Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Now we've had some debate about whether a roll call is required, but we're still going to do it in the spirit of formality because it's our first budget committee. So go ahead.

Vice Chair Yang. Here. Council Member Bouley.

Here.

Council Member Coleman. Here. Council Member Kim. Council Member Jones. Here. Council President Nager. Here. Right six present and one expected shortly being Council Member Kim.

I'm here too.

Oh, sorry.

See this is why we should not do roll call.

This is exactly why we should do roll call. Alright.

Chair Johnson. Here. So

one just really wanna say I am very excited to have this be the first budget committee that I have the privilege to chair along with my vice chair. I'm super excited about this year and the year ahead. I also really appreciate the time that the Office of Financial Services staff and team have taken to actually be able to present today and really just want to acknowledge that you guys are maneuvering a bunch of different things right now. And so I just want to say thank you for being here in person and then also for all of the work that had to go on the back end for this presentation. It'll match the HRA presentation later on this afternoon. But Director Logsdon, I just wanted to say thank you and welcome.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much Chair Johnson and council members for having me today. I really appreciate it. And Laura Logsdon, I'm Deputy Director of OFS. Before I jump into the presentation, I want to welcome Joe Harney who's our new OFS Director. I believe he'll be in front of counsel this afternoon to be sworn in, so you'll see him again soon. Welcome, Joe.

I'm gonna say should we call him up now and be like, hey, it's coming in. No, I'm kidding. I won't steal your thunder from it, but you know, I might call you up after, say a few words.

I'll defer all questions to the OFS director. Great. I will jump in. Are you seeing the PowerPoint?

We are. Okay, perfect.

So today I'll be presenting information that the Council Budget Committee requested recently regarding the city's special fund FTEs and the general fund budget to actuals for 2026. I want to thank the OFS budget team and the accounting team and our department partners, finance leads across the department for their work on putting all this information together. So first I'm going start with the special fund FTEs. I provided the kind of detailed Excel spreadsheet, so you all have should have access to that information. You can dig in, you can cut the data any way you want, but it's really useful, really interesting data.

What we have in the 2026 adopted budget is 780.36 FTEs funded in special funds and that represents $97,500,000 both of salary and fringe. Those FTEs are paid for really by a diverse array of revenue sources. And I've got some examples on this slide and the table at the bottom that shows the FTE count and the total cost by fund type. And then examples of what those revenue sources are that are within those funds. So, one example, enterprise funds.

Enterprise funds are set up like business services. So, that's like police impound lot, our parks golf fund, our public works sewer fund. So, that revenue is paid for by fees that external users of those services are paying the city. So, as you kind of dig into that data, you'll find a lot of information about all of the different revenue sources that are supporting those special fund FTEs across all of our funds. We the budget team worked with departments to identify which of those fund funding sources are ongoing versus one time and indicated end dates within that spreadsheet as well.

So, the vast majority 89% or 696 FTEs are supported by ongoing funding sources. 11% or 80, almost 84 FTEs are not ongoing sources, but the end dates for those sources varies widely. So, a lot of those are grant funded. Those grants could be ending next year or in three years. Some of those FTEs are supported by opioid funds and we have a much longer timeline and kind of phase off plan for that. The opioid funds are available for the next twelve years. So, just a lot of variability in the data and yeah, lot of FTEs in the city supported by special funds. This slide provides a breakdown

of Director Loxon, just a quick note on this slide. I think at some point, it'll be very helpful to just kind of know of those that are non ongoing. So like 83.92 FTEs. Just as we're getting to approaching to the timeline, like just kind of knowing when that funding lapses. And so just some of them, especially for those that are grants and like, yes, opioid dollars or public safety aid.

I know that one of the conversations last budget cycle, we were notified that maybe there was funding that we thought we were gonna get that we didn't get. And so just in advance of that, it would be really helpful to have that, to have kind of like the breakdown of when we're expecting to do that, when we're expecting for them to roll off of the funding cycle or if there's any that are kind of at that risk piece again of not being funded for the New Year.

Sure, sure, Chair Johnson. So the spreadsheet currently has a column that indicates the end date for all of the sources. So it'll say in there the specific year that all of the funding ends. So, for like opioid funding, it says, I think 2038. And so, the grants should all indicate the actual end date as well.

And then, certainly through the budget process, if departments want those positions to continue, if they're intended to be you know permanent positions, departments would be like bringing forward budget requests to either you know shift those FTEs into other funding sources, you know request in general funds, like departments would need to be bringing that forward in the budget process for sure. That's how we would address it.

