City Council - Special Meeting

The May 20, 2026 meeting of the special joint city council and redevelopment agency budget is called to order. This meeting has been properly noticed and posted in compliance with the open meeting law. These proceedings are being video recorded and can be viewed live on City of Las Vegas TV on Cox Cable Channel 2. You could also watch the meeting live online and access other city content by visiting lasvegasnevada.gov slash connect. The proceedings will be rebroadcast on the City of Las Vegas TV the Wednesday of the meeting at 8 p.m. and also Friday at 4 a.m., Saturday at 7 p.m., Sunday at 7 a.m., and the following Monday at 5 p.m. For public comment related to the items on the agenda, citizen participation, and public hearing items, we have available a speaker card which you can complete and submit to the city clerk. Cards are available in the clerk's office or at the rear of the chambers. If you do not submit a card, it does not prevent you from speaking under public comments, citizens' participation, or specified public hearing items. If there is anyone present today that has a need for hearing-impaired equipment, please see the city clerk's staff. Please note, if you are parked in the parking garage across the street, a self-validation machine is located in the foyer. between council chambers and the security desk you walk through to enter these chambers. You must have your ticket with you to use the machine. If you do not have your ticket, see security personnel when exiting for a validation coupon. We will now move on to item three. Agenda item three, public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters on the agenda for action. The amount of time any single speaker is allowed will be two minutes. All comments made will be cross-referenced to those specific items. If anyone submitted a speaker card or who wishes to speak under this portion of the agenda, please come to the podium and state your name for the record. This is your opportunity to address the council, but the council is not able to respond or engage in dialogue. You may also address the council at the end of the meeting during citizens participation regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council. Although you are not prohibited from speaking during both public comment periods, we kindly ask that your comments are not repetitive. We will set the time, as I mentioned before, at two minutes. Does anybody wish to come forward? Seeing no one, I thank you, and we will now hear items number four and five together, which are both public hearings. Agenda item number four. Item four is public hearing and discussion for possible action regarding fiscal year 2027 City of Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency tentative budget and fiscal year 2027 City of Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency final budget. Redevelopment area awards one, three, and five Mr. Knudson, Ms. Diaz, and Ms. Summers-Armstrong. And item five is a public hearing and discussion for possible action regarding the fiscal year 2027 City of Las Vegas tentative budget and fiscal year 2027 City of Las Vegas final budget, including the five-year capital improvement plans. This impacts all wards. Mr. Jansen, welcome.

Good afternoon, Mayor Berkley, members of City Council. Mike Jansen, City Manager for the record. I'm going to let my colleagues to my right introduce themselves.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Susan Heltzley, Chief Financial Officer.

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and Council Members. Rosa Cortez, Deputy City Manager.

Well, Mayor and Council, we certainly had a interesting day today for sure. A lot of items on today's Council agenda that I think the city can be really proud of. And hopefully we can finish the day in a similar manner with a FY27 budget that you all can also be proud of. I'd have to start off and thank Team Las Vegas. Team Las Vegas is a name that we give all of our directors and managers over some of our offices, including our city attorney, as well as our city auditor. That team, Las Vegas, is what helps us bring to you a budget that, as best we can, meets the priorities of council and addresses things that are unique to all of your wards. The team that's in the audience today also includes reps from our finance department, and I will tell you, we have an incredible finance department. They live, eat, breathe finance year-round, but starting in maybe just before January to today, it's pretty much nonstop, all things budget. So I want to thank that entire team. And then last but not least, our entire CMO team. who provides guidance to all of our departments, who gets the feedback from so many different areas to try to make sure that we get a budget that keeps our city moving. So with that, I'd like to start off really first things first with the most important part of the presentation for you today. what I want to make sure you take away and that is we're bringing to you an FY27 budget that is a balanced budget. It's a balanced budget and it also has even a surplus and that surplus is going to allow us to get back to a council approved policy as it relates to our general fund reserves. Something that's really important for a community like ours that can be hit with changes in visitation that we have to navigate ups and downs, and by having a strong general fund reserve, we can get through those types of things. So starting off with that, We've got themes that we follow every year in our budget. Some years they change a little bit. But certainly for this budget, Badland is behind us. And with that behind us, we have to get those reserves back to where they need to be. And the reason for that, we've talked about this, is we've got to protect that bond rating. We do a lot of bond issuances for so many things that allow a city to run and expand. And if we don't have at least a 20% reserve, we don't get that good bond rating. Your policy, the policy that council endorsed a number of years back was we got to get it to 25. We weren't able to do that last year, but this year we're right back at it. But in order to get there, it wasn't easy. We had to ask our departments for a 2.5% decrement, and they helped us identify how we can achieve those goals with some of those decrements. