here, there's Bradley Peterson, executive director of CGMC, with all of the bonding chairs on a press conference talking about the need for lead line funding. Ultimately, like I mentioned earlier, when it comes to a bonding bill, because you need 60% of folks to vote for that bill, it's a lot of trade-offs of we'll vote for this if you give me this amount. And so ultimately the lead lines only got 15 million, which is not a lot compared to what was funded in 2023. And ultimately what we're gonna look for in this next year is some sort of dedicated funding source. So we don't have to rely on the what ifs of a bonding bill because it's also getting 60% of folks to vote for it is also a big what if. And then getting into housing and zoning, and I'm sure you have all heard of this in the past few years. It's been an ongoing conversation that advocates continue to bring to the legislature. In 24, they introduced a package called the Missing Middle. In 25, they called it Yes to Homes. In this past year, they called it the Starter Home Act. They're all a little bit different from each other, but have similar elements. And this year's package really was going to require preempting of aesthetic and material standards, of HOAs, and then requiring accessory dwelling units in any size city. And then they kind of built some requirements based on the larger that your city gets. So for cities over 5,000, they were gonna require UP TO FOUR UNITS ON 33% OF AREAS ZONED AS SINGLE FAMILY, NOT ALLOWING ANY MINIMUM LOT SIZES THAT ARE GREATER THAN AN EIGHTH OF AN ACRE IN GREENFIELD AREAS, AND THEN REQUIRING MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING IN 33% OF AREAS ZONED AS COMMERCIAL. AND THEN FOR CITIES OVER 10,000, THEY MADE THIS KIND OF CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE SITUATION WHERE YOU WOULD CHOOSE SIX OF THE TEN THINGS IN THE BILL So for those cities of first, second, and third class, they must pick those additional choices and they get points for it. So it would include things like parking minimums, additional upzoning in single family zones, allowing multifamily and commercial zones, and the creation of housing trust funds and other housing subsidy programs. And we've talked to our members. We know how unpopular this preemption stuff is with you all. You as community members know what's best for your community, especially when it comes to housing. in Greater Minnesota. Unfortunately, around the first week of session, the League of Minnesota Cities dropped active opposition to the bill, which meant they were like, we're not going to support or oppose it. Thankfully, us at CGMC, our friends at the Metro Cities and the Municipal Legislative Commission, which are some of the Metro suburbs, continue to oppose that bill in the House. It was ultimately defeated in the GovOps Committee. You can see Bradley Peterson here testifying in that committee with our great handy-dandy housing packet. And there was ultimately no hearing in the Senate. But we do expect advocates and legislators to bring back some version of this in 2027. Any questions before I get into looking ahead? So we have an election coming up. The primary is on August 11th. The governor's race is up in November. All of the 201 legislative seats are up. There's, I think, 43 retirements between the House and the Senate. So we're really anticipating doing a lot of education between election and when session starts in January because we work on a ton of issues and we want to make sure that these new legislators that are getting elected know about all the issues that the CGMC and our members really care about and that they know about those things. We do have a candidate packet. Mayor, you may have seen that at the conference earlier this month. So we have a candidate packet really detailing all the issues that we work on at CGMC with our members' input as well, and we plan on giving that to folks after the primaries come August. And then upcoming events. We already had the summer conference. I know I saw some of you there. Thank you so much for coming. We have the fall conference in November in Waite Park. Highly encourage you all to come. You know, that's when the policy agendas are decided. And then we already actually have the legislative action day at the Capitol, which will be February 10th in St. Paul. Any questions here before I'm going to talk a little bit about GMP really quick. but anything else about this?

Willie, any, I mean, as you look forward with LGA, it's obviously not a conversation this year. Do you anticipate going into 27 conversations around either like risks to it or another conversation about, you know, whether it goes up? Obviously Austin, you know, a big chunk of our budget comes from LGA. So having kind of an idea of flat, potentially higher, potentially lower helps us as we go through some of our budget stuff.

I don't think there's going to be conversations, knock on wood, about cutting it. There will be a lot of new folks to educate, so fresh faces will hopefully heed our call of not cutting LGA. But the member that wanted to cut it last year is retiring, and so we're not going to see that person at the legislature anymore. YOU KNOW, I THINK THERE IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE TALKS WITHIN MEMBERSHIP TO POSSIBLY INCREASE THAT. WE'LL SEE WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE COME THE NOVEMBER CONFERENCE AND WHAT MEMBERS DECIDE. NEW SPEAKER THANKS. NEW SPEAKER ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

NEW SPEAKER I THINK TO YOUR PIECE ON EDUCATING THE LEGISLATORS AT THE CONFERENCE, KENDALL QUALS WAS THERE AND HE NEVER HEARD OF LGA. SO THAT WAS A LITTLE BIT CONCERNING. So there's a need for the education. I appreciate what you guys do for that.

Very much so. And I'll just touch on, I know Brianne mentioned earlier that you guys are going to be talking about the Greater Minnesota Partnership Group, which is a I'll just kind of give a brief overview. It's a spinoff of CGMC. It brings together cities, HRAs, EDAs, businesses, and nonprofits all come together around a variety of issues around childcare, housing, infrastructure, economic development programs. And then this past year, what GMP really worked on was the Greater Minnesota housing infrastructure, and so that's for workforce housing. They got $14.3 million dollars passed, and so that won't be in this round of funding from Minnesota Housing, but it will be in the next round of funding for Minnesota Housing. They also work on encouraging the BDPI program to increase funding for that, the Teddy program, the infrastructure funding, and then also childcare funding. I know there's newsletters that go out and whatnot. My colleague Darielle really leads on that. So if you have any questions that I cannot answer, I will direct her to you.

Thank you, Lily. Appreciate you coming down. Hope you have an enjoyable trip back. And we always look forward to our kind of a day with coalition. Couldn't come down here. Thank you so much. All right, moving on to item number six. Under bids and awards, we have the wastewater treatment plant EQ digester cover number two, recoding project. Steven.

One second.

As we get this here, I'm going to go back up here. Thanks for having me.

All right, so this item before you tonight is related to the EQ Digester Coatings project that was bid on June 11th. Bids were received with two bidders bidding the project. Wapshaw Construction was the low bidder at $1,723,000. Champion Coatings was second at $2,369,000. Our engineer's estimate on the project was $1.3 million, so bids came in considerably above our estimate. And Before you tonight are those numbers, also dating back to other projects that have been done recently at the treatment plant regarding these digesters with coatings and covers and things like that. And our recommendation tonight is to reject all bids, and we will review this project again in the future. So that would be our recommendation to Council.

All right, thank you, Stephen. Council, any questions of Mr. Lange? Otherwise, looking for resolution on 6A. Move to reject the bids. Second. Three.

Councilmember Waller. Aye. Councilmember Baskin. Aye. Councilmember Postma. Aye. Councilmember Helley. Aye. Councilmember Obala.

Aye.

Councilmember Fisher.

Aye.

Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Resolution passes 7-0.

Thank you, Breonna. Item number seven is flood hazard mitigation asbestos abatement at two properties, 210 4th Street NE and 500 Oakland Avenue E. Stephen?

We had a number of bidders on this project, and the low bidder was Sterling Systems Inc. Their total base bid amount was $84,180, and bids ranged all the way up to Mavo Systems at $247,450, so a wide range of bids on the project. But you can see there was a second bidder that was quite close to the low bidder. That was Toil Environmental at $85,251. Each of these contractors look at these projects differently when it comes to the amount of work necessary to abate the asbestos and complete the environmental work. And so a lot of times their bids can range based on how they look at the project, what their staffing is, and their other workloads with other projects that they need to complete. We do have a grant that will fund up to 50% of the work on this project. That is a flood hazard mitigation grant. The remaining funds will be covered with our local option sales tax, and we would recommend awarding this bid to Sterling Systems, Inc.

Very good. Thank you, Stephen. Council, any questions? Looking for resolution. It's all moved.

Second.

Agree.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Council Member Baskin. Aye. Council Member Postma.

Aye.

Council Member Helley. Aye. Council Member Obala.

Aye.

Councilmember Fisher.

Aye.

Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Resolution passes 7-0.

Very good. Thanks, Brie. Under petitions and requests, item number eight is exempt non-union health care savings plan participation amendment. Trish.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Before you tonight is to consider changes to the HCSP contribution for non-union, non-exempt employees. This comes up periodically for a variety of groups. There's no cost to the city for this. This is the employee's dollars or unused sick leave or unused vacation that goes into this HCSP at retirement. So before you is a change to this for non-union exempt employees.

Very good. Thanks, Trish. Council, any questions? Looking for resolution. So moved.

