All right, I guess I'll go ahead and call to order this meeting of the Special Fiscal Committee of the
County Council for Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. Committee members, you want to say your names? That
would be our roll call. Hope you stay, Oscar. Isaka, sorry. Hey, Varela. Nice guy. Isabel P. Mosner.
Okay, so all four committee members are here. We have Lisa Langer and Christine Chang from the council
office, Jessica McFallon from the clerk's office here in the rear. So first, taking a look at the agenda,
does any committee members have additions or the controller revisions to propose or does it look fine?
I think it looks fine. All right, seeing no changes, we will go ahead and start with planning the December
10th deliberation session on budget priorities. So I've been thinking about this a lot and I included
in the packet some information that I thought could kind of structure the conversation in two weeks,
three weeks.
something like that. So I'd love to just talk about this and get your feedback. I have to admit, I started
actually, I switched part one and part two, because my first thoughts were, or two, were my, when I
first started thinking about it, I was like, Okay, let's see, what did we say were our priorities this
year? And how does that
map onto the categories, the buckets that we agreed to. And some of the things that people said,
you know, in the spring of this year for 2015-16 were more like projects getting to outcomes and not
so many outcomes. So I was trying to kind of juggle that. And then I thought, well, we have outcomes
in our comp plan. So let's go back and look at those.
I don't know, I guess we'll start with part one then turn them. See what you all think. I think the
little organization of thought, even though this is amazing, thank you. To map some of our comp plan
things onto those. That's a really good start to conversation in a lot of ways.
They go because of the mapping of part one, part two, all combined. That makes sense. I think building
off of where we left the conversation last time, I think that just doing part one will give us a lot
of substantive conversation. And maybe, I mean, what I suggest is that we
We have other plans as well that have outcomes in them, transportation plan, sustainability plan,
et cetera. And I would pull, I think that activity for one is enough for this group meeting, is that
take all of the outcomes that we have listed last week, or Gesundheit, or both, and then have a,
I think three, but two levels. One is prioritizing those, but two is some of these that are here are
better, to your point, are better outcomes than others. Public safety is enhanced. It's not an outcome
that's measurable. We have to operationalize that. Well, the comp plan does have indicators.
Under each outcome, saying how to measure it. Exactly. So that's what we should have in. Exactly. Because
we should be discussing very specifically the, you know, but I feel like the part one and two to me
is actually, you know, part one is here are all the many things that we say that we're working towards
and how do we want to prioritize
You know, what, what is, what is our priorities group? And then part two to me is about theory of change.
So do we still believe that, you know, that this approach listed in 2002 is, is, is still the way that
you accomplish this, um, which gets very clearly to, well, what would you find to move this, this, you know? So.
I understand you were saying, Isak, first we look at here's what they're working towards and then how
do we prioritize. And then we look at the relevance of the 2018 conflict. We should have some discussion
about theory of change. So if, I think that that's where you'll have more disagreement probably than
about priorities among some others.
I don't want to discuss necessary changes. So if we say, for example, that let me pick an outcome so
we can use this off the top of our head. We want to increase the range of affordable housing options
that are universally designed and environmentally sustainable at the top level, but then there's
subcategories within the comprehensive plan.
And, you know, to a lot of us that's a overhaul of certain provisions in the, you know, to others that
we want to see substantial funding for, I don't know, tax it's like right like you know that we that that's a.
The how does the money will the outcome for a business that part. And that's kind of why I feel like
I want a combination of those two parts in terms of going okay so on that example that you gave recently
range of affordable housing and then if we go down to the second part.
We have under goals that we said last time it was to revise the UDO to form based and set up a small
housing developers don't have short term rentals invest in land trust. So that's kind of what I mean,
like all of those things we could say are like supporting plan under this thing. And so it's like, so
that's why I would say they'll be interested in buying those things together because it's not just about.
you know, to try to then incorporate the things last year. And then of course we can like build that
tree a little bit more to recognize things that are being done already that we want to keep investing
in. And I'm not sure that we necessarily have time in the whole meeting to do that whole tree building.
I think part of that whole tree building is what Adam is trying to do now, right, in terms of fitting
in their current programs into that. So I think if we focus on the top layer of the tree,
that might actually like for this meeting, the most useful for like having next year is then go like,
okay, here are our priorities for the top layer. And then how are you fitting current projects in? And
then at some point next year, council members can go, okay, I see the current projects are fitting here.
I also think this should be a current project. This thing should be, you know,
categorized under there or something that like is important in us. Yes, yes. So we focused on the top
layer. I agree with that. Which I think maybe is, yeah, what you said before is part one. And then let's
help us address the limitation. Like the limitation of our discussion last year was that we, you know,
there's a lot of things that
we could have proliferated from the initial conversation, but we didn't have time to do that, right?
So, and there's some things that came out of that conversation that aren't necessarily budgetary things
as well, that we shouldn't be having, you know, it's like, you know, men in the DDO is not a budget
consideration unless we want it to be, which is why I was able to say, you know, we would like to put
more money into getting another planner or to, you know, whatever is necessary to speed up. So if,
and again, I'm not advocating for any of this, I'm just using them as examples. Yeah, yeah. So, but
I still think even in that plan,
it could be useful in terms of documentation, preparation for the meeting to build a bigger tree with
what's already in front of us not making anything do up. And then I specifically say, you know, what
we're talking about in this effort to try to keep us at the high level as opposed to decaying at the
program level. Does that make sense? So why don't you say keeping the focus on
Do you say biggest branches of the tree or current tree? I'm not getting the tree now. Perhaps if we
think about it in terms of what are the outputs of the conversation, and very early conversation we'll
have more, but our first conversation, the outputs end up being, right now, council collectively seems
to care most about in order. This is not in order of these priorities, and there are all types
of comprehensive plan things.
here are some ideas and some mappings, some initial mapping of where some programmatic level suggestions
may fit in within that broader thing. But the output is essentially us saying, we think housing is most
important, I'm just trying to actually groundless and things, environment is second, the safety is third,
and this is where we'd really like to see you investing.