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't take a moment to just look at what's happened since the end of February. February 28th, I believe, is when the Iran conflict really was in full gear. And very, very quickly, the budget outlook for all entities in Southern Nevada zoomed in on these two bullets you see here related to the soaring energy prices and essentially crude oil. is almost doubled since that date, and similarly for jet fuel. And for a community that relies on tourists that drive in, that fly in, that's a serious situation for us to navigate. We're optimistic that it will be short term, but we had to bring a budget to you that took into account the what-ifs, what if that's sustained, and we start seeing a drop-off in visitation. Similar to that, inflation. Inflation ebbs and flows. It so happens that the most recent indicator for consumer price index, that's the one that just came out in April at 3.8% year over year, That's the highest we've had since 2023. Another indicator that is also important for us as we're looking at what it's going to cost for us to buy materials, what it's going to cost for us to build things, is the producer price index. That was up 6% year over year. That's the highest since 2022. So those indicators are just another reason why we have to be careful with how we're projecting our revenues throughout this year. And then, you know from so many of our briefings throughout the year, we've done a great job bringing to our citizens parks. Parks get started, and by the time they get opened, they gotta have new staff, they gotta have new services, supplies. So this budget is capturing, it just happened to be the way it is this year. A whole bunch of parks are all opening in this fiscal year, which meant we needed to add those resources. Every step of the way in our budgetary process follows the city council priorities, so I have these up here just as a reminder. Just about everything we do, every employee of the city is aware of these. We have our newest one, housing and homelessness, that is now a key tenet of all things that we do. And then jumping into capital, What I'll just simply say on capital is, again, timing was everything. This year, we have a park bond that's being paid off, so we had an opportunity to issue another park bond and get more of those projects that many of your constituents have asked for. We can now move them forward. You're going to see in an upcoming slide from Rosa how so many of our key public safety projects, they're all moving forward. I want to just give you an example. When you build something like a fire station, they can take three to five years because you have to get land, you have to get that project designed, constructed, you got to equip it and staff it. So these are projects that take a while before you actually see them in the community, but they get on the CIP project so that we can get them going. And I'm going to just give you one example. Since our tentative budget to today, there was a fire station we've been trying to site in the northeast area of the city of Las Vegas. And only just recently, with Councilman Bruni's assistance, we've been able to identify a property owner. It's an area of the city where we just don't have a BLM parcel that'll work. We've been able to identify a property owner who's very interested in us potentially integrating that station into their development plan. And so that project, the Northeast Area Fire Station, has been added to this year's capital program. but it's as a result of relationships. And that goes across all of your wards. You have relationships with property owners, with business owners. When we need something, a lot of times your assistance is what gets us down the next step. So I wanted to make that aware. And again, a difference from our tentative budget to final. In our tentative budget, our CIP was looking smaller than last year's. But subsequent to that, we took a look at how our funds for few revenue indexing, that's our RTC dollars, those are very well set for the next 10 years. And we also have very healthy fuel tax that's coming in. So with that, we see an opportunity to issue a transportation bond as well. A $40 million bond is what we're showing here. That would move our CIP project going from 150 to 155, which is actually a little bit bigger than last year's. So again, even though we got those challenges, some really good things happening. I thought it would be really important for you all to see since such a big part of Southern Nevada is dependent on the economic engine that is development to take a quick look at what's been happening at the city of Las Vegas and I've tied this date to right after you were sworn in mayor I want to look at it from January of 25 to present what has the development of situation look like. And you'll see in the next slide all the entitlements that have come before you and your colleagues since