Okay. Thank you.

Definitely. So this slide then

Council President Nacre has a quick question as well. Sorry. That's okay. Thank you.

Well, didn't say it would be quick. No, I'm

just kidding.

It will be quick.

That's me saying it will be quick. Just kidding.

Very quickly. How has the number of special fund FTEs changed over time? I know generally we've seen FTE growth and I'm curious if there's if you have a ballpark of those numbers and if there's been a difference between special fund FTE growth versus general fund FTE growth.

Sure, Chair Johnson and Council President Nacre, off the top of my head I can't say but all of that information is in our annual budget books. So, could definitely pull up, there's a table in the annual, each annual budget that shows total FTE special fund versus general fund. So, we could pull that together really quickly.

Thank you.

Definitely. Any other questions? Alright. So, on this slide, this is still we're still in special fund FTEs for 2026 but this is a breakout by department. So, you can see here parks and public works have the greatest number of special fund FTEs.

I think PED has the greatest percentage of special fund FTEs. I think a 100% of PEDs staff are funded in special funds. You can also see there are several departments that have no special fund FTEs and all of their people are funded for out of the general fund. So, that includes council, emergency management, HR, mayor and OTC. On the right, I've also included like a high level summary of what those FTEs are doing.

This isn't all inclusive because like in those departments that have a lot of FTEs that are out of special fund, public works and parks in particular, I try to just do like what are the greatest number of FTEs but there are folks doing other work as well. So, example, in DSI, all five of those FTEs are the heart team. But you know, in OFS, our special fund FTEs kind of crossed many divisions. All of our fleet team are funded out of special fund. There are a portion of the OFE team is funded with grants. A portion of our treasury team is funded with special funds but not all of them. So this is just kind of a high level representation of what our special fund FTEs do.

And Deputy Director Logsdon, you mentioned PED, PED's operations, the special fund that they're funded from actually comes from HRAs. That's correct, right? The transfers come from the HRA. The funding sources within the HRA's budget?

Sorry, could you repeat that?

The funding sources within the HRA's budget or like a HRA transfer, just wanting to it says the funding sources and such here and I just wanted to be able to clarify that piece.

Yep, definitely. Thanks Chair Johnson. So PED, FCs are funded with a variety of sources, definitely the HRA is the main source. There's also billing that happens to the city general fund. So, we'll see that when we get into budget to actuals. There's I think it's about $800,000 of general fund that supports PED operations. There's also a lot of grants, PED manages federal grants and a lot of their FTE time ends up getting charged to those federal grants as well.

And just as a follow-up then, just about how much of the PEDs operation or overall operation costs or FTEs are covered over the with the HRA funding?

Chair Johnson, I don't know off the top of my head. I know Deputy Director Green is here if she would like to speak to that, but I would defer to the PED staff or I can get that answer afterwards.

Okay. Yeah. I just think from that amount it would be helpful to know the FTE costs because I think it's actually a majority. But thank you. Keep going.

Great. So

I don't know for sure, but I think it's

Deputy Director Green, you can approach. Come on up.

I don't know the exact number. I think I know we have like six to seven that get a partial reimbursement from HUD. And then outside of that, I I believe the number of FTE fully funded, so to speak, although

the funding runs across all

of the sources, is 60, somewhere in the 60 range. But if you have that if Brian has that information, we can parse that information out.

Thanks. Thank you.

Great. Next, I'm going to move into a budget to actual. So are there any other questions related to special fund FTEs? All right. Sounds good.

So, for quarter one twenty twenty six budget to actuals, what we're seeing right now for spending and revenue is that it's very similar to where we were in 2025 at this time in terms of kind of percentage of our budget. When we look at budget to actuals kind of at any given point during the year, there's a few kind of key things, timing issues to keep in mind and I have those listed on this slide. So first, there's always a payroll lag. We get paid you know two weeks after the end or kind of our payroll is on a two week lag and then there's another one to two weeks before it actually is reflected in In for. So, there's always a bit of a lag there in terms of payroll.

Transfers occur at various times throughout the year kind of dependent on the department and the business needs. So, certain transfers occur frequently like our debt payment transfers and other transfers only occur you know once a year at the end of the year. Internal bills and charges also vary throughout the year, again depending on department needs, business needs, certain central service charges for ETI and INET which are technology related. Those occur monthly. Other basically departments manage their internal bills and they can be billing monthly, twice a year, quarterly, annually.