Second.

Three.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Councilmember Baskin.

Aye.

Councilmember Postma.

Aye.

Councilmember Helley. Aye. Councilmember Obala. Aye. Councilmember Fisher. Aye. Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Resolution passes 7-0.

Thank you, Brie. Item number nine is approving our 2026-2028 labor agreement and memorandum of agreement with the International Association of Firefighters. Trish.

So before you tonight is a request to approve the agreement with IAFF for 2026, 2027, and 2028. The terms of the agreement are very similar to the agreements that have come before you already this year, covering the wages for the 26, 27, and 28, sick leave provisions, new vacation policy. There are some unique things to IAFF for assisting inspector pay, and EMT pay, but otherwise this resembles many of the other agreements we've had, and this would be number six of our eight labor agreements.

Excellent. Thanks, Trish. Council, any questions on this? Looking for resolution? So moved. Second. Free, please.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Council Member Baskin.

Aye.

Council Member Postma.

Aye.

Council Member Helle. Aye. Councilmember Obala.

Aye.

Councilmember Fisher.

Aye.

Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Resolution passes 7-0.

Thank you. Item number 10 is an ICM agreement with Envision Cold, formerly Minnesota Freezer Warehouse. Stephen?

Yes, this is just a name change. We bring these to you periodically. These ICM agreements regulate the wastewater flow from a particular business. In this case, this is a little bit different where... Envision Cold, formerly Minnesota Freezer Warehouse, we have an agreement with them to meter their water that goes down the sanitary sewer because they have a lot of water that is lost to evaporation through their chillers. So with this, the agreement is the same. It is just a name change with the new ownership of the facility. So we'd recommend approval.

Excellent. Thanks, Stephen. Council, any questions? Nope.

Move to approve.

Second. Bree.

Councilmember Waller aye councilmember Baskin aye councilmember post my Councilmember Hallie aye Councilmember Obala aye Councilmember Fisher aye Councilmember at large Austin resolution passes 7-0 Thank You moving to item number 11 is a resolution for Murphy Creek Meadows change order Steven

So the HRA recently acquired the Murphy Creek Meadows, which is a development that started in the mid 2000s and it was set up for townhomes on 24th Avenue Northwest. The development struggled for many years and the HRA is now looking to build townhomes in that area and part of the project involves completing the public infrastructure work that was never completed by the original developer. So the HRA has worked with a local contractor that does a lot of our street reconstruction projects, Ulam Brothers. We together have worked with the HRA to indicate what work needs to be completed as part of the development agreement. Before you tonight is a change order where in the amount of $59,772.84 where the city would enter into a change order with the contractor. This is the same contractor that has all of our street reconstruction projects for this year, we would do a change order to that contract where we would add these quantities and pay amounts. Then the work would get completed this fall, and then we would pay the contractor for the work, and then we would get reimbursed from the HRA because ultimately it is the HRA's responsibility to complete this infrastructure now that they have taken over the development agreement from the previous property owner. So with that, we would recommend council approval of this change order, which will ultimately be reimbursed back to the city by the HRA.

Very good. Thanks, Stephen. Council, any questions? Move to approve.

Second.

Three.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Council Member Baskin. Aye. Council Member Postma. Aye. Council Member Helle. Aye. Council Member Obala.

Aye.

Council Member Fisher. Aye. Councilmember at Large Austin. Aye. Resolution passes 7-0. Thank you.

Item number 12 is a motion granting the Planning and Zoning Department the power to contract removal of junk and or illegally stored vehicles at the following location, 204 2nd Avenue Southwest, the Enright property. No motion.

Second.

Three.

Councilmember Waller. Aye. Councilmember Baskin. Aye. Councilmember Postma. Aye. Councilmember Helle. Aye. Councilmember Obala. Aye. Councilmember Fisher. Aye. Council Member Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Motion passes for removal of junk.

Very good. Thank you, Bree. And moving on to citizens addressing the councilors. Any citizens in the chambers wishing to speak with council on items that weren't on the agenda?

Tom, you don't have 53 things. You want to?

Absolutely not.

Thank you. All right. Reports and recommendations. Dave, anything from the state administration or department heads? No.

A lot, but nothing right now. Okay, good.

Sounds good. On to city council members. Paul. Nothing, Your Honor. Thank you.

Obala. I want to thank all the police and sheriff for the work they have done today. We had an active shooting in the city, so we've been monitoring it, so great job. So everyone is safe, so the panic is down now, so thank you for all the work you're doing every day. Thanks, Obala. Jeff. Oh, I'm sorry.

Let's go to Laura. Laura.

Yeah, just a reminder, everybody to vote in the primary, and thanks to our election judges who will make that happen.

Thank you, Laura. Jeff. Nothing, Your Honor. Michael.

Just a couple of quick things from the Austin HRA excited that this year's Riverland build house is on the market So if you are interested in a brand new house That is on the market and we're excited. They are adding more Houses to Austin while training future construction folks. It's just such a great program and then from the discover Austin board Excited to announce that they will be moving locations at the end of this month. They have purchased the building directly across the little one way from the spam Museum I think it says Edward Jones on it now possibly and so you You might even see a large group of teenagers walking boxes down the sidewalk at the end of August. So Nancy's got a lot of great ideas as to how we're going to be able to use that new space and location to do even more to promote Austin. So I'm excited for that.

There'll be old people helping too because there's lunch provided.

Oh, there you go.

No, only thing, Chief Hartman, thank you to you and the rest of the law enforcement community. I think, you know, knowing that there's just a tremendous amount of confidence that as dangerous situations arise, that you guys have a handle on it. I thought you did a very nice job of communicating with it in a timely fashion and obviously ultimately resolving peacefully the situation. So thank you to you and your team for all that great work.

Very good. Thanks, Jason. Becky. Nothing. Thank you. I just have a About three or so announcements here. I just want to read the August anniversaries of our city employees. We've got Kristen Olson from the library, 25 years. Josh Kunze with fire, 12 years. Hans Gilbert, fire, 12 years. Julie Kleinfelter, congratulations, Julie, 12 years at the library. Luke Reese, nature center, 10 years. Emily Soltis at the library, 9 years. Jeremy Mason, sewer maintenance, 9 years. Joe Johnson, street maintenance, 8 years. Ryan Mason, facilities and buildings maintenance, 8 years. Craig Hagee, wastewater treatment plant, three years. Owen Smith, sewer maintenance, two years. And Ian Caruso with fire, one year. Also want to call everybody's attention to the retirement of Todd, the big beefy boy, captain of our police department. He's going to be retiring his last days, August 14th. And there will be a celebration and lunch for him here at City Council Chambers, 1130 a.m. to 1. Everybody's welcome to join us. And we're going to miss Todd. I'm going to miss him as a... chief or captain of our PD, plus a neighbor because he's moving out up north. So we're going to miss Todd. But please come on August 14th, 1130. Also, we have an employee appreciation breakfast, moving back to a breakfast at the senior center. We did that some years ago. And it's always neat to have the council wait on the folks. So please come if you want to pour orange juice or ask anybody how their first few bites are. All those things are important. So please come to the employee appreciation breakfast, 730 a.m. to 9 a.m. at senior center on August 26th. With that, looking for a motion to adjourn.

You know, Mayor, I did forget one thing. I forgot to offer my condolences on you getting bounced in the second round of the Putnam Spelling Bee at the Somerset Theater. You only made it the second round, but it gave a good effort. And in paper.

I would have done a lot better. I think TJ Lynch, he got bounced in the second round the night after, too. It can happen. There's some nerves up there in this game.

Oh, I bet.

That was a very well-done deal. That was a great show. And Mr. Byram, your daughter, did a beautiful job of setting that up and getting those folks to come up and volunteer and be embarrassed. But, yeah, that was a well-done production. Hopefully everybody got a chance to see it. If not, you missed a good one. So, yeah, thanks for that, Posty. Really appreciate that a lot. Get those in the minutes, Bree. I've been trying to. I want to make sure we've got a capture. You don't know how many times I heavy sighed all week and weekend about that. Affordability, you've got to be kidding me. Anyway, looking for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Bree.

Council Member Waller. Aye. Council Member Baskin. Aye. Council Member Postma. Aye. Council Member Helley. Aye. Councilmember Obala. Aye. Councilmember Fisher. Aye. Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Meeting is adjourned.

Very good. Thank you. And we're going to stay live because Laura's on the Zoom and we'll just, either way, if there's, I don't know if there's sandwiches over there or not, but we'll go as soon as we can onto the work session. I don't know if Marty has even to back up anything. Maybe just take about three or four minutes. Is this bundling? Is that...

Thank you for passing that along.