you've come into your leadership role. But as of right now, our economic engine has permit valuation a little over a billion dollars. That's five months into the calendar year. We still have six plus months to go. What that looks like is 723 projects on the building side, 194 on the civil side. And now compare that to the last two fiscal years, or calendar years in this case. In calendar year 24, we ended the calendar year with $2.3 billion in permit valuation. In calendar year 25, we ended it with $2.1 billion. And I have to put a shout out to our permitting team. Their numbers are impressive on when you submit a plan for a commercial project, that permit review takes five days. For a residential project, it takes three days. For developers to decide where they want to develop, where they want to invest, how fast they can go through the process is a really important indicator. Just again, kudos to our team for doing a great job in that space. I mentioned, Mayor, since you've come into your role, this is a real interesting slide for you all. Since 1-1-25, you, your colleagues, you have approved entitlements. This is the pipeline of future permits. You've improved entitlements for over 18,000 housing units. And if you look at where those housing units are going throughout our city, It's fair to say that a whole bunch of them are gonna be more than 600,000 and another bunch will be less. So if you just look what that entitlement means to our city, at about 600,000 a house with the building and associated civil permits, that's about $11 billion in entitlements for housing units. Additionally, another million and a half square feet of commercial space at about $650 per square foot, that includes the building and the permits, that's another billion dollars. So why this is important is the actions that you've taken as a board, that's setting up our pipeline for the next four to five years for permit activity for developers to develop in our city. It's also an indicator of developers having confidence in the city of Las Vegas. Onto the right there, it's kind of an interesting slide. I have to apologize in advance. I wasn't able to get a project in Ward 1 that had over 1,000 residential units approved since this date. So you'll see there, you had the Grand Sawyer Cashman in Ward 5. The development agreement was for 1,200 units. You had the Badlands redevelopment in Ward 2 was almost 1,500 units. Desert Pines in Ward 3 was over 1,500 units. Sky Summit in Ward 4 was 3,500 units. And Monument Hills in Ward 6 was 6,000 units. Those all have happened since 1-1-25. MPT, my note for you is we're gonna work together to see where in Ward 1 so much of your property's already developed, but as you and I have discussed, there's some underutilized properties and hopefully we can find a way to get a Ward 1 chunk on there as well. But this is really, it's all that you've been doing over the last period. In order to get this budget to you in the shape that it's in, we had to employ a number of strategies. One of the easier strategies is to look at the true personnel vacancy rates. Historically, we just took a straight 3% and said, hey, that's the vacancy rate across all departments. But when you dig into each department, you find that some departments just have higher rates because of certain things. Examples are on the marshals, corrections officers, and our firefighters. They have a much higher rate of vacancy because there's a limitation on how many folks you can put through the fire and police academies. They have much higher retirement rates. They can retire at an earlier age. And then sometimes some of those folks that go through the academy, they don't get confirmed. In this budget, we've captured the effective vacancy rate, and that allowed us to better manage those costs. We've also had to limit new positions. If you look at 19 to 27, our FTEs grew by a little over 400 positions, close to 45 positions a year. This year we had to limit it. There's about 27 positions that are being added to the payroll. And how did departments help us on those decrements? Well, they looked at some of their vacant positions. They also looked at some services and supply programs they had that were maybe more nice-to-haves than must-haves. And that's how they built their 2.5% decrement plan. Of note, what's really important is every month we walk you through what the C tax looks like. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it flat? Well, these positions that are on the decrement list, they're still in our staffing plan, but there's no budget associated with them. That means throughout the year, we have an opportunity to potentially bring those positions back if our budget comes in stronger than we budgeted. So that's important to know. A couple years ago, we offered a voluntary separation program. We're in the final year of that to have some savings. It's important to note, no uniformed officers or firefighters are impacted by any of these decrements. And just as a point of reference, for FY26 we're actually asking for decrements in the neighborhood of five to ten percent so we're getting away from having to have decrements but again they were necessary to build us back up Last but not least, fee schedules. We've got a lot of fees that had not been adjusted for years and years and years. Our strategy is to try to get them updated with an annual CPI so that there is not a need to come back in the future and ask for a raise of fees. Nobody wants to do that. CPI built in will allow us to navigate that a whole lot easier. So with that, I'm going to pass the mic over to our CFO, Susan Heltzler.