So, there's a lot of variability and when billing occurs. And then, internal services. Some monthly internal service charges can be delayed at the beginning of each year because we're on a delay of when we start closing each month. So, at the beginning of each calendar year, we're still closing December of the prior year and that takes a few months and then once December is closed, we start closing January of the current year and then we kind of get caught up mid year. So there's just some things kind of timing delays and things to keep in mind anytime you're looking at budget to actuals.

So on this slide, I've got the general fund budget to actuals for in terms of our spending and on the whole, we're at 24% of budget which is very similar to last year when we were at 22% at this time. I've noted on the right a few explanations for outliers. So, first one emergency management, they've spent you know 86% of their general fund budget so far. That's only because the vast majority of their general fund budget is a one time annual payment that we make to Ramsey County for dispatch services. So, that's already been made.

It's $5,500,000 So, the rest of their general fund budget is just for staff and that's so that's very normal. Excuse me. And the general government accounts, currently that specific line is a little inflated because all of our indirect costs are sitting in that kind of department right now and those get allocated out to all the other departments once we start our month end close process for the year. So, the total spend is accurate. It just will be pushed out to all the other departments soon.

And then, last one there is the PED. That's what we were just talking about previously. So, that 870,000 is an admin fee to support PED. And so, the department will be submitting those internal bills according to their practices.

Alrighty. And we have two questions that I see Council President Aker and then Councilmember Joost.

Thanks, Chair Johnson. Two quick questions. One, the do we have a budget year to date column? I feel like it's always very helpful to be

able to see what we would

have expected to have spent by now versus what we've spent by now, not just what we would expect to spend by the end of the year. Just to your point, to kind of highlight whether or not things are moving as expected or not. That's one question. And then should we be concerned, I know the mayor's budget it looks like it's 43% spent at this point and there isn't a company note to explain why that is. I'm curious if you can speak to that.

Sure. So, on the first question, the budget year to date, there's the budget is annual. So, we could manually just go in and divide it by 12 and say this would be if we had kind of standard consistent spending and revenue each month. This is what it would be. But those factors that I noted on the previous slide of you know certain transfers and charges only happen you know once per year. Like it wouldn't exactly reflect reality. The closest is probably our payroll which is you know the vast majority of our spending is payroll. So, we could look specifically at employee expenses divide that total budget by 12 and compare to that and that would be

a pretty good indicator. Just as a quick follow-up to the That's actually kind of what I'm getting at. I mean, we can all divide by four and know where we should be at this point. But given that there are certain expenses that happen, for example, the payment to the county in this first quarter, the budget year to date for that line would show that we would expect to have spent, you know, most of the budget by now. And so it would look right. Budget year to date would look aligned rather than looking like we've spent 86% of our budget and we shouldn't have done that already. I've been I know that this is a standard practice in lots of the boards that I sit on with that year to date line and maybe it's not in government, it just feels like it helps set the expectation and the reality accordingly. So, maybe it's something we can

look at for the future.

Sure. Thank you, Chair Johnson, Council President. To your second question, the mayor's office, that spending is a little higher than normal because of the exiting administration. So, severance payments, vacation payouts, which are all normal, but are basically, you know, probably once every eight years or twelve years or four years when administration changes. So, that's why that's a little higher. And the bonus payouts

are part of that as well.

All payouts to staff that left are included in that.

Are we concerned about sorry, to the chair that this will leave the mayor's budget the mayor with not enough budget to make it through the year?

Chair Johnson, Council President, no. The mayor's office has made all of the hires that they have intended to make. They worked really closely with OFS and with HR when they were making those hires and looking at staff salaries and we told them this is what the 2026 adopted budget is. There was no restrictions placed on them with their hiring. We talked about how the mayor's office budget might be a little overspent this year because of kind of the typical payments that occur administrations change. But that's something that the city can manage on the whole and can manage the general fund on the whole. We have several departments that overspend every year and several departments that underspend every year. So, have no concerns about managing that.

I think as a follow-up just to one of the things that I think would be really, really helpful for us as well just we are I think everyone here is aware of the public news articles and the public mentioning around the mayor's budget overall and just potentially some of the pieces and questions that still remain. If we could get a staff just a breakdown of what that actually translated to as far as employees or staff, what was the payout and bonuses, and then also the justification for those bonuses. Being able to see those out of the mayor's budget would be really helpful just because I know for me that that's something that I still am very interested in seeing that I haven't seen. And so that's not something that I expect for you to have to say today. That's more so a follow-up that I wanted to note for the record.