We had one month that was $3,000 less. We got paid when we should have. I guess. Really torn. I mean, they're all 15s. What month is this through? Do you know? Okay, they're all 8s. Oh, okay. So this doesn't have any for 2026?

That is 26. 26 is what's left of that.

Okay.

Yeah, I think it was April time that was down like 3,000. I talked with Nancy after our meeting. April, I think, was the month The other months we're all done. So that was 20%. The other months we're all done.

We have work to do. Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

I'm going to open both of these. I'm going to open it up, turn it over to Emily and then the staff.

This one will be brief. Okay. I was pretty happy, though. I got out there. I heard it come up. And I'm like, oh, this car, if we find the car, the car's not going to stop. And so I quick ran out of the office. It was my best time. And then straight out, they said, no, stop. And I'm like, brr! I knew, yeah. I'm moving. I'm like, I'm getting in on this bad boy. You know?

So this week, we're giving it all out. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I knew it.

I just can't find more seats. They put them out. I'm like, okay, let me come in here. You know, Jeff called me. He's like, hey, let me go back. I'm like, honestly, I don't think I have a car for you. You can come back, but you're going to have to walk. Like, I got no room for you, dude. All right, we are ready to wait for Jeff.

Marty's got us all with the thumbs up, so we're going to move on to our work session, and the first item is our Hormel Foundation grant review, and I think we got our voting in. Tom, do you want to say anything, or Bree, both of you?

It's already done, huh?

Yes, the foundation requests are due in August 21st. We have a council meeting in two weeks that we can hit submit on, but Marie passed out ahead of time all the rankings, and she was able to put them all together. And Council Member Helle did abstain from voting since there's a possibility she might end up going after one of these grants. It's all said and done. We will rank these and we'll get them out to you, but it appears Todd Park ball fields were number one. Riverside Arena improvements two. 75 Cedar River Whitewater project design. And HRHR property acquisition were the top ones. But again, we will submit, unless there's any requests from council, we will submit all of these at the next council meeting for official approval. Again, they'll go into the foundation for review. The contributions committee has three meetings set up where they will review these. And yes, your ranking does count because when it comes down to the end of the how much money is left over from everybody's allocation, there might be a project in here that they can squeeze in That wasn't a high priority, but still made the cut. So that being said, we'll send that out to you so everybody can see it, and that's what we'll base the council agenda on for Monday in two weeks. Very good.

Thank you. I think this might be the first year we didn't get a tutorial on which was number one, 15 or one. We'll say, we'll say. Well, we were supposed to.

Yeah, one was my highest. The deer in the headlights like, oh, I'm not saying anything else. I will say your 15 requests are at the high end of probably any of the 10 organizations. Dollar amounts are roughly the same as last year, so that's good. And we've been 9, 12 applications, 15 this year. We might want to look in future years to pare them down a little bit. They'll get over 110 applications for the contributions committee to look at, so we like to get some of the basic ones in.

Very good.

Thank you. Appreciate your time and the votes, and we'll take this to them for... Decision very good.

Thanks, Thomas.

Thanks, Tom.

I'm number two 2027 budget discussion David Mayor members of the council this is the first first public conversation we have on the 2027 budgets this evening and I'm going to set the stage to be very efficient here in my opening comments. I want to lay the groundwork, and I'm going to turn it over to Emily. Emily's going to get a little bit more into the presentation materials that are in your packet. I'm going to turn it over to our team for briefings and presentations. We're going to essentially do the same thing in two weeks, probably not without me setting the stage, and Emily may have some more information or something that she might want to, and we're going to get into it in full force on August 24th. My conversations for context, I've said it a couple times and I put it in my update the other day, is that it's a fascinating experience to do this after decades of doing public sector budgeting but coming into an organization that I'm relatively unfamiliar with with five of the nine senior leaders doing it for the first time together with us. And it's not because some of them don't have a lot of experience in the organizations, it's just that they're relatively new in the position. But it's certainly a team effort and a total team effort here and we're going to, do successfully well and exceed your expectations. At the end of the day, I'm very confident of that. The packet includes a template. Emily created a, either had it before or used it before, a template that we're going to structure each one of the department heads' presentations around. It includes goals. It includes accomplishments. It includes some high-level financial information. It also included in your packet the spreadsheets, the spreadsheets of each one of the departments. It is not our intention to get into those spreadsheets this evening or in two weeks. However, they're there because you obviously want to see them or potentially look at them. And if you have done that and you have any questions, clearly our team is ready to answer those questions. But they're still preliminary at this point in time. Nothing is final with respect to the budget. We're still working with the department heads on capital requests, some operating requests. We're waiting for some fund balance information. As you know, Tom, who is here, has been helping us with the 2025 audit. We should have the general fund balance. With that shortly, we're working on identifying the building fund balances. So some of the tools that we may use to support the 2027 budget, the data and the final numbers aren't available today, but they will be in a couple weeks when we're ready to talk about it. It's our intention to present to the City Council a preliminary levy recommendation on August 24th. So you're going to see in your schedule that you have that we've identified that date in all of the communications that we've had with you prior, but now we can say with some confidence that we're going to use that date to present that recommendation. I met with Emily today at 4 o'clock when I came in, and we're going to share with the staff tomorrow at our staff meeting at 11, kind of the roadmap to get us there beginning tomorrow, eventually, to August 21st when the packet is ready to go and then our presentation on the 24th. We're going to include in that some comparisons with some peers, some data analysis and some graphs that you're going to see that tells our story, that tells the Austin story and I'll refer to that in a second. This morning I reached out to Dr. Page and the county administrator, asked them where they might be going with their preliminary levy and each one said, we don't know yet. Now, if they do, they certainly weren't in a position to let me know, and I respected that. Then they, in turn, asked me, well, what is the City of Boston going to do? And I said, I don't know yet. Ask me in a couple weeks. So I'm kind of hoping that on August 24th, I will have a better feel for what those two jurisdictions are doing, obviously because we're the three that make up the biggest chunk of the residents' tax. Also, I reached out to Matthew, and I wanted to collect this information. the average value home, which is easy to find in the city of Boston, but I also want to use $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 home value, and then I want to see what the distribution of the property tax statement is from the city, the county, the school, and then any other taxing jurisdiction that might be within this community, HRA or whatever else might be. So part of that is going to be what we're going to share with you in the 24th, just from some data comparison purposes, but also the Fleming and Levy recommendation, what does that mean for our operations, for our capital, and for OUR PROGRAMS. TWO OTHER THINGS, AND I'LL TURN IT OVER TO EMILY. ONE, AND THIS KIND OF GOES WITH MY EXPERIENCE, THE BUDGET IS MORE THAN A PRELIMINARY LEVY. IT'S MORE THAN A FINAL LEVY. I KNOW THAT'S THE DECISION THAT A COUNCIL HAS TO MAKE THAT'S PUBLIC, THAT'S NOTICEABLE, THAT PEOPLE REACT TO, THAT PEOPLE RESPOND TO, BUT IT REALLY SHOULD BE A DOCUMENT, AND I'LL SAY THIS FOR THE SECOND TIME TONIGHT, THAT TELLS THE STORY OF WHAT THE CITY OF AUSTIN DOES FOR THE COMMUNITY IN THIS CITY. Just in the two months I've been here, I've received a whole handful of emails from Dr. Page about what's happening in the public schools. And I don't read all of them because some of them are too nuanced for me to know because I don't have any kids in the district. But many of them really deal with what's the public school system doing? How are we responding? What are we doing? And I'm not suggesting that emails from the mayor or the city administrators is the way to approach that. But what I'm suggesting to you is that he's telling the school story continuously and all the time. And as I think about who's telling the city of Austin story, nobody that I know of right now, right? Now, that doesn't mean to suggest we're going to recommend a communications staff person. In fact, probably not, right? But we have to think about the story we tell to our residents as it relates to all what we do, flooding and the things that Stephen and people get involved in, the law enforcement, public safety, but also about the financial aspect of what the city does.

And we'll talk more about that in a couple weeks.