Right. And then within each of those, I think it's also useful to then go, okay, so under housing, we
think that this is most important. Yes. Yes. And so like a piece of that tree analogy for me is like
thinking about this document. I'm looking at part one. And, you know, so continuing with the with the sub
sub subjects here. So increase the range of affordable housing options and then underneath that, but
from section two that we mentioned last year, even in the different colored font, I don't know how that
like works out or documentation and then kind of being kind of deliberate. Like we're talking about
the black font right now, right? That we're not talking about these smaller ideas. And I think that
that's a way to
communicate to council members as a whole that we're talking about the big ideas. So I think it's really
hard when we think about something like that we want to spend money on or we want to invest in to especially
in this like outcome-based budgeting to like if that was an outcome kind of question and I think that
that's still really hard so we have those examples underneath
what we consider outcomes, like those are paths to an outcome. So it's like, if you'll have this idea,
that's a path to an outcome, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the
path, we're talking about the outcome, so. Yeah, and I did, maybe I should have moved, not moved the
second paragraph or part two down so far, but I do say outcomes answer the question, what would have
been a better way to build housing? It's easier to build housing, it's more owner-occupied.
Right. Um, so yeah, I could try to work that. But I think the big thing, I think that both of us are
saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, what you're saying is that let's not view these two parts as like,
it's like, okay, we've done part one, now let's switch to another activity. It's the same thing.
Right. And so, so like from the list that you have now, you know, it's like, okay, here's all the stuff
we talked about last year. And we know, I don't think we need to like force some mapping of this. I
do think that we're, that the intuition is correct. Go to the conference and plan, even though I also
argued that we need to update our conference plan, but like, like go to the conference plan, go to the
plan. We already have a plan. We already have a transportation plan. We already have plans that we've
agreed to accepted that give us clear outcomes. We're going to, that's going to be our, the, the reach
that we're going to build all of this out.
of yeah I don't I want to be clear yeah you're basically right in terms of interpretation of what I
was saying I don't think it's necessary to put all of the things in part two map dogs those all the
things apart one but just as examples yeah and that we can use last year's examples yes exactly as so
then you don't have to recreate your own samples and then I also think that it would be valuable in
terms of like
you know, so it's not just the comprehensive plan. There's also the transportation plan, you know, and
the like subset of that. Which is technically part of the plan. Right. If there's the climate action
plan, like there's all these plans and you can't possibly, no individual can possibly like prepare this
and go, okay, these are the only options, the possible budget priorities to remove these buckets. But
getting us started as a group. And then, you know, as part of the,
packet, like referring folks to these other plans and like, hey, if there's something in these other
plans that I haven't put in here that you think is most important and that you also want to put in here
in terms of budget priority, like come to the meeting with that kind of suggestion. So it really is.
So in your draft here, I would encourage that by leaving some space underneath each of those categories
for other council member additions.
Dave, what do you think? Yeah, I think it's a good framework. I mean, for instance, I would include,
other than comprehensive plan, the Novak study of 2022 under public safety, which is the recommendation
that we have 105 sworn officers, police officers. I think that's a goal that we should aim for. And
it's a very definite number.
whether we'll achieve that or not, but in order to address understaffing, that's where we ought to be
heading toward that number. And that's a part of whether we actually annex other areas of the county.
That's what we need right now. So I agree. I think that we could develop specifics, more specifics,
based upon maybe other consultant reports, studies, and so forth that we could add on to this. Are there
others besides the NOVAC one that haven't been mentioned that would be good links to make for the packet?
Especially because I didn't think about that one because that was before my council term started.
Well, along with the Novak report regarding public safety, there was, uh, the Obama administration's
21st century policing report, which established, I think that there was, um, if you want interactivity,
if you want to preach this, um, you know, the police interaction with public, you need, uh, you need
police involved in the community.
Therefore, you need a certain number, uh, in order to have the, um, you know, the flexibility of the
police officer to be able to interact with people on a neighborhood basis. So, um, that, that kind of
confirms that, um, you know, what, one specific aspect that I, and I appreciate Isabel going through
and, and kind of developing this framework. So for instance, one,
One category was, I have too many windows open, sorry. My concern about invasive plants in the community,
the comprehensive plan basically states that under policy 3.4.2, eliminate
to the greatest extent, feasible invasive plant and animal species. I don't think we're doing that.
That's under the urban ecology. Dave, can I just jump in? Because I feel like you're getting to very
specific points that we want to discuss on December 10th with everybody. Yep. So as far as this framework,
do you think it makes sense what
Isak and Hopi were talking about were in part one, you know, giving some examples from part two, which
is things people actually brought up in the spring. Just for examples, because we are going into a new
budget year. They have new ideas. Yeah. Overall, yes. But specific to, I mean, a specific goal oriented
would be. I think would be desirable.