Sure. Chair Johnson. And that would be a request of HR. HR managed that process. So

So The the expenditures and just like what the amounts were would be HR? Yes. Okay.

Yep. It's all in contracts. So HR managed that process.

Okay. Wonderful. We can follow-up then, Kamoot, with HR and make that request. Great. Sorry. Councilmember Jones.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Logsdon. Council President Anker actually asked like pretty much all of my questions and follow-up questions, so thank you for doing that. Mike, I do want to clarify. So you mentioned, you know, the majority of these department budgets, and what we see in expenditures are staff time except for a few of these specific cases.

So for most of these departments except for the ones where there are notes, can we expect to see the budget? This is kind of what Council President Nacre was touching on, but, you know around 25% because we're you know a quarter of the way through the year that they would increase that way just with the majority of the expenditures being salaries. Is that what you would we can expect to see basically?

Yeah, Chair Johnson and Council Member Jones, yes, with some qualifications. You know, there are certain department general fund budgets that do include transfers to special funds that are not specifically for FTEs and those transfers occur, you know in Q3 or Q4. So, qualifications, but generally the vast majority of our general fund spending is for FTEs. So, that's why on the whole we're at 24%. Thanks.

And I'll just add, really appreciate information everything you just said about some transfers occur in certain quarters. I think as I'm learning more about the budget and how it actually works and how it's expended throughout the year, just even understanding that's very helpful. So I'm grateful for all the information being shared today.

Appreciate it. Alrighty. All right. Next, have revenue. So, on this slide, we can see our Q1 revenues for 2026. Right now, we're at 4% which is pretty comparable to last year when we were at seven percent at this time. The reason revenue in Q1 is so different than spending in Q1 is because our major revenue sources don't come in in Q1. So, our property tax, our first property tax payment from the county comes in at the May and our first local government aid or LGA from the state comes in in July. So, in Q2 and Q3, that's when you'll start to see revenue kind of drastically increase. So, this is very normal.

I again have a few notes about outliers here. So, for both general government and library, that's where we'll see the property taxes and LGA come in. So, it's the same note there. And then, the other outlier right now is OFS. So, all of our interest payments so far this year, they all get deposited in OFS at first and then as we do that month end close process, it gets distributed out to other departments and other funds. So OFS being at you know 200% of budget right now is not accurate. It's just because we haven't done the year end close or month end close process yet. And then certain departments do not generate general fund revenue. So that's also normal.

I see a question from council member Coleman.

Thank you, chair, and thanks so much deputy director. Just a quick question with the county delaying or offering the ability to extend property tax payments by two months. I'm curious if that has any impact if we I assume we still expect a payment on schedule but then potentially a second payment. I'm assuming we're fine there but just want to double check.

For sure. Chair Johnson and Councilmember Coleman, yes, we will still be getting a payment from the county at the May. They have been sending us updates on that program that they've set up. The uptake I think has been somewhat low. So, the impact to St. Paul is pretty low. I think it's in the tens of thousands. So, it's not going to have a major impact on our first property tax payment or I think on our annual property taxes.

Council President Nacre. Thanks, Chair Johnson. Doctor. Logsdon, can you remind us of the sources of the revenue that come into the city attorney's office, the council, and the mayor's office?

Sure. I will Chair Johnson and Council President, I'll do my best off the top of my head, but we can definitely follow-up with more specifics. So, the city attorney gets some revenue from outside sources that are paying for city attorney services. So, they contract with PHA, public housing, as well as Port Authority And so, those are some sources there. For counsel and the mayor's office, I'm going to need to follow-up. I don't want to give wrong information.

Can't Joe just tell us? Thank

you. Yep.

Okay. Well, I really appreciate just kind of being able to get a glimpse of this. I know this is our first one, right, of four that we will ultimately have for this year and continuing. And so just one of the things that's really important is just that we had to have a starting point. So I think the feedback that was received to just the additional columns or additional information, that would be helpful.