It's also the most important policy document that a city council has that sends the message about what are our priorities and what are our goals and what are our strategies. So we want to talk about some of that tonight when you hear the presentations from our team about what they're doing. Because really a budget is a manifestation of action on behalf of the staff that does the work that you identify levels of funding for. It's not just about 7% or 8%, 9%. It's about, well, what do we do with that money? So we decided to begin to tell that story really with what you're going to hear from Stephen and others tonight about what our accomplishments, what our goals are. And the last thing I want to do is I want to just say thank you to the staff. So all the people in this room here for the patience you have with me, for example, and Emily, who's relatively new at this. They're interesting budget meetings. Each one was different. You try to map out us. Here's what we want to accomplish. And with the two chiefs being new, interim chiefs being new, they were unique conversations. But we're going to get to the end pretty easily. So the staff council members are very aware of the fiscal culture that the organization has. They're very aware of that. Secondly, they're very conscious of the council's role and position. It's clear. When we walked into my office, we started talking about it. They get that. But they also care deeply about the level and value of their service. They care deeply about the level and value of their service and what a budget allows them to do or not to do. And we talked about, well, we might not do that next year, but you should talk about it with the council because the council needs to know you think that is a priority. The last thing I have to say then is the opportunity for the staff to come and talk to you about what they need and what they want to do and how they serve the public is an important opportunity for these professionals to share their experience. You know, there's a role for me, there's a role for the finance director, but most importantly, there's a role for your team members to talk about what they do because they're so proud of what they do in this city and community, and they're good at what they do. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Emily to kind of take us through the basic elements of the PowerPoint, and I think Stephen's the first.

Yes, yeah, if we need to adjust, I can do it. Adjust accordingly.

All his money goes to the second one.

Thank you, Dave. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Like Dave said, tonight is really just about painting a picture of what our 2027 budget proposals are going to look like. We really want to emphasize the goals and achievements throughout the years. and kind of put a dollar amount to those to show you where taxpayer dollars are actually going and how it's helping the community. I'm not sure how much you dove into the PowerPoint that was in the packet, but the first set of slides is just kind of going to be a recap of the 2026 budget overview. This first slide is the certified levy, which came in at a little over 10.5, which is an important number to keep in mind as we move forward. THIS GRAPHIC, ALONG WITH THE NEXT GRAPHIC, JUST ILLUSTRATES A BREAKDOWN OF EACH TAX DOLLAR FOR THAT 10.5 MILLION. IT'S A GOOD ILLUSTRATION OF WHERE IT GOES AND KIND OF PUTS A LITTLE MORE TO CERTAIN AREAS LIKE LIBRARY, PORT AUTHORITY, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS, AND THE GENERAL FUND. AND AS WE GET FURTHER INTO IT, WE'LL BREAK THOSE OUT A LITTLE BIT MORE, BUT THIS JUST KIND OF GIVES YOU A HIGH-LEVEL OVERVIEW OF THOSE TAX DOLLARS AND HOW THEY ARE BROKEN DOWN. THE NEXT SLIDE IS ROUGHLY SIMILAR, AND IT DIVES IN A LITTLE DEEPER, A LITTLE MORE WITH THE PUBLIC SAFETY, HIGHWAYS, CAPITAL PROJECTS, PARKS AND REC. THIS JUST GIVES YOU A VISUAL TO KIND OF PUT WITH THE DOLLAR AMOUNT AS WE MOVE FORWARD, AND AGAIN, THIS IS THE 2026 BREAKDOWN, SO THAT WAY YOU CAN SEE WHERE EVERY DOLLAR THAT COMES IN, WHERE IT GOES TO. And if you have any questions during the presentation, just stop me and we can address those as they arise. This is just a basic overview of how we calculate that levy. And just kind of to give you an idea, I'm sure everybody is well aware of how this happens. This is just more of a visual to kind of emphasize what 1% actually looks like going forward. And then in the presentation earlier this evening during the council meeting, LGA was discussed. I was able to find on the state's website that there is a potential increase of roughly 39,000. That is unofficial right now. That has not been approved. But that is definitely a good change from last year, roughly around this time. where it was potentially being cut so again not finalized but if that is our official dollar amount moving forward in the coming months that is a pleasant relief as opposed to last year we also do not have the police and fire state aid calculations those are usually done in September So those are two outliers that as we move through the process they will be a factor in the budget and we want to keep those in mind as we move forward. So budget presentation schedule for this evening, I know this looks like a lot, but we plan to move through these relatively quickly. Again, like Dave said, we aren't going to go line by line. Spreadsheets were included in the packet for you to do the deep dive that you would like to do. Again, these numbers are no way finalized. We do have some things in the upcoming weeks, meetings to go over our healthcare, what the insurance, COULD POSSIBLY LOOK LIKE, YOU KNOW, CONTRACTS STILL TO BE SETTLED, DIFFERENT AREAS WHERE AS WE MOVE THROUGH THE PROCESS THE NEXT MONTH, SIX WEEKS, THOSE NUMBERS WILL BECOME MORE FINALIZED FOR US. SO TONIGHT, AGAIN, LIKE WE HAD TALKED ABOUT, WE'RE REALLY JUST FOCUSING ON RIGHT NOW WHAT OUR PROJECTED BUDGETS ARE GOING TO LOOK LIKE AS WELL AS OUR 2026 SUCCESSES AND THEN OUR GOALS FOR THE UPCOMING YEAR. So tonight we'll start with public works and then move through administration, port authority, IT, finance, HR, clerk's office, outside funding requests, and then a recap of CIP. This is going to probably look a little different than what you're used to, especially on the CIP side, where we are only going to review the CIP requests for the departments that are presenting this evening. That way it gives the other departments who will be presenting on the 17th an opportunity to explain their requests in a little more detail. So just keep in mind the CIP list is going to look incredibly lean and it is by no means the final proposal.

Emily? Yes. Can I ask just before we get into each department once, you mentioned, so obviously healthcare is always the big kind of unknown, especially this early in the year. Is there an assumption percentage increase that you used on health care when we're getting into these numbers?

Yes, we did. Trish and I visited a little bit about that, came up with an estimate of what we thought would be, you know, right around ballpark. It might be slightly higher. I'm hoping I always like to kind of err a little bit. higher, you know, so that way it gives us a little leeway in the event, you know, once we get the numbers solidified. But yes, those have been included in those budget proposals, so those health care estimates will be in the presentation tonight.

Okay, thank you.

And then August 17th, we will go through Parks and Rec, library, police, fire, recap of those departments, CIP requests, and just an overall budget review. And this will set the stage for August 24th, where we will have a special work session to really get more into the requests, look at what our proposed levy is going to be, and look to council for recommendations, what you would like, with staff being able to recommend what they need. The 24th is really going to be the session where we sit down and do a deeper dive into everything prior to the September budget discussions, because as we enter September, as you know, we have to pass the proposed levy. And then from there, you know, it's throughout the rest of the year, it's finalizing everything before the adoption of the budget. So with that, and this just kind of, this slide just kind of reiterates that, that the August 24th special work session is really going to be where we sit down and do an overview of everything. So with that, Stephen, you are up first.