Yeah. As it's like, I think was saying that, you know, if we have that target in mind to the extent
that we can focus on that, um, you know, we're likely to get a better outcome. And just to, to figuring
that is that it's, um, you know, I, I think we'll be much better suited at prioritizing when, because
it wouldn't work the level when we aren't, uh, um,
How do I say this correctly? It's really difficult to answer the question. What's more important, roads
or parks? It's really hard to answer that question. But if the question is,
What, what are we prioritizing in terms of action this year, and you have the type of detail that Dave
was just talking about and we can look holistically at something that we agree all of these things on
this table are things that we care about.
That's the thing that we think we can really move forward that's going to have broader impacts on a
lot of the other things that we're working on. And again, we can have different arguments about our
theory about why we think that thing matters a lot. But I think that that would really help, because
I think that there's some elements of priority that I think we all share as a city, but we don't have
a lot of clarity on what
very clear action that we can take, right? Versus there's some things where there's a lot of action
that we can take. And then there's other things that I think that to the points that Dave just brought
up that I think will be really fruitful not to get into them, but to now, but to have this conversation
in a couple of weeks that where it's like, these are like what I call like chalk problems. Like they're
like, these are like $10 problems in relevance to like the $150 billion things that we often
You know, they get under prioritized because of the fact that they're like, oh, yeah, we'll get to that
type of things. And so I think it would be really great to raise those to the level of like, no, we
really want to see this happen this year. And there are things that were very doable. I'd also like
to respond to Dave's suggestion to cite the Novak report and maybe the Obama policing report. Those
are very different, especially, well, let me just take the Novak report.
not the same as a comp plan. That report was done by a consultant. It was not done with a lot of public
engagement or any public engagement. It's not like an agreed upon set of principles and goals that our
community has adopted.
So I would really hesitate to include that as a basis for funding. I mean, you personally, as a council
member, any of us can say, hey, no vets of this. And I think that's valid. It's backed up by Obama's
report. But I don't think it's appropriate to include in this kind of here, the objectives of the city
type conversation. So no, no consultant report should be included.
the meeting on December 10th where we're starting with the comp plan and any other adopted plans like
planning action, transportation, those all had broad public input were adopted by the council. The report
wasn't even like didn't have anything to do with city council. We didn't ask for it. We didn't adopt
it. I just don't see that it is something to on par with. It's a professionally produced report that
established that we're understaffed in terms of our public safety, which has been validated by the actual
officers and the police union and, and the chief of police. I'm, I, I think it's a valid report. And
I think that's. I was saying that it's not a valid report. I think she's trying to draw a difference between
plans that have been like in terms of what we're talking right now with budget priorities and these
like budget priorities based on our our adopted city plans and the the difference she's trying to draw
here is like the Novak report could impact how like the pathway to
So in her she cites in terms of the public safety part is public safety is enhanced and we could argue
that that's like too general of a thing to say, right? But you could say using the Novak report as like
a citation of evidence that part of the pathway to enhancing public safety is to fully staff the department
so that we don't get the
budget outcome from the NOVAC report, we get the path to the outcome from the NOVAC report. Is that
a good way to explain that, Isabelle? Yeah, that's fine. I can agree with that, yep. I think that for
this session where the packet information that we get is not the pathway to the outcome, it's just the
plan that is the outcome.
Okay. I mean, just to address public safety and the fact that we have one outcome, I think public safety
should be its own plan. That's for another day. That could be a
a pathway underneath that that we talk about at some point saying hey let's invest in actually figuring
out a public safety plan in the same way that we have a comp plan and a climate action plan and all
these other plans is how can we. I might magnify that more which is to say in a more meta way which
is to say one of the benefits of this practice is going to help us recognize where we don't have outcomes
and maybe one of the things that you want to see
you know, we had to break the session this year, like less planning, more doing, but there are some
places where like actually we brought a leave, what else? You know, and also it opens the conversation
to like, you know, a climate action plan, it was a five-year plan then in 2018, we're way past that,
right? So, you know what I'm saying? The climate action plan, wasn't that in 2018 adopted? No,
it was 22. Oh, 22, okay.
Okay, but you think so, but the plot plan is 2018, right? So. Which is like 10 years, it's supposed
to be a year, is that right? Is it 10 or 5? It's 5. It's 5. Right? So, but anyways, but at my point,
my point being regardless of that is just that it's, it gives us a nice, it'll help us really clear
the math where we have outcomes and we're not. One other thing, oh.
Well, I have one other thing. Maybe we have the same other thing. When you guys were talking about the
prioritizing things, I, and maybe this is more of an especially for the 10th, but maybe this would be
like the question, right? Whether we should think about prioritizing our big buckets, you know, labeled
one through six on the sheet.
or whether we should really focus on prioritizing the things underneath each of those.
Cause like, are we really going to choose between housing and homelessness and a high performing government?
Like, aren't those six buckets partly chosen? Cause like where are we going? All of these are really,
really important things to keep the city as a whole going. So really, I almost feel like it's the stuff
underneath that, that's more of a dismissal. Yeah, I do not think we would prioritize those six buckets.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. They're interim. Yeah.
you end up with six prioritized lists, essentially. And then from that six, you could come up with a
top man or something, like a top in actions or something like that. Yeah, that's right. And maybe, but
part of it too, I think that in terms of what you were talking about with the $10 problem, I think that
to some degree, some of these priorities, I mean, it probably, if you look at averages, would cost a
whole lot more to deal with transportation and mobility related stuff because
it's just so expensive to deal with roads and things like that, then it would be to do high performing
government. High performing government is a big part of our budget because everything falls into that.