Deputy Director Logsdon responded to their initial request that came from counsel of what this would look like. And so we're able to really expand that, change that as we go forward, especially to get the information that we ultimately are looking to see when we have enough time to do so. So if and I think it would be curious as well to the OFS team to kind of know based off of what we've been able to see here, what the feedback is, and if this hits what we're looking at and what we're wanting this conversation to be like moving forward. And so I just wanna say with the questions that were put in front of OFS 2%, this is exactly what, you know, the what myself as Chair and what Kamud has communicated. And so just was really happy with seeing just the numbers in hand.

It's really digestible. Yes, it brings on questions and brings about conversation, but I think that's the purpose of why we wanted the budget to actuals in the first place. I will say a shameless plug in the sense that St. Paul has maintained our AAA rating standard peer from Fitch and S and P, and they reaffirmed our rating, which I ultimately feel like is a testament to the work that you all are doing and is quite the achievement. And so I just want to name that as well while I have you in front of me and while I have the team as well because that's something that I know we work really hard to maintain.

To your credit and that when we get midst of everything, most of last year was under your leadership. And I do want to take a minute to acknowledge that, especially as someone who stepped up to serve in an interim time, especially when there was just so many anomalies. So I want to say thank you for your service as well as an interim director. Thank you, and I look forward to being able to work with you in your capacity as deputy director as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Johnson. That's super, super generous. Yeah, we were so pleased with how the presentations went with the rating agencies and we felt like we had a really great story and strong message to bring of how St. Paul managed through like immense challenges last year, but you never really know going in like how they're gonna view that.

And even our most critical rater which is S and P was just like really impressed and really on our team and really on our side. And so, it felt like such a huge testament to the work of our whole team, everybody in the city, decisions that the council made, that the mayor made. So, just yeah, super, super pleased to get through what a like huge challenge we faced last year and to come out with these outside entities acknowledging like St. Paul is a great city. You should invest here. It feels really good.

Thank you. Absolutely.

No questions left, but thank you so much for being here and being able to do that. If people have questions, it's been a bit digest things. Kamud and I and Vice Chair Yang are really asking for folks to kind of be able to, one, yes, can share them with OFS, but also can also share them with us so we can start to compile those so that way we can get it in one form versus multiple different requests that are coming from council members. So if you do have questions or you think of something that you are reading, especially through the appendix as well, or the attachment, which I thought was really helpful when it gave you the breakdown and by funding source, don't hesitate to reach out to us as well so we can hopefully put it all in a list and compile it in one request versus many. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So the budget committee scope is something that I'm gonna bring on the agenda for both this month and you'll see it again in May. In part because what our goals will be as we continue to kinda go go for the year is to one, get through our budget retreat and then two, also from our budget retreat, start to have presentations and our calendars and ultimately for folks to really kind of know where committee the will be ultimately going and what presentations will be which and held on what date. And so this agenda item really will be back next.

You'll see it again on the next agenda, and in part, that's going be the purpose. Instead of putting a list of calendar the calendar dates in front of you without the topics to this time, I really just wanted to be able to kinda hold that here versus withdraw, and then also be able to share with council members kind of what to expect moving forward when it comes to budget dates and presentations. So I know that some council members have maybe sent maybe some presentation requests last year. Kamud and I will need that again this year. And so in part as a follow-up either from the retreats or just information that you've seen and maybe haven't seen presented.

We did get the full list from Vice Chair Ging at the time as well around what things are still pending, and some of those are still captured for the year. So it may already be scheduled. But the there are several blanks or several opportunities where the budget committee can still fit in presentations, still fit in requests. And so we want to be able to do that in a way that also responds to what comes up out of the budget retreat.

Yes, Council President. Madam Chair, if we just to be clear, we sent suggestions or requests for budget committee topics to at the time Chair Yang, are you saying that those have been calendared or that you need them sent to you again?

Yes. They so sorry. Yes. They have been accounted for. We have the list from previous year. There are still within that list several things that are not scheduled. Several things that several dates that are available with things not scheduled. But, yes, if you send a request so, like, next next meeting will be the presentation on the biannual budget budgeting coming from Ramsey County right for May 13. May 13. Yes. And so that will be a part of it because it's been accounts priority long before I became chair. And so that was a request that we're acting on that has been confirmed. We have another confirmation, I think, in June as well. And, Kamud, I'd defer to you just to kinda, like, which presentations do we have confirmed.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. So for the month of July, we have a presentation confirmed by Doctor. Susan Brower. She is the state demographer for the state. She's the chief of the demographic center for the state of Minnesota. She will be here on July 22 to present analysis on demographic data.