All right. So in the Public Works Department, we have a total of 56 employees, but 31 of those are tax levy supported. The other positions fall under like sewer user fees and things like that. We have three part-time employees this summer. We have 141 miles of street and almost 19 miles of trail. Some of our accomplishments for 2026, the implementation of a point of sale program was a big accomplishment that we worked through at the end of 2025 and into 26. This year by end of year will have completed 21 million dollars worth of work at the wastewater treatment plant expansion project Likewise we'll have completed six million dollars worth of work at the wastewater treatment plant levy those are both going simultaneously right now year two of three on the Oakland Avenue first Avenue one ways project will be complete by late fall and And the I-90 bridges, we've been working on that with MnDOT for the past three years, and that project will come to completion this fall as well. So those are all very good things. A couple other things I didn't note on here. In 2026, we implemented new rate increases for our planning, zoning, and rental fees. That was something that we talked about during budget discussions last year. Those were implemented this year. And Also, I guess I'll point out here, just a reminder, in the Public Works Department, we were reduced to street maintenance employee positions in 2026, and also in 2025, we were, I'm sure you all remember, we were requesting a graduate engineer position that was not put into the 2026 budget. So, just a couple updates there. As we look at goals for 2027, 2027 is a milestone year for us to complete the wastewater treatment plant project. We'll have some carryover work into the spring and early summer, but we hope to have that project complete by the end of June 2027. Likewise, the third year of the Oakland Avenue One Way and First Avenue One Ways project will be completed with First Avenue next year. So we have 12 blocks of reconstruction on First Avenue next year. So a large amount, but we'll look to get that started early and get that completed in 27. And then, you know, each year we always wonder what's going to be the next big project. You know, in the mid-2000s, we were working at the airport for about 10 years. Then that carried into flood control in the teens, we'll say, for 12 years of flood control work and then that carried into now where we're working on the wastewater treatment plant project and I really think our next focus in the coming 5 to 10 years is going to be our collection system will start coming up in 27 looking at the Ellis ditch area and the sanitary sewer collection system there and how can we expand our point of sale? How can we continue to work to get water out of our sanitary sewer collection system? So I think that's really going to be our next big challenge. As we look at personnel, our public works department, a big part of our department is made up of our people that do the work out there, the boots on the ground every day. We try to keep our budgets lean as much as we can, and this year there's $556,000 of budget increases proposed in the public works department, and $555,000 of that is related to personnel. So we do really try to keep it tight. lid on our materials, our supplies, try to cut costs where we can when it comes to utilities and all of those things. Central Garage, which deals a lot with our equipment. We've talked about this in previous years, how our equipment costs have been just skyrocketing since 2020. So we always try to stay on top of that as those equipment costs increase. And we've found ways to develop equipment rotational patterns with our equipment to try to get as much longevity out of those as possible as well as utilizing the talents of our staff to complete maintenance and repairs to our equipment to try to get that stuff to last again as long as possible. Our capital improvement budget, this is items that are directly related to the tax levy. As you know, in the Public Works Department, we have lots of user-feed supported funds that go for wastewater in different areas. But when it comes to tax levy for 2027, we have some engineering equipment, main portion of that being a GPO. GPS equipment that helps us locate items in the field and do accurate data entry and recording it's as we've Continued to increase the amount of infrastructure in our right-of-way It's always it's more and more important to know where all of that is that accurately so a $25,000 piece of GPS equipment will help us be able to do that We have our hazardous building removal that's been ongoing for many years $50,000 for hazardous building removal At the arena, we currently have identified $227,000 worth of improvements at mainly Riverside Arena. We would propose that that be funded with $65,000 through Hormel Foundation Grant, which Mr. Dankert referenced tonight, and you all scored very highly, I believe, in the rankings, which is great. During the lease agreement with the Bruins, there was discussions to how the Bruins could help support capital improvements at the arena. We've identified $10,000 of Bruins support for those improvements. And then finally, $152,000 would come from the city tax levy. So that's how we would look to break down those arena improvements. We also have our street reconstruction program identified at $175,000. I'll come back to that in a second. And then we have the senior center roof which we've provided a couple different options. One would be replacing with asphalt shingles at a lesser cost, but we're recommending to put in the budget a cost of $240,000 for a metal roof on the senior center. So just going back to street reconstruction program. In previous years, we had been tracking at $175,000 from the tax levy going towards street reconstruction. That allowed us to complete about $2.5 million worth of street reconstruction. That $175,000, when we look at how that is paid back over the course of 15 years, it allowed funds to come back to us to budget and plan for $2.5 million of street reconstruction. That budget was cut in 2026. $35,000 was cut out of that budget, taking it down to $140,000. that brought our overall ability to for funding for street reconstruction it brought it down from 2.5 million down to 2.1 million so we had to cut um almost well it was over it was 450 000 out of our street reconstruction budget by cutting 35 000 out of the tax levy um when we do that so i'm throwing a bunch of numbers at you here i had some other things I could pull up, but we won't do that unless you have questions. But by that cut that occurred to the 26 budget, by cutting 35,000 out of our street reconstruction budget, that put us on a 90-year rotation for street reconstruction. That's not a feasible option. We can't get our streets to last 90 years. So I encourage you, to restore those dollars back into the budget for street reconstruction, getting us back to $175,000. And in the coming years, we'll likely need more than that. That $175,000 puts us back on about a 70-year rotation. 70 years is still a lot to get a street to last, but we feel that's a lot more manageable than a 90-year rotation when it comes to street reconstruction. just encourage you to replenish those funds that were cut from the budget in 2026 as it relates to our street reconstruction program.

Stephen, can you run through those numbers one more time? Yep. So we cut $35,000, and that decreased the budget by how much?

It decreased the budget by... Hold on one second. I have it here.

$460,000, I think you said.

So we decreased the budget by $35,000... and it reduced our street reconstruction program by $475,000.

And that was because the 35 that we put in usually maybe take that away. Because between federal grants, state grants, and the fact that we, 30 to 40% of stuff gets paid locally, is that why it's such a big number?

Right, so we receive payback on our assessments over the course of 15 years. So we are still getting money back from street projects that were completed 14 years ago. So by decreasing in year one, that fund by $35,000, we're going to be shorted $35,000 every year for the next 14 years. And in total, when finance does their magic, that comes out to total $475,000. Got it.

So it's not a $400,000 one year, but over the course of time, we're going to miss out. Okay.

On our capital improvement revolving fund, when we were planning for construction projects for 2026, at $175,000, that would support almost $2.6 million worth of city street reconstruction in 2026. By reducing it by $35,000, we had to cut our street reconstruction budget down to $2.1 million. So it was a $500,000, $475,000 change in year one by reducing that $35,000.

So just to make sure I'm understanding, so we're taking a small amount, but that's not like that's the only thing that we do because we're now not also spending other dollars that we would have coming in. Okay. Which then, that net impact is we go from 50, 60, 70 years to 90. 90, yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

I think that was my last slide. Thank you.

I have a question, too. Sorry, Steven, you're not off the hook yet. Can you guys hear me?

No, we can't hear you. All right, next.

I just wanted to clarify, when you show the increase, $555,000 and some dollars increase in personnel for public works, I'm assuming that is just the people we have advancing forward in their careers and moving up our step system. That's not adding anybody. That's not some kind of merit raises. It's just the people we have turned the calendar page forward a year. That's what we're going to pay them.

Correct status quo with our current number of employees in public works, yes.

Thank you. That's for budgeted employees, even unfilled positions.

Yes, that's every position that we currently have approval to fill, whether it's filled or not. And then that also obviously includes benefits and health insurance and everything that goes along with it. But yes, that's every approved position that we have in Public Works.

We currently have all positions full.

were budgeted in 2026 except for we recently had one opening at the wastewater treatment plant but again not tax levy supported all right thanks and then emily is that the same way we're thinking about the rest of them so like yes okay so finance goes up 55 grand that would be in part because of yes and i'll get to that because that one does look a little strange and i'll go over that one when we get to it

So yes, every employee salary benefit number that you see on these slides is currently what we are approved to have in 2026. There are no increases proposed or built into any of those. So for administration, we actually have two full-time employees, that's the city administrator, and then one of our clerk positions is funded 100% in the administration budget. 2025 accomplishments for administration, is obviously to prepare staff for the leadership change that we're going to see with the new city administrator hopefully in the upcoming months and then dave also has quite a few projects on his list in the short time that he's with us and dave did you want to touch on any of those or not this evening because they're they're coming all right And then our 2027 goals, biggest one, of course, is to onboard the city administrator. And, you know, with with all the moving parts, that's a pretty big task. And, you know, for 2027, that is a lot to bite off. So those are the accomplishments and goals for the current year and upcoming year administration budget. I did this a little bit differently than the others where I only included the Just the administration budget. I didn't include council, mayor, the smaller budgets that we have outside of this just because there were no changes to those. So I really just focused on just the administration budget for this piece. As we go forward, of course, that will be grouped in. But the projected total increase is a little under $48,000. That is projecting the city administrator salary being on the high end of the approved pay scale for that. So that could change depending on the new city administrator when they start contract negotiation, that type of thing. So overall, we're looking at a projected impact on the levy at this point of a little under half a percent. So no major changes there, no changes to supplies. You know, just kept that pretty lean primary focus was just on personnel.

Port Authority stayed the same.

There were no increases to that. I do believe there is a Port Authority meeting at some point coming up between now and before we certify our levy. We'll touch base with the board on that. But to my knowledge, there is nothing knew that we need to plan ahead in 2027 for?

Yeah, Emily, I think that is a safe assumption.

All right.

Unless Jeff's got a magical project he's thinking about.

Oh, nothing today anyway. Yes, I forgot we have some key players here tonight for the Port Authority. Information technology, right now we currently just have one employee in that department. And 2026 accomplishments, it's really right now the focus is designing the new ADA compliant website. I don't know how many of you have been involved in website design. That is a massive undertaking and it involves all the departments. A LOT OF COLLABORATION WITH EVERYBODY TO MAKE SURE THE INFORMATION THAT WE GET OUT THERE IS CORRECT AND UPDATED. SO THAT IS A PRETTY SIGNIFICANT UNDERTAKING, ESPECIALLY FOR ONE PERSON TO BE IN CHARGE OF. THEN THE 2027 GOALS, MICHAEL INDICATED THAT HE WOULD, YOU KNOW, HE HAD TWO PRIMARY GOALS. ONE IS TO AID WITH IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENTS TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY. Basically what that boils down to is some of our departments, like finance, being one of the primary ones, we are looking at identifying efficiencies within our current software system and trying to go to a more paperless, more technology-driven side of things, especially with payroll and our accounts payable process. So Michael is going to be instrumental in getting that accomplished. And then information technology strategic plan. And that, I believe, we'll probably go over. Did you want to save that for a later date?