Public safety is the best option. Interesting. Maybe community health and vitality would be another
good, because that's like staff time and work time, but it's not
materials, make the materials aren't as expensive. So that's maybe the better on that. Compare those
in terms of cost, how much they cost and it's, it makes them hard to compare. I have my one thing to
add. The six buckets did not have environmental climate.
Yeah, and yet a lot. We have a whole chapter not complaining on environment. I put them all in community
health and vitality. I'm inclined to say that should be And I agree. I think also a very good conversation to have
And again, I think two things I was going to add. One is that this conversation is proving that the
conversation will be very fruitful to have this way. The plan that we haven't mentioned is they had
an old plan that I think is something we also should consider. And then my third question was, even
though I said two things, my third question was, what are you thinking about in terms of the actual
like how the conversation goes, so like the runoff show, and are we gonna get, is it just gonna be council
members, or are we gonna make it participatory with residents? I was thinking just council members.
For now, yeah. To start, and then I was kind of waiting to think through runoff show to get your feedback
on the framework.
But I have talked to staff about maybe having whiteboards with sticky notes that we live around. But
I have to think through it after I get the framework revised. So that's fine. I also, in terms of an
idea of a seventh bucket being environment, I think that could be a really interesting conversation.
But I would also wonder if
that environmental piece that's actually something that should thread through all of the other six instead
of being a something so that. That's true, but I think that that's a conversation to have in terms of
like part of that and then similarly equity and justice are similarly things that.
should maybe spread through. So it's almost like having a whole separate sort of. A lens. Yeah, a lens.
That here we do high-performing government with a lens and with an equity lens. Right, exactly. And
so that would just be an interesting piece of the conversation to have is how should those things. Yeah,
some of those things spread through all of them. Yeah. And like what kinds of metrics should we use around
Those items threading through the other. That's such an interesting thought. Yeah, like, yeah. But we
have a whole plan for climate action. Right, right. So I'd have to look at those outcomes again and
see if they could go in a different bucket. Well, I don't think that you necessarily need to work in
terms of your preparation to change where it is right now, but I'm saying that we're going
to have conversations about the environment that I want to know. That would be feasible if I thought.
with the climate action plan. Right. Okay. Yeah, that's like, I just don't want to put more work on
your, you know, I do that, but I just think that that's a piece of the conversation in terms of,
you know, do these things deserve their own bucket? Do they need to thread through the other thing?
That's like, how? How do we want that to work? Any other feedback on the basic framework for December 10?
Great work. Thank you. Well, just to say that I guess I'm at odds because I think that environment should
have its own category. Yeah. It has its own chapter in the comprehensive plan and that contains topics
that are pretty far afield from one another themselves. So I would be struggling to just shoehorn it
into or even establish
threads that run through the different categories that are established here. Um, but that's my preference.
Um, you know, I think that this is a good framework to begin. Um, I appreciate the work that you've
done. This is a bone already establishing where council members fall in various topics. So that's the
other thing. Um,
Thanks, Dave, and I tend to agree with you about environment, but the other thing I forgot to mention,
so in part two, I have the initials of the council members said these things, and I think it would,
I would prefer to send this out to all council members and say, did I get this thing wrong before I
put it in a packet, you know? But some of them I kind of categorized,
had to make assumptions. So I think I would. Or I can just take those. What does it add? Well, if there's
any confusion, what did you mean Courtney? I'm just thinking that, you know, the like the context in
which you generated that list is quite specific. And I personally don't remember
exactly, you know, like the epistemological, my thought process, you know what I'm saying, at that exact
moment. But I think that a lot of it was very contextualized in the conversation we're having in the
way that, you know what I'm saying? So, I don't know if it adds a whole lot to attach these to people.
And actually, I think it almost
might make it harder because of what we're trying to do with these is to provide examples, but we don't
actually want to talk about these things. We want to provide examples of how it goes under the framework.
So maybe it actually, like it might've made sense in how you were originally like considering your framework,
but I think that we maybe even thought about that a little bit in terms of almost shrinking the conversation
or being more specific about like,
conversation. So I think it actually might take away from that the larger higher level conversation
to get to interweaves about any of the specific things. So I think we need to ask the council members
what they were thinking. I also think like, I mean one specifically that you attributed to me was
I think said by multiple people, find repair maintenance of city infrastructure. I think a lot of people
said that. Yeah. And then I'm dealing with one that got attributed to it. So I mean, well, I used that
little PowerPoint chart that you and I made after the discussion. But yeah, a couple of people through
the course of this grant intention. Right. Right. So I, yeah. Okay. So just
I'm just going to take a few examples. I'm going to leave off the initials. Well, look, you know, again,
I mean, I'm easy. That's fine. I appreciate what you did here as a bell. It gave me it reminded me of,
you know, what people saw as priorities. I didn't feel as limiting. I felt that, you know, because I
know that we all share a lot of common interests, but we
prioritize things. I found it helpful, just historically speaking, doesn't have to be included with
initials. But thanks for doing that. Okay. We move on to public comment then. Is there any member of
the public who would like to comment? Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on the
have the December 10th deliberation session. Thank you, Isabelle. This is Christopher from the chamber.
I just want to give my words of encouragement to the committee. Great job today. Some discourse. It
was worth me speeding from Ellisville to make it here and listen to it. So I just want to give give
my encouragement here and continued good work here at the committee.
Thank you. Appreciate that. Any other public comment? No. Okay. All right. Well, then let us move on
to budget process and timeline for the 2027 budget.