Thanks, Mike. Susan Helsley, CFO for the record. And I just want to take a minute to echo what Mike said at the beginning of his presentation. It takes a city to build this budget. So thank you to Team Las Vegas and a huge shout out to the finance group. They've been working on this budget since September. So thanks, guys. I know how much work that goes into it because I was their director for three years, so I get it. So our FY27 major changes from tentative, as I like to put it, our general fund expenditures went down by about $800,000. I call that budget dust. So because you figure we have an $840, $850 million general fund budget, it's not really that impactful. So we have eight items, eight major items that move the needle, that $800,000. We had a debt service transfer. It was actually reduced by $1.2 million because we refinanced city hall bonds. So we wanted to make sure we pick that transfer up. Our metro budget actually increased by half a million. They had gone through and done an awful lot of work getting their budget finalized. Their property tax revenue went a little wonky on them, so we ended up having to pick up a little bit more of their expenses. Our payroll revaluation, it decreased by half a million dollars. We look at our payroll three times during budget. So we zero-base our staffing. We actually put in how many people we have, what step they're at, where they're at. on which range they're in. So we can tell you exactly how much our payroll is going to be for our 3,800 employees, which is really actually pretty cool. That's a lot of work on the payroll team. Our mayor's fund was reduced by $100,000 per their contract. We went through and made sure that that was picked up. Our animal foundation budget actually was reduced by $100,000. The crossing guards cost increased by about $100,000. We added additional high schools, and it went up by contract CPI. And then we added about $15,000 to the workforce development group, increased funding for strong start interns. I know that's been a really nice program that we've had here for the summer, so it's nice that we're able to have a few more And then we just had some internal service fund charges in our facilities group that increased by $350,000. And $150,000 for workforce development. Decimals are hard sometimes. One thing that's not on the slide is we're adding bonding authority. And Mike mentioned it early on. So we're adding some bonding authority for next year so we can go out and ask for that $40 million transportation bond that we would, it's a revenue bond, it would be supported by our motor vehicle fuel tax and our fry tax so that we can go ahead and move some of those transportation projects forward that have been sitting on the shelf. We're also asking for a $50 million bond in the RDA. So again, just the authority to do so. We would, of course, come back to this body to ask for permission and run it through everyone to make sure that everything's okay on those bonds. Another thing that changed are special revenue funds. We've got some fire transport vehicles that were going to be delivered next fiscal year. They're actually going to be delivered this fiscal year, so we don't have to put $2.6 million in for next year because they're going to come early, which is nice. Our debt service fund, we just updated to include the refunding and refinancing transaction for our city hall bonds. Had a little bit of noise going on in our sanitation capital outlay. It increased by $6 million. So its five-year CPI is $461.4 million. So we're making a lot of improvements to our sanitation program. And then within our internal service funds, we increased our liability savings. Internal service owned by $10 million for potential and pending litigation. Our workers' comp increased by $1.7 million due to rising claims in new legislation. We had a few unfunded mandates that really hit us hard on our workers' comp, AB 410 in 2023 and AB 142 in 2025. They just have recognized additional things that people can claim workers' comp for. And then we've increased our computer internal service fund for software liability amortization by 3.5 million. This is one of those weird little accounting things. So we have this GASB. It's an accounting standards board that we have to follow. So the 3.5 million is not cash, but we have to recognize it on our expenses. So if we don't recognize it, taxation asks us, hey, what are you guys doing with your GASB 96? So we're going ahead and putting that in this year. Here's our general fund revenues. We're right about where we were, $838 million roughly. You'll see that our consolidated tax is 53%. followed by our property tax at 20.5%. And our license and franchise and our other are both very close. Franchises is about $82 million, the rest of it being licensees that come in. And our others is just we've got some property taxes that we don't show under the property tax and a few other things that hit right there. When you look at our consolidated tax history, it always astounds me how quickly it grew from FY20 to FY22. That is really indicative of all of the money that came in through the CARES Act, and ARPA money, and the $2,000 stimulus that people got. They had money, and they needed to spend it, because they didn't go anywhere in 2020. And they realized, you know what? I can do a lot of online shopping. So we have been very careful not to assume that that's going to continue