And then Ramsey County is coming on?

And Ramsey County is coming on May 13. They will be doing a presentation on biennium budget approach. Looks like the county is following a biennium budget process And they will be here to share their perspective on how does that work.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, Councilmember Kim. I'm also wondering then about property tax trends that we usually get from Ramsey County? Is that also could that be requested at some point as well? It's just interesting to have the demographic information and the property tax trends together.

Yep. So one, I'll have to go back to the initial request that was made to the Ramsey County team to make sure that they can if they can add that and if not, we'll get it rescheduled.

Okay. That sounds great. And a quick follow-up. Thank you, Chair. One thing that was discussed, I think, or mentioned multiple times last year when we went through this process was what's the cost of doing business?

So just for the city to keep the lights on, for us to have staff, we've just finished negotiating a lot of our labor contracts with pattern language. And so recognizing that we have cost of living adjustments every single year, sort of the inflation of cost in doing business. Like what's that baseline look like for every single department? And then what does that look like in terms of a minimum levy? We set a max levy, but I think it'd be really interesting for the city to start a conversation that at a minimum for the city to have the lights on and have butts in seats, have to pass a minimum levy of what percent.

And so, for me personally, that's a question that I'm going to be lifting up and hopefully asking, I'll submit those questions to Chair Johnson for the budget process this year. But I'm really interested in that in a way that I think there's an opportunity for us to I don't want to say like educate the electorate or residents, but just like how do we provide more information that helps them contextualize the vote that we take when we set the max levy? So, just sharing with my colleagues, that's one of my goals for this process this year and looking forward to working with you, Chair Johnson.

Understood, Councilmember Kim. Council President, did you have a follow-up?

I but I don't even know if I raised my hand, I'm gonna yield to council member Jones.

Okay. I thought I saw it.

I thought I saw it. In my eyes.

Maybe I wanted you to raise your hand out. Council member Jones.

I I yeah. Cherry Nelson, thank you. I wanted to respond to council member Kim's comment. I think the the idea of understanding sort of a minimum levy is really like even what that range looks like is really important because I do think that the public doesn't fully understand kind of what all this means as many times as we try to tell them that this is the cost of doing business in the city, this is the cost of operating our city. I don't remember the exact numbers last year, but I did try to think about that for myself.

But I remember if we get figures from OFS in their first presentation where they say this is how much the contracts, staff salary increases are for the year. And I remember in my head looking at it that if we wanted to just cover those without making any cuts, without doing anything, we would have been looking at a levy of over 10% I feel like. And so there were cuts made, there were money moved around, there were things added, but it's very challenging. And I think that that's something that our community members don't necessarily fully appreciate. But that usually results in the mayor last year basically asking departments to consider a certain cut so that we could bring that number down.

Vice Naylor. Vice President, I'm ready. I really appreciate the conversation, and Ms. Kim, how you brought it up multiple times last year as well. And I think what I'm curious about and I think we need to identify a little bit more clearly is because in some ways the cost of doing business is the budget. That is the cost of doing business. I think there's a difference between what would our budget need to be next year if we just kept everything the same and didn't add anything new. Like that's one number and I think that is really helpful to communicate to people like this is just what happened to last year's budget because of inflation, because of contracts, whatever. But then sort of the I also hear what you're saying, Ms. Kim, this other question, which is different, which is kind of minimum viable product of the city of St.

Paul. And you could argue that we're above that right now as a city. But in some ways, I don't know how we that's kind of like up to us to determine what should the city be doing. And so I'm curious how you or others would say, butts and seeds, depending on the program we run, we might need more butts and seeds. So how do we define what that minimum viable product is?

Councilmember Kim.

Thank you, Cher. I think just to add to that too, because there's like, yes, and then what's that number? And then with the grants and things that we use to supplement, like alleviating the levy on the tax base, it's like what's the big starting point, I think, Councilmember Jo's point, right? Like, to just do this is higher than the number we're going to we would even levy because we have all these additions. But just like how are we helping work through that number to show kind of like how the bibimbap is made?

Because last year we were talking about it, we have a $23,000,000 budget deficit. But we never really kind of got to see, well, this helps break it down. This helps break it down. This helps break it down. So I'm even thinking about it in terms of process and also the minimum viable product and then also recognizing that it's a values document of priorities.