So I just jotted down some things to touch upon, matching current funding to programs and programs to
categories. Jessica, do you have an update on how that's going? That is exactly what we are working
on. Gretchen and I, one other department kind of has capacity and was very interested in it, has a big
department. We're working right now to kind of
reopen the case if you will like where we were when we stopped working on it. It's been a minute and
we are working on organizing where we were when we stopped and getting all of those meetings and trainings
started again where all the department heads go to training on how to proceed through the next step
from the vendor and then they all do that work and then we all then me and the mayor's office and our
other department head review that work
So we don't have a specific timeline set up. Yeah, we're still reviewing. We're still sort of getting
ready to start. We're just getting ready to restart that process. Yes, we are definitely still actively
working on that. So I don't have like a specific time frame to give you on any of that. But yes, what
you know, what you wrote in the agenda is exactly what our next steps are. Yeah, that's a great summary
of what happened.
And so do you... Same page. Okay. So there's no set timeline, but in general, do you think that that'll
be done in time for... Yes. You know, starting again, reading in December, look at it again, and then
really starting those trainings and finishing that work and changing it.
March. And so that's the matching firm funding to programs, which is different than matching programs
to outcomes. Correct. So it's the matching programs to outcomes. And that's that last one. That will
be next. So that the plan to finish by March is part A matching firm funding programs. And outcomes.
Oh, and outcomes.
Yeah, all of it. Okay. Okay, so that first year, you make the matching funding to programs and then
you're going to do the matching programs to outcomes to build those things should be done. Yes. So if
we want to add an outcome category called environment, we need to
talk to the administration. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe this committee can advise should be
by Jessica direction. Anybody else? I mean,
You're always invited. Yeah, we're always invited. Yeah, like, I mean, it just wasn't on our radar,
honestly. I would be interested in hearing from you guys about, like, the, or just, or whatever, like,
adding a sub bucket. So that's kind of, like, kind of why I asked that is that kind of feedback at that
meeting might be interesting, like, in that kind of, you know, add another bucket versus
trying to wind it through the other ones. You know, those are kind of like the two options. And I just
like saying those are the two options, because maybe there are other options. But those are the two
that have come up at this meeting. I think that I would be interested in hearing feedback on that. But
we can also get feedback on that later. We could, if that doesn't give you a test. I'll have the feedback
now. I think that less priorities at home is more effective to handle.
It's hard to have a lot of those big puppets. The more condensed you make, the more you refine those,
the easier it is to make this kind of style programming work. It's just my feedback from what we've
learned in our trainings and what the trainer's saying, what our students do, the more un-wieldy and
difficult it gets.
even though, I mean, I. Let me just say, because then you end up having, I feel, a squirt and sort of
things, right? So you end up having. Yeah, you have more things that split between. Right, so so you're
thinking about something simple like, yes, I've had a time where it's like, is it vital for you to be,
is it going to be safe for you, is it, you know, communication and happiness, is that you are sort of
into becoming, like, and so. But how can we make sure that environmental concerns are being met by the
city, you know, maybe in our outcomes?
Like how do we ensure that the concerns are being met? But- Well, a lot of work that's done like that,
um, Shawn Mia does, what category is that going to go in? Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good question.
Like, I mean, this is definitely like the conversation. Yeah. This would be really interesting.
All right. And that's the answer to that. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I agree with you. Like,
yeah, there's that and like a bunch of other things, but where is it going?
a good question and that's exactly where the fights work and trying to make it clear and maybe what
we present to you and where those things are so. But I think though one of my things between finalist
conversation on science and have a fruitful conversation but I think I think at the the
point here is then trying to create categories that don't make it very difficult to split things. So
if it is a distinct category that can exist on its own, great to have it. It's actually that benefits
you. But if you have a category where it's like so, you know, where a single program will not be split
between multiple categories, that's not helpful. But if it's a very distinct thing where we can say
this is a thing and things that are not in this thing, then that's very helpful. And for sure, other
cities have a category that isn't like until last night, like that can be a category.
Um, so, you know, we can absolutely do it. Yeah. Uh, you know, lots of cities kind of have that as a
bucket or a category or a band thing. So, but that is, yeah, you explained what I, from my perspective,
whether it's that issue that comes, starts to develop. Exactly. And so here's like a question sort of
related, I don't know if it's this agenda item or not at this point, but would it make sense? I mean,
Isabelle, you just put all of those environmental things that are community health vitality, is it,
easier or doesn't make sense instead of creating the seventh bucket to create subcategories underneath
our top six like that that would be another I guess thing that that I would say like oh like let's consider
this does that you know meet the concern say where do we push on the stuff and the you know fewer categories
better in terms of splitting things and I don't know if it actually does but you know as you think about
it we're okay we're going to figure out
where to put you on this stuff, what we really need counsel to do. I'm going to try to redirect, reframe
this conversation. I think we're getting a little off track. We're going to figure out what our departments
do. You guys need to figure out what the community priorities are and the outcomes. Exactly. Don't worry
about what our departments plan. We do so much stuff. Correct. Don't worry about that. Just worry about
what your outcomes. Exactly. I just like to flag that we really shouldn't ask the question, where do
we put things that we already do?
Don't worry about that. What we already do should actually be asked, how does this fit into the priorities
that we have? Well, kind of. I mean, I guess I was trying to meet that concern of going, ooh, is seven
going to be too many categories? Does it make more sense to have some categories under other categories?
That nesting thing. Both of your questions are a yes to both.
The number is the problem. It's the distinction between them. So if you proliferate, if you proliferate
categories and then they become so narrow that many of them have overlaps, that's a problem. But if
we have plenty of categories, but they were very distinct, like that's quite difficult. So is the better
question to ask to think about over the next, you know, however long, how overlapping the environmental
thing should be with if we had another environmental category
or if you have a specific environmental category, would you be challenged? You know, oh, I'm not sure
where to put this because there's so much overlap now between the same category and the other categories.