to increase. In fact, you can see as it levels. And actually, this next slide really shows it quite nicely. how the leveling off of our C tax has happened over the last couple of years. So we've got a couple of things here. If we assumed continuous growth back to FY 2013, we would be roughly at under $400 million. So you can see that we've been growing faster than that. Our five-year average growth is 5.9%. So that would put us about 490, a little over 500. We're actually doing a projected growth of 4.6 from FY21. And interestingly enough, you'll notice that we're keeping it pretty flat this fiscal year till next fiscal year, as we were talking earlier. A lot of uncertainty in the marketplace right now between the inflation and the cost of oil and jet fuel and our tourism numbers are just not where we'd want them to be. So we're going very conservative this year. However, next year for FY28, We've got some things going on. We've got the final fours coming, so we've got the basketball fans. The Las Vegas A's are opening up, so we're hoping that that's going to increase our sea tax numbers too. And, of course, we're getting Super Bowl back in 2029. And I know I don't benefit from that because I don't go, but if somebody gets to enjoy my tickets, I'm glad they're able to. So that explains the difference that we've got going on in those outlying years. And this next one just shows our property tax history for all funds. It's a very stable growth. I always like to tell folks we collect 99.5% of our property tax, so that's a very, very... solid revenue source for us. Of course, since we're landlocked, it's difficult for us to grow this more, so we do look forward to all of the permitting that Mike was referencing early on. That should really help us with our property tax. And our full-time equivalent history, you can see, as Mike was saying, we really grew our FTEs quite a bit up until about 2025, then it slowed down in 26, and this year we're adding 27 The majority of those are public safety positions. We do have a few positions to handle our parks and rec, and this number did not change from tentative to final, so we did not add any additional positions. Our general fund expenditures, $826 million roughly. You can see salary and benefits is almost 50%. And then our non-labor costs is another 22. Metro is 25% of our general fund. And then our debt surface, 3%. And the other is a little tiny $6.2 million. So we are very heavily focused on salary and benefits when you assume that Metro, 80% of their budget is salaries and benefits also. And this next slide just shows our general fund expenditures of the 826 by function instead of by category. So again, our public safety is 67.5% of our budget. That includes, of course, Metro, our DPS, our fire department, some of our public. We've got some folks that work in public works and neighborhood services that all contribute to the public safety. Culture and Rec's another eight and a half. So it's pretty well spread out between the rest of the groups, but as you can see, public safety is truly our number one priority on how we spend our money here. Just a snapshot of our general fund final budget. We believe our estimate for FY26 will come in with a 20.9% fund balance, which after settling Badlands is not too bad. We realized that we had some work to do at FY26 You can see we had some transfers out of $104.5 million in 26. That was to go into our internal service fund for the liability so we could pay off the liability. And we also reimbursed our sanitation fund last year that we took out a loan for. And in FY27, you'll see that our consolidated tax, we are estimating it to be flat to this year's estimate. And we will be coming in at a 25% surplus, which is about, it's $12 million. Not a huge number, but it's a start. So we're very excited to be building back our excess balance we've got going on. And this just shows our general fund revenue and expense trending. You can see the years where we actually were bringing in more money than we were spending. FY20 was an interesting year because we took a lot of, we went through and did a lot of cost-cutting just in case revenues didn't come back. And we actually ended up with a revenue surplus that year because we got some money from the CARES Act. And then the rest of the time, 21 was pretty flat. We've been running surpluses going forward. And you can see the last couple budgets, we had some deficits. This year, again, it was in a surplus.

So I'm going to turn it over to Rosa before I lose my voice.

Thank you, Susan. Rosa Cortez, Deputy City Manager. I, too, would like to echo what Mr. Jansen and Susan had mentioned about our gratitude and thankful for all the work that the department's Team Las Vegas has done in getting this budget completed. And I want to thank them for being here today. So thank you all. All right, so with that, I will quickly go over the fiscal year 27 capital improvement plan. This first slide shows the funding sources that we use to fund our capital projects. This should look familiar to you, as we showed you during the tentative presentation. And most of these funding sources have restricted uses. For example, the 1% room tax is used for transportation projects, and the 5 cent ad valorem is for facilities. I also want to point out the bottom two bullets, which are the bonds that Mr. Jansen had mentioned earlier, the park bond. that we will be issuing