And so I think what I'm hearing our council president say in addition to this is like as a council, what is our sort of minimal viable product for the city as we establish our budget as well? What are our priorities and what does that budget look like? So really excited for this conversation in general, but just thinking about the ways that we talk about the budget this year, but also kind of show our math to our residents, I think is just interesting and also important. Yeah, 100% agree.

Yeah, I really appreciate just kind of like the overall discussion, especially the ones that kind of encourage us to dig deeper as policymakers and folks who have the authority, right, ultimately at the end of the year to set that budget for 2027. I think, you know, especially as we're thinking about what the city should and should not be doing, is really like what I think around the budget. Especially this year we have several federal dollars that are rolling off of our revenue source and or right special funds that should be in theory expended by the end of the year because their money really originated from ARPA funding. And so there'll be a lot of discussion around what we keep, what we don't keep. And I think that those discussions are what can happen with us as well so as with in partnership with the mayor's office.

And so that very well also might dictate what things we continue, what things we don't continue, and how much those things cost in order to continue them, especially if they are currently grant funded or currently funded by something other than the levy itself. And so that's going to be really something that we watch this year too. And I think more importantly, educate ourselves about. That's part of why being able to ask today just for some breakdowns of the employees. Like the numbers of employees that we carry on special fund dollars is really important in the sense that we have 3,000 employees, 700 of them are through special fund dollars and not currently on the levy, not currently in general fund dollars for whatever reason.

Or some of them have lifespans of funding for 10, others are rolling off this year. And those will be really you know the urgency level will operate within the departments themselves too in trying to find external sources as well so as whether or not we roll the entire Office of Native American Safety on to the general fund or not. So there's just certain revenue sources that we can outline too, but I think that's where a lot of this information is gonna be important to gather as we go along, which is why I'm actually really excited about the continued budget to actuals conversation, but also the reporting that comes with it because it just helps for better communication with the administration. But, yeah. So this item will be back this item will be back next month when we anticipate just having a little bit more of some presentation holds as well, so you guys see the dates and what we're anticipating and who we're bringing forward.

I will say that Kamut has already done a phenomenal job of outlining the departments, so we are prepared with the presentation schedule for the budget once the mayor has done her address. So hearing from departments has already been outlined of which dates will be which. And so for the second half of the year, there actually are quite a few dates that we've identified already because Camuto has and council member Yang and Kim were able to do that ahead of time. Just really awesome. And I only have a few to fill and not like all the years. So that's great. We have about three minutes or so before I wanna head us over to the oh, wait. Is it 11:15? We have some time. Okay. Council member Bui. Oh, I thought we had an hour or Yeah. We have more time than I thought. Okay. Okay.

I had forty five minutes in my head, but that's because it's an internal when I wanted to end. No problem.

This is our one stretch.

I really

really wanted to say I appreciate having this early on so we can have kind of these like candid conversations around the approach to the budget. I just wanted to add one of the things I really appreciate from last year's budget process is having external partners present to give us more so of like an independent overview and like a fresh renewed look at the budget because I do think, you know, especially for, you know, some of the most senior long lasting, you know, council members like my my colleague, President Nacre, like I do seem like you can get into a pattern right whereas like the directors are giving you the proposals that's coming directly from the mayor. There's not really a lot of like autonomy or wiggle room to really look at like the concrete cost of doing business. And I would love to you know have like analysis particularly around like the income levels of our residents per neighborhood. And also just see where is their earning potential, and where's the pain points, and actually like what what each commercial corridor is generating because there is a cost of doing business but then there's also the investment into our cities and our businesses that actually we depend on those those revenues of sales tax of property taxes.

So I really would love for us to have a thought partner along the way in terms of how our investments into the city is actually giving us a higher return on investment. And I'm thinking about that intentionally. Also, last thing I wanna just mention as well is I would love to track, like, you know, what is our top revenue generators? I do think this is a great ballpark in terms of, like, which department. But even within each department, like, where are ways that we can be actually investing more into department or a program or a service that's actually, you know, we're seeing, you know, higher revenue sources.

Just because like you mentioned, Chair Johnson, like we're going to be seeing a lot we've already been seeing lots of cuts on the federal level. So, think states across the country are looking at more creative ways and equitable ways in terms of generating revenue and you know how are we leaning on the state and being more proactive in terms of like know our policy muscle to be able to get more support from

the state and the feds. Thank you, Councilmember Bouley. All right. Well, seeing no other hands, I want to say glad that we had we got through our first, budget committee of the year. So with that, we are adjourned.