Is that a better question to ask them? I mean, I think what I'm hearing from ESOCC and maybe from Jessica
is that let's not get that gawk out. Let's focus on how exactly. Exactly. And yes, that's exactly it.
Because that's where your second question is also correct because
what you said is that second level of those outcomes, right, is really what we're, you know.
The top level is a comms exercise. It's how you talk to people, certainly, to organize and galvanize
support and intellectual thought, so it doesn't become overly complex. That's the top level. But when
you talk about outcomes specifically, at the end of the day, if you have a very good outcome, whether
you put it here or there doesn't matter. The outcome's clear. You know what I'm saying? I guess we got
bogged down on that a little bit.
I was saying, hey, it would be interesting to have your feedback around this thing. Right. Right. But
I think you're giving us enough where I would just I would vote for this first meeting. I think we'd
get a lot out of just having the nine council members, just all of us really getting a chance to talk
without just without any
you know, let's do something else now. Like, let's just, like, let's talk this out so that when we now
go to these committees or when we're speaking to the mayor and the administration, we have a clear,
like, there's so much clarity from council. I agree. It is. I think that's the best thing we could do
to help the administration is collectively having, and even with your dissent, have a clear understanding
of that dissent. Right, right.
Well, I think I'd like to formally invite your question over to me. Sure. Because having you there to
not primarily to answer a question or to think back, but to hear, you know. It's much easier to be in
the room to understand. Yeah. Understand what people. Yes, what people are thinking. Yes. I'm thinking
on my calendar. Which now?
And Dave, please feel free to jump in at any time. I will. Thank you. So then part C, I had ideas for
public engagement. And we talked about this a little bit at our last meeting, where I think it was Dallas
had an example of
An outreach fair with the public, with each department having a table and kind of explaining how they
use taxpayer money. So I don't know if, kind of gets my notes. Who was it that there was somebody on
our staff? One of the attorneys. That was the city of Dallas. Oh, I believe that was Anna Halmson. Okay.
So that's just one method of networking engagement. And we were talking that that may come relatively
late in the process. And it is, I don't like to understand that. Yeah. What the city of Dallas intended for that.
Was it, were they actually getting feedback from residents about what priorities should be funded or
were they just like, meet your government? Right, yeah, I absolutely hear what you're saying.
I don't know. As I recall, Anna described that it was an opportunity for city staff to describe
various services and outcomes that people have attempted to make. The organic thing that happens with
them, people do share their opinions, whether you ask them right or not, I'm saying. What I have written
down on my notes were staff prepared program costs and then had a couple care tables about each of the
program folks.
So it was that lower level, instead of talking about the big five buckets, the lower level, like, this
is what I'm doing with this money. So the SIPAN and what the SIPAN is giving to the community. From
my perspective, and this is just reflective professionally on this,
The benefit of that type of engagement is that it helps us to think outside. We get so bogged down in
the box because we spend a whole year working on things, sustaining things, and it's really easy. It's
just an intellectual bias that we all have, like where it's very easy for us to be like, yeah, how do
we do this thing that we've been doing for 10 years or whatever? And then the rest of us, you know,
sometimes we'll come and be like, why are you gonna do that at all? And that's actually what's really
helpful. It's like, if, you know, they'll say, oh yeah, we want,
of the economic development is a great space where we have some ideas about when we're doing arts or
something and people come and say, and what you should be doing is this, right? And it just doesn't
really help. It's like, oh, why did it open the thing? Or, oh my gosh, I hadn't even thought about it.
Why don't we have chalk on Kirkwood? That's where that chalk problem came from. Everybody's like, why
do you have chalk on Kirkwood? But not even a thing. I thought about we should have chalk on Kirkwood. Right.
with that is, is you can, you know, all of a sudden a comedian member goes, oh my gosh, I get it. We
do this program. Yeah, that's amazing. I want to participate. I want to do the thing, which also gives
that kind of measure of not just criticism, but positive feedback. Yes. Yes.
So think about this, I think the best way to use that engagement is around program design. It's what
we think of as beneficiary discovery for program design, and that's really, really helpful. Yeah, and
so what I have written down from my notes from the last session was that maybe a public engagement fair
should be a 2027 goal instead of 2026, but it kind of depends.
And then I also have using this bear as part of the budget presentations or maybe a September deliberation
session. Maybe use that as a September deliberation session. The September is right after budget season.
I think the last discussion of this, like if preparing the budget is more about department heads,
Having to do a whole lot of work, but preparing for this fair would be more about other staff, because
they're ones who are more active and they're specific. And by then we'll have our budget book done and
we can use the budget book to sort of create the materials. So that's like part of it. So I think the
way that we talked about it last time based on my notes or maybe it was based on my like thoughts about
it that I didn't actually have time to say was like,
because the budget presentations can be so challenging for the public to understand and comprehend that
the spare could be an idea that's more digestible for people who aren't accountants or other financially
savvy kind of folks to just understand how we're spending our money. And that then,
that it would involve lower level staff, not just department heads. So it spreads out some
of that communication work and pages. Go ahead. Just timing wise, I know that Gretchen has her finger
on the pulse of the department heads workloads better than I do. And I hope I'm not speaking out of
turn when I say it's kind of feels like there's never a good time to do something like this.