for $21 million. And I'll show you in an upcoming slide some of the projects that we'll be funding with that bond. And then lastly, the transportation improvement bond that is a new opportunity for the city to advance some delayed transportation projects. Wrong way. So as Mr. Johnson mentioned, public safety is our number one priority in the city of Las Vegas. And these are the projects that we reviewed during the tentative budget. And they are listed by ward. And I will go over those quickly. We talked about Fire Station 103. That's the new station that will be located at Alta and Falcon. And then in Ward 2, we've been working with Summerlin Howard Hughes to amend that development agreement to include any fire station. And the dates are shown there. In Ward 3, the Fire Station Training Center, that's a multi-phase project. We will be starting construction soon, and that is located at Mojave and Bonanza. The Ward 4 project is the 9-1-1 joint, multi-joint 9-1-1 center, multi-agency. That is a partnership with Metro, the City of North Las Vegas, Clark County, and the City of Las Vegas. and we hope to have that project constructed or starting construction at the end of this year. We're still working out those details. We also talked about advancing design for a new fire station in Ward 4 in the Northwest at Chambourine Tropical. In Ward 5, we have Fire Station 1, the rehab project. That's one of our busiest fire stations. We hope to start construction on that in Quarter 2 of 2027. And then in Ward 6, Looking forward to seeing the Metro substation completed by the end of the year. Another project in partnership with Metro, and that also includes a city park. And then lastly, the new fire station that Mike mentioned earlier, we're advancing design for a new fire station in the Northeast Quadrant located near Grand Teton and Rainbow. And here I just wanted to go over the projects that are included with the FY27 bond. And this is not all the projects, but I just wanted to highlight these. So for Ward 1, we are adding construction funding for the Firefighters Dog Park, which is located on O'Bannon and Redwood. That will include three dog cells and agility equipment. In Ward 2, we are adding design money to complete the design of the Kellogg's Air Soccer Complex, the final build-out, which is a vacant parcel. 3.4 acres just west of Fire Station 44, and we currently plan to include a soccer field, a multi-plaza pavilion area, some fitness equipment, and additional parking. So the money there will be used to complete the design drawings. For the JC Levitt Park renovation, as Councilwoman Diaz mentioned earlier, there's a survey that is currently ongoing, and that will allow us to define the scope of work. but the funding for this will be to create design drawings, and this park is located at St. Louis and Eastern. And then in Ward 4, the Mountain Ridge Park Improvements, home of Mountain Ridge Little League, we are looking to add funding for design to do improvements that improve pedestrian access at various entryways, install new netting, install shade structures over the seating area, Also do some transition with the bullpen batting cages. And actually upgrade the walking path around the entire park as well. And then Ward 5, Hears Park, the funding that's going to be allocated for Hears is the construction funding for that project. That is a neighborhood park located near Smoke Ranch and Torrey Pines. And this park is about seven acres, and we will be doing a complete renovation where we're going to upgrade the walking path with lighting, add fitness equipment, put a new basketball court, lighting, landscaping, redo the grass and irrigation. new playground equipment as well. And then lastly, Ward 6, the Teton Trails Park final build out that also has a vacant parcel. It's about five acres. And we have completed a schematic design and we want to now do the final design documents. So the funding will go to get those documents completed. And that entails some pickleball courts, sports field, a new restroom and additional parking. And with that, I will pass it on to Mike.

Thanks, Rosa. Thanks, Susan, for your slide coverage. I'll take a little bit of time just to go over the RDA, and you all see Dina Babski at our RDA meetings on multiple occasions with all the different projects that are going on in our RDA. And as a reminder, our RDA, the area that it covers is Wards 1, 3, and 5. And what this slide really just shows you in a couple of the bullets is just all the unique projects that are coming out of the ground, that are in process, And it covers all of our major districts in Wards 135, certainly the Medical District, certainly Symphony Park, the Arts District, and our newest one is the Cashman and Grant Sawyer, a huge redevelopment of that area of our redevelopment agency. At the top, I wanted to just point out you'll see the assessed value increases and the tax increment revenue growth. What some folks are not aware of when you see all the projects that are coming out of the ground downtown, they don't actually get added to the tax rolls until they get their certificate of occupancy. And so FY28 should be a near record year because all of these mega projects are all going to be added to the tax rolls. They're in right now trying to get their certificates of occupancy. Some of them already had them. But it should be a really banner year for the RDA next year. And that