Real briefly, because it's in there only. The others weren't identified, but that one is because I asked to prove it. A couple of legs to that stool. One is an assessment by an outside firm to come in and help us understand our strengths and weaknesses, kind of a gaps analysis. The second is an inventory that we've just completed of all the programs. hardware and software that we have. And then the next one is kind of an interview with the staff about their needs and future needs. So the goal there is to really create a one to three, one to four, one to five year strategic plan that deals with operations and capital and staffing, how to best do it, because we lack redundancy now in that area. And so we don't have any money recommended in this budget tonight for this, but I hope by three weeks from now or by the time the budget is adopted, the study will be well on its way where we can identify some money for 2027, even though it's not going to be finished. It's going to be implemented over time. So that's all I want to say about that because it's really important, I think.

So two thoughts, I guess, from my perspective with that, knowing that we're obviously in the very early stages of it. One is I do think it's right for us to be looking at redundancy, safety, security. I think we've experienced with the county last year. We've experienced with municipal water supplies. In the past, it was, okay, we're this tiny little city. We don't really have to worry about it. I think municipal governments are going to be a bigger target just by virtue of there's gonna be more hacking and things like that. And so making sure that we feel good about safety. And then the second piece, which I'm guessing it'll go as well, is I would really love us to understand how can we leverage AI to improve efficiency effectiveness? We've been having a lot of conversations in other areas of the community around, I mean, we're now at this stage where it's less about fancy, large language models and much more about specifically how do we drive efficiency. And I think there's a growing consensus that the organizations that leverage AI early and figure out how to embed that as a core, benefit and core knowledge base will be exponentially more effective overtime and so would love to kind of understand what that looks like, especially because I think that could be kind of our get out of jail free card over the next 5 to 10 years of things that we can do efficiently instead of knocking heads over employees every time.

And we're at the point where that's perfect because we haven't finalized the study or the plan, so we'll add that in there.

And we did have a council. I'm sorry, Council Member Baskin, I just want to point out that the City of Austin has not yet leveraged computers to do such tasks as totaling up the hours on every timesheet. Employees generally are totaling up their hours by hand, and then their supervisors are double-checking them by hand. So we're going to need a little bit longer on-ramp to AI than maybe what Hormel Foods does. But I agree with you. We got to get there.

See, I would actually look at it, Hormel's not actually that far. We do have electronic payments. So we've gotten there. But some of the conversations are, it's almost okay to be far behind at this point because we don't have now legacy systems that we just spent $3 million on a couple years ago. So maybe it is our opportunity to go, all right, let's just make the jump. But obviously, much more to come.

And we do have, with our current ERP software, Logis, there are modules that we can implement that, like Laura brought up with payroll, they're there, we're just not utilizing them. So, you know, some of this, all it costs us is the time and, you know, training to get up to speed on that. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, this spring we did have a group go to an AI training. Was that hosted by the League? Is that... And it was pretty preliminary, I think. But I think everybody is on board with advancing and using technology to our advantage. So hopefully, 2027, once the study is complete, we can see some of that kind of come out. And even if it is the early stages, it would be nice to see where that goes. So Michael's got that on his radar, and he's planning accordingly.

One thing I would also add to the conversation, fully agree about, you know, there's a lot of great things that I could see in the future. You know, I know our new police chief has talked about getting body cameras at some point, and some of them have programs where it literally helps auto-populate a police report, you know, to really save some time, things like that. We don't have as a city an AI use policy, and I think that is a fundamental first step as we start to look at this. Probably a good thing to put on Michael's plate to kind of at least look at what other cities have as a framework. Maybe the league has something we could, you know, let's put that building block in first before we start stacking the other stuff on top of it.

And before I move on to the next slide, I don't know how easy it is to see it. Probably not very well. But on this slide, that is actually a screenshot of the home screen, just the top banner portion of the new website. That kind of gives you a sneak peek of what the layout is going to look like. And, you know, of course, that's one page out of... Each department will have their own page and it's going to be a pretty robust website. So that's just kind of an informal glance at what we're working on. And then the 2027 budget breakdown, there actually is a slight decrease. Personnel was budgeted a little high in 2026. So we did make some adjustments to that, but overall everything else is pretty status quo. There's no major changes to software. We did see a slight increase in cybersecurity insurance, but other than that, you know, nothing too notable. So that one is kind of a rarity where you see it go down instead of increase. And then finance, we have three full-time employees. The 2026 accomplishments have been a lot of internal training of staff, mostly me, getting up to speed with everything. I've spent quite a few hours with Kim and Melissa going over PROCESSES, PROCEDURES, LEARNING THE ROPES, LEARNING THE SOFTWARE. DEFINITELY SPENT QUITE A BIT OF TIME WITH THE TRAINING TEAM AT LOGIS TO LEARN HOW TO OPTIMIZE OUR SOFTWARE, SO THAT'S BEEN HELPFUL. WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO IDENTIFY EFFICIENCIES WITHIN THAT CURRENT SOFTWARE LIKE WE DISCUSSED WITH THE PAYROLL AND ACCOUNTS PAYABLE. SO OUR 2027 GOALS ARE TO IMPLEMENT A MORE STREAMLINED PAYROLL PROCESS. and then also implement electronic accounts payable process and just try to get things a little more streamlined, a little less paper, a little more electronic to hopefully make it a little easier on those employees who are doing the data entry from those manual timesheets. One area that looks a little bit odd is the personnel. It did go up 55,000. The cause for that is Tom, my predecessor. His salary was broken down within each department, and he logged his time accordingly. So right now, I am just 100% out of finance. If we need to look at changing that, I certainly can. Just for the sake of making things simple, I just took all three of our salaries and put them in that line item. So it is a little skewed from prior years. Supplies and other no notable increases there. Everything is the same. So as we move forward, if we want the finance budget to look similar to previous years, we can adjust that. If not, my personal preference is You know, the easier the better. But, you know, that's entirely up to, you know, city administrator, whoever wants to make that decision going forward. And then up next we have human resources.

Okay, so for human resources, we have two full-time employees. And I'm going through some of the 2026 accomplishments. We started out the year with a new health insurance plan and overall program. And that was a big change. And we had lots of questions and worked through issues and payment plan, how things were being paid. process as far as claims. So that was a heavy load to work with employees through that. We still experience a few things now and then with that, but for the most part it is processing as it should. Also, at the beginning of the year with the new PFML, there was a learning curve with that. We have had quite a bit of usage year-to-date with that. We've had 24 claims amongst our 140, 345 employees. I'm just checking with other communities, so that is a little high. But working through, again, that process, it was new filing claims and that kind of thing. So that's taken a chunk of time. We've continued to work through the employee engagement process. Quite a few events that we've had throughout the year. So just promoting the events and department outreach and things like that. We have had quite a few vacancies that we've worked through. a lot of retirements. So some of those have been, you know, as you can see down below, the major leadership recruitments, the police chief, fire chief, city administrator. So those are some big ones. The trickle-down effect in the police department with our promotional processes. We'll be doing a lieutenant testing next week, followed by more than likely a sergeant. It depends how things go, but a lot of promotional processes. So Just filling those key positions. As you approved tonight, the IFF labor agreement, that is number six of our eight agreements. So negotiating those this year. And then working with Information Services with Michael for the city website redesign. And then a big portion of that will be the employee portal. Strengthening that for our employees. Right now we do have an intranet, but just strengthening the portal where employees could go for information, have that housed there. So working through that right now. And then goals for 2027, we'll be supporting the city administrator, the onboarding, getting a new individual in here, working through the... their goals, their processes, how that might look, just going through the transition with that. And also part of the website design will be launching a fully online interactive employment application process through our website, so I'm excited to have that come to fruition. And continuing to enhance employee communication, looking at adding department digital messaging and any other additional outreach methods that we ultimately use, but The digital messaging is part of the CIP request under human resources for 2027. We'll continue to move forward the employee recognition program and then updating and reviewing the employee handbook and variety of policies will be our goals for 2027. The human resources budget is pretty standard, pretty minimal, not a lot of changes going forward. Personnel breakdown, you can see there, 326,992 to just under 327. Supplies hasn't changed or increased, I think, 500. And then that other piece, most of that includes things like our employee assistance program. That's under the HR budget. So that is a program that we have for our employees. And then other personnel services, so like our random drug testing that we're required to do for DOT. That falls under the HR budget. And then there's some internal booking of accounting and rental and things like that that happens through the actuary process that finance does. So other than that, there aren't too many pieces within the HR budget. Projected increases of just over $19,000 and then 0.18% of the overall impact on the levy.