And especially when it's a new thing to add to the federal schedule. So I will say that September sounds
good, but I am not the voice of, you know, I'm definitely not the voice of the final, okay. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I'm just saying, like that was in my notes from last night. I think that I thought a lot. And
I'm thinking like, oh, maybe this could actually work out. Maybe. But I wrote it down literally so that
I would mention it again someday. So thanks for that.
I agree, I agree with all of that, and I am, so just to triangulate on some thoughts here, is that
where you put it, but it just had implications for what you used it for. And so the one way, another
way to think about it, in addition to the way that you just thought about it, if it can't be ignored,
is that if we imagine that it went, okay, we come up with some priorities, and then we're doing this
early, it's just so great. And then you all come up with sort of like this initial, we have the early
draft of like, okay, like, this is where things are sort of tracking out. And then from that, we have
a further conversation about, okay, like prioritizing within that ranking or something like that.
Exactly. Exactly. It's all out in the world. Okay, this outcome is tied to these programs and you know,
okay, now what I would do at that stage individually is I would go to constituents, I'd be holding listening
sessions, I'd be doing door knocking and I'd be asking like, what you think? And so that's another place
where you could
The burden on, you know, Isabelle's heard me talk about this a lot that, you know, there's something
very beneficial and easing the burden of individual information getting so that we don't have.
different realities about the same elephant, right? And so when you can do that in the open,
it's not about, you know, I'm still gonna do all those things, but it's just really helpful when you
can have those in the public far. So it may be a space to do it in that maybe earlier stage too, like
in that sort of like March area, right? And I think I suggested that or said that it was like March
is way too soon. We can't manage that by March of 2026, which I think is where in my notes I was like,
maybe we can do that in 2027.
that maybe the march one isn't you bring all the department heads and they're there to explain and blah
blah but maybe it's as simple as something that the council holds and we bring people in and maybe we
all have a little bit of homework or we go to talk to our constituencies and you know what i'm saying
and we could send out surveys to all of the neighborhood associations you know there's things that we
could do and just get some good feedback on this is what we think the budget is going to take shape
at and then and then to your and then you could add a little bit of element of that and the
budget discussions you got a little bit of element in that in that time
and what we think of the budget negotiation theory. So I don't think there's a wrong time to do public
engagement. It's just that each of those is quite a different event. I think that the fair idea specifically
was that would be way too much for trying to do in March. And that's why I was like, maybe it could
be in September as part of the budget presentations. And then maybe in future years. I love that.
Well, I think that we need to recognize this. Jessica indicated that this is the fair, the engagement
fair, a little bit of a huge lift for staff and really the mayor would have to agree to do it. So that's
a little bit out of our hands. I don't know if we can propose it. But then, so Eson, you were saying
that once we get a list of priorities,
for next year's budget that the council has raised at the time. Then we can do public outreach in order
to tweak that list or? Well, I mean. Do you mean priorities for outcomes or action?
I, so to be clear, and this is reflecting your own practice as well, right? I think that we, all of
us always do the public engagement, right? And then give us some structure. But we do, like, I mean,
we shouldn't undersell the hardest bit of our work. So then, but my thing is that there's this thing
that happens in between there, where, you know, once we sort of set our initial, so us now having this
meeting on the 10th is taking the space of the
conversation that we've had earlier, we were sort of like, here's our wishlist of things we'd like to
see in the budget, right? So, and we now have a real structure. The structure should at some point get
an initial draft response.
Right? So what that's been in the past was we've had like a work session with the mayor, right? We're
just like, okay, okay, but we've been doing a work session essentially for two full years at this point
on this budget, which is great. And so what I'm suspecting will happen is that at some point here after,
you know, into the new year, but before March, there'll be a sort of like, and I think
And I don't have a good enough word to describe this. All the words feel too strong, but like a draft
response, you know, sort of like, this is where we think, like, this is the sort of flow that we see
occurring at the moment prior to the March time when all of the department heads are really getting
together and hammering the things out. Where it's like, this is, here's some initial thinking of the
outcomes that were sort of, you know,
That Council is generating that. No, that is the response to the administration. So we sort of come
up with like here outcomes. We want to see that are mapped onto the programs and
And then they're like, yeah, well, actually, there needs to be some negotiation of priorities, right?
Because the administration might go, sorry, our number one priority is this. Your number one priority
is that. Let's discuss. And there's going to be some dialogue there, right? This isn't a static thing.
And so I was thinking that at that stage, once we've had the engagement by
the administration or that's when you want to do a structured engagement with the public now. So we
both had the time to think alone, now we should think publicly, is essentially my thinking. Yeah, that
makes sense. But what kind of format does that other thing we should take? I think it would take a couple.
You know, one, it could either be focused on like
that finding defining outcomes better so which I would imagine like if I was doing that and it's off
the top of my head but if we have we have a sort of housing almost might have other group of people
you know think about
stakeholders in housing, homeless, and people who are interested. They're like, it's April over there,
and we're gonna think through, these are all the outcomes that are clearly pulled from all of our plans,
and just getting feedback on those outcomes. And they're like, actually, that's not quite the right
measurement, or that's not- So it's like discussion-based, so it's small- Yeah, everything's small-
That's the format that I- Yeah, but focused on, but that would be assuming we're focused on defining
outcomes. You could take it a step further, which maybe not as useful, but you could have people giving in
put on program design towards those outcomes. So if you said, if we said, you know, we want to reduce
the veteran homeless population by 50 people and you can have a conversation, what is the best way to
do that? Like, it's the question mark. Can you see the outcome? This is what we're agreeing on. How
do you think we should do that? We're getting, we're generating feedback to get these things we're doing
all the time, right? So. How do you design it so that
you guys can capture all of that. A small discussion here is that feedback might be lost. Well, I mean,
that goes to that, but we set it up so that we'll just have everybody throw it out. We could send a
virtual survey to all the neighborhood associations, to everybody on the mailing list. It can go out
as a press release.