is simply going to allow us to do more in the RDA. I highlighted one of our support programs. And so if RDA funds are used, you have to have that nexus. So we've had one today for some improvements with the new Greek restaurant on commerce. A very popular one, seems like I see a security grant request coming through quite frequently. It was a program we started during ARPA time and we've sustained it through the RDA. But I wanted to just highlight the Downtown Special Event Public Safety Support Program. Really what this is, is we want special events to continue to happen all over the redevelopment agency. But in order for those events to be safe, when you have large crowds coming into an area, there's a significant cost for law enforcement, fire support, et cetera. And so as those costs went up, vendors came in and and told us, hey, we may not be able to do this event anymore because of the cost. And we know how valuable those events are to our redevelopment agency. So this support program was added probably about two years ago. And again, I just wanted to get it out there for those that are listening. If you're thinking of an event downtown, By all means, when you meet with our event team, take a look at that incentive program because it may be a key way for your event to make it through the process. Again, our RDA is in very good shape. It's very healthy. As Susan mentioned earlier, you'll see up there under other contributions for FY27, the number 53. Fifty of that is that bond authority. So there's no guarantee today that we'll actually issue 50, maybe it's 40, maybe it's 30, but we wanted to have the flexibility to take advantage of that bond if a number of projects happen during this fiscal year. And some of those projects involve the Ma Museum expansion, the expansion of the Neon Museum, the biomedical health challenge, some strategic land acquisition for future garages, a whole host of things. And the FY27 budget will have that flexibility to do that. The only other item I would point out to on this particular slide is when you come down into our expenditures, you see that 85.6 under program expenses. That is us saying if we are going to issue a bond, let's just say it is 50, we are going to put that bond to use. We're not going to sit on those revenues. We don't want to pay interest on a bond and not put it to use. So the idea is whatever we issue in a bond, it'll come out with some of those expenses. Additionally, in that program expense are funds for TIs. We've talked to you about a number of very exciting tenants that may be coming into the third floor of Civic Plaza. Not ready to announce just who that is yet, but there's funds in there that would cover those TIs. And so, again, a lot of great things happening in our RDA. This slide is just a snapshot of what everything looks like when you look at all of our various funds that make up the city's annual operation. And it's landing at about $2.2 billion is what it takes to run the city of Las Vegas, approaching 700,000 population. As you see on the bottom line, we've steadily grown every year. I'm sure this time next year we're probably going to hit that 700,000 mark. And you'll see, again, our FTEs, they've steadily grown to be able to meet the needs of the community. I go without saying if I didn't take a moment to thank all the regular employees you see there, 3,086 temporary employees, our hourly employees. We've got hourly lifeguards, we've got hourly instructors at some of our community centers. What makes the city great is all of our staff, not just the full timers, but also those part timers. And so again, I wanted to take a moment to just thank our entire team. Here's really the key budget takeaways for you today. It's a positive budget. It's structured conservatively, but it's going to end with a surplus. And again, this is after having deficits in 25 and 26 due to Badlands. It focuses on those challenges we mentioned, again, getting those reserves up, recognizing we could have a flat C tax. But at the end of the day, this budget really reinforces how much public safety remains our number one priority. I have a lot of conversations with Chief Gray and a number of folks from the fire team, and I wanted to capture just the impact of this year's budget. I think I'm not going on a limb to say this is probably the largest investment in fire and rescue allocations that we've probably ever had in the history of the city. And what you see there, going ward by ward, the oldest fire station is being replaced, 50-year-old fire station. The busiest fire station is being rehabbed. A brand new fire training center is going to construction. We're adding a ladder truck and a whole bunch of staff at Station 4 to be able to meet all of our new mid-rise building demands. We've got a new Summerlin West fire station that's going into design, a new Northwest fire station, a new Northeast fire station, And I can simply say so much more. It's a pretty impressive budget for your focus on public safety. What's left? The final budget's got to get to the state by June 1st, and we have to file with them our planning document, our five-year CIP, by August 1st. And Mayor and Council, with that, I really appreciate the feedback you've given us throughout the process. It really helps us try to figure out how do we get everything to land as best we can. And with that, we're open to address any questions you might have.