So the clerk's office does have two full-time employees. As Emily mentioned earlier, we do have a third full-time employee that's completely under the administration budget. Our 2026 accomplishments would be the migration of the agenda and minutes management to that Civic Plus platform. And that would be a part of the new website redevelopment. We recruited, appointed, and trained 84 election judges for the city of Austin this year, and then we assisted the county with training of their judges, and they had 151 election judges. We did that all out at Ruby Rupner this year, and it seemed very successful. We assisted with so far updates of 10 city ordinances. We have worked with the administration of the low potency hemp edibles, um, and still working through redevelopment of the cannabis ordinance. Um, we're worked on the safety updates to council chambers and then the security updates to city hall. Some of our goals for 2027 is to establish a records retention policy. start the process of digitization and indexing of the clerk's permanent records so we don't have so much storage in our basin of paper, and then continue to review our city ordinances for inconsistencies with our current state laws and prepare recommended amendments for our council to consider. For our budget breakdown, personnel is $230,016. Supply is $6,000. That did increase. So the reason for the increase to the budget would be due to our election. Under normal election cycles, we'd not typically conduct an election in 2027, but based on the outcomes of the 2026 election, we are anticipating anticipating that election may be required in 2027, so the proposed increases allow us to prepare for that possibility rather than requesting unplanned funding later. Other would be $33,350, so total projected increases $24,410, and then the projected impact on the levy just 0.23%. I can touch on some of these and then if Emily wants to chime in on anything I've forgotten. So I worked with the city administrator and Emily on collecting the letters that were sent out to our nonprofit organizations for their budget requests. We received all of those back. As you can see there on the chart, we have listed On the top of the graph, the amounts that they received in 2026, and then the amounts that they're requesting for 2027. Their letters were placed in the work session packet for you to review, so council will decide whether to award those funding requests or select an alternative amount. And then on the bottom half of the chart, we have our non-profit organization budget requests. We have an annual amount that we give to the DCA of that $40,000. KSMQ TV of $5,800. Pillars for the City, I did increase that. I haven't gotten my quote back yet, but that would be for two plaques, increase of $2,000 to that $1,600. Culture and Arts Commission, that stayed the same, $3,500. The High Water Music Series did get an increase request of $3,000. That has been successful this summer, so Jason did ask for a request increase of that. CGMC hasn't given me an estimate of their annual dues, so we kept that at $58,000. LMC did give me an estimate. I believe they said it would be 5% increase, so it was that $26,458. When Lily was here earlier, she touched on that Greater Minnesota Partnership, and that was an estimate of $3,000. Fireworks, with the Hormel Foundation request, then the city's request would be 10,000. And then we have the Austin Artworks, the Artwork Sponsorship Art Award for 500. You can see that the amounts at the bottom come in very similar for the second portion of the chart. And they're quite different at the top on the first portion of that chart.

Mm-hmm, so and I fully understand that you are not representing all of these nonprofits so Understandable if nobody here can answer my questions But a couple that I have one just a quick note if it really is a 5% increase for the LMC I think you should double check the math on that because I think it's more like 1,300 bucks that it's going up instead of 450 KSMQ from what I understand is probably not going to exist for a whole lot longer, so I was kind of curious what that funding would go towards, or I'm not quite sure what's going to go on with that. And then the big one is obviously the $50,000 increase request from Impact Austin. I know a couple of folks here might be attached to that organization, but I'd be really curious what the large increase was for.

So with KSMQ, I can reach out to them and just see, because that one was a standing request, so I'm not for sure. It was just information I gathered from Mr. Denker prior to going through this, so I can definitely reach out to them. LMC, I'll have Mr. Unmock touch on that, and same with DCA if he has any information.

So just members of the council, the letter that... TCA submitted did not have a request for an explanation of why. And so for this meeting, we just decided to include that amount, and I was going to follow up because I think there has to be a rationale for why that is, but we didn't ask for it yet. The league, we can easily, both the league and CGMC are working on their budgets now, and we'll have a better number here in the very near future. We'll edit that number. We're going to have an update on KSM. with Craig and I are working on some things on the legal end with the building and with the transfer to TPC, so it re-verifies that number. I don't know if that number will increase what we're working on or not yet.

I'm going to add a little bit of color. I know enough to be dangerous on the impact, Austin, so take it with a grain of salt. I believe what John and the team were adding in was there's an assumption now that we're done with the comp plan, there's active planning work taking place around, okay, what are the major things that we want to put into place? And so there's some conversations between Impact Austin and the DCA, Hormel Foundation, Hormel Foods, the Institute, the schools, and some things like that. So I think without knowing exactly what those are, and I think that work's being done over the next couple weeks here, the goal is to come out with, hey, here's like the three or four like big things we as a community want to get together behind. And I think there's probably an assumption, whether it's a personnel cost or an implementation cost or something like that, that they wanted to put some dollars in so that it's a, let's just budget for it, knowing that we will have some big rocks to move versus a coming back in February and going, hey, we need $50,000 and us going, well, budget's done. We got nothing for you. So I think it's worth an additional conversation. It's probably worth a specific question to John, but I think that was kind of the thought process is. It's a half a percent of a levy.

Yeah, it's a substantial number.

And like we had mentioned, too, we didn't want to make any assumptions or shortchange any of these agencies, so we just put the full requests in this spreadsheet so that way you can see it, and there will definitely be future discussions as we get further into it. Okay, and then the last area is levy-funded capital outlay, and this is only those departments that presented tonight, so don't get excited thinking that we have drastically cut our budget for 2027. And I'll just let each department touch on their area, starting with Stephen. Yours are kind of self-explanatory.

I don't have anything to add. That was pretty much what I described during my

discussion unless there's any questions and then Trish on the digital signage sure just a couple of items of note so the digital signage request would be for thirty three thousand two hundred dollars and that will cover the we're looking at ten devices so different all departments would have a screen or a device and then picture like a cable box that would project notices. So we'd use it for welcoming new employees, the employee engagement events that are coming up, open enrollment reminders, anniversaries, those kinds of things, just being able to connect with all the employees in all the different departments. Not all of our employees have city emails, and so although we try to send out emails with all of our notices for events that are coming up, and then the open enrollment, all those kind of benefit announcements, it does not get to all of our employees through a city email address. We do have some personal email addresses for employees, but not all employees want to receive that kind of information through their personal emails. So then we rely on notices sent out to the departments or department supervisors to get that information to employees. So this would provide, again, 10 devices for each of the departments. Plus included in that would be one device or one setup for City Hall for public-facing. So we'd be able to basically anything that goes out on our Facebook page could also be then in City Hall. Very similar to the library has a public-facing TV or device that shows all their upcoming programs. The Nature Center is very similar that they have something That shows all their upcoming programs, things that are happening at the Nature Center. So it would be like that. It could be upcoming ordinances. It could be elections. Again, anything that we put on our Facebook page would be projected and have available for our public coming into City Hall. So that is included in that number. The breakdown, again, comes out to be $30,000, and then there is a fee per month using a digital signage program. So that translates to $3,000. So the annual cost would be $3,000 for this software, but then the hardware piece of it would be the $30,000, and it would be for... 10 units or setups for each of the departments.

And then the last item listed for this evening is audio visual upgrades for the conference room of 22,000. And Dave, did you want to speak on that or is that?

With all due respect, Dave doesn't know what that request is for.

All right.

I think they got cut out of last year's budget. I think it was a request.

I think it's a carryover, yeah.

Michael added it in there. Yeah. It might be even to move our work sessions up there. Yeah, I know there's been some talk about that. Then I support it.

So, again, those are just for the departments this evening, and then you will see a much... longer list probably on the 17th that includes the remaining departments presentations a Recap of tonight's presentations. I know this slide is kind of blinding. There's a lot of numbers on there just Rough estimate for right now running total of what has been proposed this evening. We're looking at a little over 700,000 as far as increases for these departments that are presented tonight. Again, there's a lot of factors that go into play. You know, a lot of things that we are going to shore up in the upcoming weeks, like the health insurance, LGA, and then as we get further in, we'll work to refine these. But this is just to give you an idea of where we're sitting today with our first round at our budgets. And that is it. Does anybody have any questions? It's a lot all at once. And next work session will be round two of pretty much the same thing. But if there's anything, you know, if you need to digest it and you have any questions and need some clarification, you can get a hold of me and let me know. You know, spreadsheets were in the packet. If you want more information on anything that was included in the packet just let us know and we can get that to you and we'll just plan on working through this as a group and shooting for August 24th, like we had said earlier, as kind of our big work session. Once everybody's had a chance to discuss their budgets, the 24th will really be where we sit down and analyze our proposed levy and get things in motion for the proposed levy certification. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Emily. Thank you. Yeah, no questions on my end, but just thank you for everybody that went tonight, that is going in a couple weeks. I know there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into that. Dave, Emily, thank you for your leadership on this. I'm cautiously optimistic. This is always like the least fun part of the year, and we always seem to like... take four steps backwards on everything. And so I just, it feels different. And so I like the high level recap piece of it. And, you know, I look forward to us kind of going through and looking at the different options and getting to where we need to get to.