Thank you so much. This is a public hearing, so are there any people from the public that wish to comment on this item? Seeing no one, we will close the public hearing. Are there any questions or comments from members of the council? Okay, go right ahead.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mike, Rosa. Susan, you guys have done an amazing job. Sometimes life gets rocky at the city, but you three are amazing stewards and amazing leaders for our city, and you've got us through beautifully the high times, the low times. Thank you for your commitment to our fire department. This is amazing. The future of Las Vegas Fire and Rescue is very, very bright here. Thank you for all you do. Thank you so much.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor. I just would echo my colleague's sentiments. Thank you for all the work and for all the folks sitting in the audience. And it takes a whole lot of work to put this budget together. And you and your teams do an exceptional job. And you're very responsive to the council and the constituents that we represent. So we should all be very proud. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Ms. Kelly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanted to put a couple of comments on the record. particularly in light of our first budget hearing. And I had some comments. Um, um, if you'll recall that the mayor had limited our time and I didn't have a chance to say some of the things I wanted to say that I think are important for the public to understand. Um, I don't want the lack of comments misinterpreted at all, um, as, um, disengagement or apathy on the part of the council. And so I'll just use me as an example. Um, this is a very long process for us. And, uh, and I know that I reached out, I started a meeting with, uh, our CFO, Susan healthfully in, uh, either it was either very early, it was late fall sitting down because I was the new kid wanting to understand how this process worked. And, uh, I met with you on multiple occasions, uh, you encouraged me to do so, and I really appreciate that. I know, and not that we need to go through everybody talking about what they had to do, but I think I'm representative of the kind of work that we do sometimes behind the scenes that's not seen by the public. And so lack of inquisition sometimes at meetings does not mean that we weren't paying attention, that we didn't spend any time. I KNOW MY WARD, PARTICULARLY CHRISTINA DUGAN AND MYSELF SPENT MANY, MANY HOURS UNDERSTANDING THE BUDGET, TRYING TO INTERPRET IT. THIS IS MY FIRST TIME ON THIS SIDE OF THE FENCE, IF YOU WILL, WITH A MUNICIPAL BUDGET AND REPRESENTING CONSTITUENTS. SO I TAKE THEIR INVESTMENT IN WHAT WE DO VERY SERIOUSLY, AS I KNOW YOU ALL DO AS WELL. You talked, Susan, about the effort of the finance team, which I know is huge. This is one of the most important things that you do. And so whether it was Gail or the team that's sitting here, I certainly, the directors, I know I spoke to multiple directors about trying to understand better how they look at their budgets, how they come to the conclusions that they come to on whether to submit uh, uh, new staffing, which was very limited. I know Mike that the direction was for, uh, decrement. And I know that the directors, uh, look very thoroughly through that. Um, you referred Susan, um, as I think when you're looking at a 2 billion, nearly $2 billion budget is budget dust. Uh, but I know that many of us understand $800,000 is a lot of money. And while not every penny we get is from taxpayer dollars, the majority of that we do. And I know for me, and I'm certain this is the same for the rest of the council, take the responsibility, the fiduciary responsibility for those dollars very seriously. And I don't mean to suggest you don't. But I did want to put on the record that we do get that. And it is, we're good stewards of that money, I feel. While I don't, I wouldn't say that every dollar being spent that I looked at, it wouldn't be viable for me to do that. But I feel confident in voting for and approving this budget today that I did the due diligence to be able to respond to questions that my constituents have or to be able to get additional information to do so. that those dollars are being spent in the best interest of not only the taxpayers, but more importantly of the constituents. I am particularly humbled on many times I've learned the extent to which we provide services, the way in which, you know, I don't think I go through a meeting with RC, our neighborhood services leader, and am not... in awe really of how much we care and how much we work. And I know that when we have limited dollars that have to be stretched, we have a lot of responsibilities. So I want to thank you all for the work that you do. And I welcome, I know I welcome my constituents at any time to ask questions. And if I can't, I don't know the answer to them, whether they're about this budget or anything we do, I'm happy to answer because that's what we're here for. But it was important to me to say, that, as I said at the beginning, I did not want anyone to misinterpret lack of critical questions or inquisition as some distance that we have or not caring, because I know that many of the questions were asked through this whole process. And so that's very important to me. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ms. Kelly. Is there a motion for item number four?

With appreciation, I move to approve.

Please vote. Opposed? Motion carries. And for item number five?

I'll move to approve.

Please vote. Post motion carries. Thank you all very, very much. Very grateful to you. Agenda item number six, citizens participation, public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters within the jurisdiction of the city council. No subject may be acted upon by the city council. unless that subject is on the agenda and is scheduled for action. If you wish to be heard, come to the podium and give your name for the record. The amount of discussion on any single subject, as well as the amount of time any single speaker is allowed, will be limited to two minutes. Is there anyone wishing to speak under this portion of the agenda? Hearing none, this special joint city council and redevelopment agency budget Meeting is adjourned.