So thanks. I have a quick one on the, just for Trisha or Emily, do you remember what the percentage healthcare increase that you used under the assumption?

Well, so I had originally started with higher increase um and it was it was a little scary but yeah it uh i i went with just a 10 i think is what we had discussed now i don't even remember i plugged it into my spreadsheet i think we started at 10 and we talked about 15. yeah we do dave and i have a call with our brokers on wednesday and hopefully we'll have a little bit better idea after our call on wednesday

But, yeah, I'm not sure what final number you put in there. We talked about 10 and we talked about 15.

Yeah, and I did, if there were any positions that were vacant, I went ahead and budgeted on the high side for like a family policy. Definitely gave us a little extra room. But, yeah, we will have those numbers hopefully a little more refined before we meet again in two weeks.

Okay, thank you. And then I would just kind of Dave's opening note about, you know, kind of how we're framing this and telling the story. And I, you know, I appreciate it. So I think we all have a little PTSD from last year's budget sessions, right? And in an effort to be as open and transparent as possible, you know, we did a good job of that. And then I think we got dragged through the mud a little bit in the public discourse. And I couldn't help but notice at the end of the fall that You know, our levy, I think it was like seven and a half. And the county came in, honestly, almost doubles, like 12 and a half, 13. And yet I never heard boo from anybody about the county. And they framed their things very differently. I actually pulled up the Austin Daily Herald article from last year, and they didn't talk about what the percentage levy increase was. What they talked about was if you have a house worth this much, this is the 1.36% you might see increase because When people here just say 10%, they think their taxes are going up 10%. We all know that's not the case. So if it worked really well for the county, I think maybe we should consider how we frame this however we land on things to try and help a little sugar to go down with the medicine.

Mayor? We're all over that. I like it. We're all over that with information and data we're going to provide on that.

Thank you. All right, anything further on the budget? Otherwise, move on to the administrative report, David.

Yeah.

I have a two-year-old today.

I took a nap before I showered. This is easy compared to running around with a two-year-old for six hours. Appreciate your patience on the budget and in two weeks. It'll be good We're we're gonna do a lot of heavy lifting and your team to try to make it as easy as possible for you To make good decisions this fall. That's our that's our goal And that's our objective with respect to the city minister can review process Trish and I put together this memo I'm not gonna walk through it because the memo is relatively brief. It's a page and a half and The recommendation is pretty clear. I think that's the right way to go, is a subcommittee of the council, primarily because the applicants at that point in time, if they have to appear before the city council in a semi-finalist state, that the odds of them, they're going to weigh their odds, and you start to lose candidates because their names are public, and I think it's the most efficient and effective way to do it. WE'RE RECOMMENDING THE MAYOR, TRISH AND I AND TWO MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL, SO TONIGHT THAT WOULD BE IN ORDER IF YOU'D LIKE TO IDENTIFY THE TWO MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT TONIGHT. YOU CAN DO THAT IN A WEEK OR TWO WHEN THE POOL IS FINISHED. I WAS GOING TO SAY END OF BUSINESS DAY ON AUGUST 9th, BUT AUGUST IS A SUNDAY. SO WE'RE GOING TO TAKE APPLICATIONS ON AUGUST 10th, TOO, IF WE GET APPLICATIONS IN. THERE'S THREE SCENARIOS. Three scenarios, whether you're the city of Austin, the city of Minneapolis, or the city of La Verne. Every time you post for an administrator position, or even a school superintendent, or a county administrator, number one is you've got a strong pool. You get a strong pool, then this process really will play itself out. You can see what we want to, the flow of it, the ebb of it, and how we want to do that. And the second is you have a fair pool, which means you have some qualified applicants, but they just, I'll use kind of the lamest term, they just don't grab you. You know, they just don't reach out and grab you like you really want it to. And then the third scenario, and this happens, is you don't have a strong pool. There's really nobody in the pool that you want to consider. So Trish and I are talking this week. We're going to develop some options and some ideas for you based on B and C. So if A is the strong pool, then we recommend you just proceed right into this and let's get going and get her done. If it's a fair pool, what do you do? Well, you typically try to maybe extend the posting a little bit, but you just don't extend the posting and do nothing because then you've got to do something in order to solicit and get more candidates. And if it's not a sufficient pool, then we've got to rethink what our strategy is. I can say with conviction, and I think you can too, is we've reached people. You know, and we posted it everywhere. You always post the city administrator positions. We sent out over 100 profiles with letters from me to a wide distribution of people that we identified. Put it on the league's website. We put it on the MCMA, the Minnesota City County Manager's listserv, which everybody does. And then just the other day, we sent out a letter to 100, 110, maybe 120 candidates. No, it was email. Email, thank you. Yeah, it was the email. And that's the thing that triggered the calls and the inquiries and what I started to do and what I spent a lot of time late last week fielding questions from people that are interested. So that was really the catalyst that tipped it. Now we just kind of wait, right? We kind of wait and see what happens over the next few days. That's all I really have for the briefing and turn it over to the council. We certainly stand for any questions on process or whatever you'd like to talk about.

And I just want to appreciate also the work that's being done by Trish and Dave on this outreach. I've heard it. I can't walk six steps to a conference or the barbecue cook-off where I haven't heard an administrator or several at these conferences say, hey, I got a letter from Dave Unmine or I got a phone call from Dave Unmine. Beautiful. And I talked to Trish last week. The number of folks that you've put it out there was enormous. Oh, 30. It seems like Girl Scout leaders, Boy Scouts. It was crazy the amount of impact you've made, not only in this state, but other states to put it out there to these associations or other specialty outfits that would probably supply a city administrator to us. So congratulations, and I appreciate that very much. I don't think you could do any better with a firm or anybody else. That outreach is amazing, so I hope we do get some good content.

We reached into northern Iowa, and we reached into western Wisconsin, and of course all of Minnesota.

Great. And if we want to discuss, I can't remember what I did it for, but we had an occasion where I needed a couple of council members, and I know there was a lot of interest, and whatever it was, maybe a year ago, I think Bree helped me slice up the names of every council member into the exact same shape, and we put them in a hat. And we drew it, and it was all audited. It was all fair. Because I know there's several people that probably want to be on that of the two city council members pre-selection. So what I'd like to do is say, who would probably give their firstborn child to be on it? Start there. Otherwise, you know, I get there's interest. Everybody probably has interest, but I want to narrow down this selection, this raffle, this drawing to the folks that really do want to be involved. So I would take names of who absolutely really wants to be on that as the two city council members. I'll let you know which child after I get home. All right, Jeff, you want in? Yes, please. Who else? I'd like in, please. Hostie? Laura, is that a yes?

Yeah, I'm happy to serve. I'm not giving any of you my children.

Okay, good. Jason? I would definitely be interested in serving. I will tell you, knowing some of the other stuff I've got going at work, if we've got other qualified people who are passionate about it, certainly open to that, but would be more than happy to be part of it as well.

Paul?

No.

No? Paul? Yes. All right, so we've got five of the... Who am I missing? Oh, Becky. Becky.

I'm way over on the end. Yes.

You weren't black like the chair came. So yes All right, we will get with Bree and we'll do the exact same shape of the of the paper and we'll put in the box and we'll draw it out and we'll let you know.

Thank you. If I'm on can we make Byram do it too because we just had to spend a year and a half hiring a pastor so since he's not here let's delegate him.

All right. Well, thank you. Is there anything else further on the administrative candidate? All right. Anybody else have anything? We're under open discussion. Anything under open discussion?

Sure. I just want to say thank you to Emily and Dave and department heads. The budget presentation tonight was a great first step. I really liked it. I like where we're headed.

So thank you all. All right. Anything else? Take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Three.

Councilmember Waller. Aye. Councilmember Baskin. Aye. Councilmember Postma. Aye. Councilmember Helley.

Aye.

Councilmember Obala. Aye. Councilmember Fisher. Aye. Councilmember Atlarge-Austin. Aye. Work session is adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you all. Have a great rest of your night. I want to hang out in the bar. Spend my time there.

Is that right? It'd be fun though. It's an adventure. Good for you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.