There's ways that we can get the data. Make sure we won't break something. Yeah. Again, I'm not like,
you know, I'm not advocating. I'm just, I'm just, we're at the brainstorming here. So like, you know,
if that's what we wanted to do, that's all I'm, all I'm trying to be laying around is that I can see
us doing these types of things at multiple times throughout the year and just know that they would be
very different, right? There's a very different design to what you do in September versus what we might
do in April.
Well, and at the December 10th meeting, I want to have a period of accompaniment. Yeah, exactly. So,
you know, we spent an hour and a half, two hours talking about things. Yeah. And we forgot a very important
thing. Exactly. I want people to be able to say that or say, you know, I don't care about these things.
Whatever. So every step of the way, we want to have some kind of public input because we also don't
want to, you know, be in a silo making our lists and then
all they have two months left to refine them. Right. You know, before we get in, after we left the public.
So all the way along. Ideally, we would get some funding. Funding? Do they? That's amazing. So any other
ideas for public engagement? I mean, we'll circle back to this. Oh, I have one more comment. Is that
we usually have a special session
At the end of April, with the council and the mayor and people in the department center, we kind of
discuss, that's always been on the calendar when we just kind of discuss priorities for that. And we're
not going to get a good time for the administration to kind of let you know we're working at it, how
things are mapping out, give you like the first draft of just marketing on April. Yes, at the end of April.
Well, this is not, this, this, uh, has not been adopted by council. Sometimes we try to add in an extra
room. It's not on the schedule, but sometimes we just use the session. Right. That's not to you guys.
I think that 2025 celebration sessions on the schedule.
There'll be nothing Wednesday and April after. Yeah. Yeah. We can talk a bit closer to it and see if
April 15th is too early for you. Yes, we will take. At least on April 15th, you'll know that we have
a majority.
But yeah, it's like for this for this. Yeah, these are the static dates that I know for my sake, I put
them all in my calendar. Is there a proof that I schedule everything else around? Yes. Then I'll schedule
something else on Wednesday. That's right. And so that's why it's really hard to add something in afterwards,
especially if it's too late after. Yeah.
We could change, move a deliberation session in April to a later date. That's right. Like we can swap
a regular session and deliberation session. That does need something to happen to the schedule.
Like in March, we could go like, hey, it would actually be really useful to swap these. Yeah. But as
long as the date is on our calendar, it really in some ways doesn't matter from a council member perspective, whether
I'm going to be there on the 15th for deliberation or regular session. I'm just going to be there on
the 15th. It would just matter for people who want to submit stuff. Yeah. Also agenda to know what enough
time do they get you materialized in sort of a. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Sooner than that. That could be feasible.
Like you said, if we made that decision or council made that decision in February. Yes. Or in April.
Definitely.
It just, it also depends a little bit on how deadlines might shift because of IT recommendations. Yeah,
we've got accessibility, which I'm hoping we can begin to implement. So that's why I said like March
or maybe even February kind of depends on what those deadlines end up being in terms of recommendations.
But just making sure that those changes happen with enough advance. And that's an advance for staff.
the public comment on the budget process and timeline or date did you have anything to add no on this
topic thank you okay all right is there any member of the public who would like to comment on items
three budget process and timeline for 2027 budget
Mister empty. Thank you. I had no comment on this, but I don't know how that ended up taking. But again,
my words of encouragement. It sounds like a good process. Stick with it. Continue to meet and we'll
see you tonight. I guess your hand was still raised from the first time. Anybody else?
Thank you, Colleen. So number four, plans for tracking the city's fiscal position. So this is kind of
in our charge for this committee that tracks on balance, it is, that's the only specific item there
in the charge that's on our agenda, but this is something that members of the public are also, have
also brought up,
we should be more proactive in reviewing the finances of the city. So, Jessica, can you give us an update
on the audits? The first item on there, I think, is review of annual audits. I think that when the audit
is completed, we always have an exit interview, and then mayor, controller, president, and council is
invited. Then we should also have that
auditor, give a presentation to the fiscal committee too. I think that's the easiest way to handle it.
Yeah, and I'm sure that's something that they regularly do. It would not be. Uh, that's also like it
means the audits should also be like public record, right? They are, yeah. And so then anything on the
committee, like,
that as of the end of the day, this is part of the packet information, as well as for the main data.
A powerful presentation, and that would be something to post reviews to the public. And I think that
that adds to transparency, even if it's in other places. If it's not within our structure and normal
public information, I think that it's hard for the public to navigate finding.
When is the 2024 audit? And then the 2024 audit, and audits are always due September 30th of the ensuing
year, but we're hoping to get it done by December 31st of 2025. So did you get an extension? You don't
get an extension, it's just late. Is that so?
When you say December 21st, that's when the city will submit everything or that's when they'll get a
reward. That's when we'll get a report. That's when it will be audited. The audit of the financial statements
will be complete.
December 31st, 2020. And then we'll be caught up, right? We started. Yes, we'll be caught up. So then
we'll be in a different time frame. And then our 2025 audit will be due September 30th of 2026. Right.
OK, good. So yeah, fantastic. So we know that before we vote. Before we vote for next year
budget, essentially. Right, right. We know that. Well, no. No, you won't, because it's due September
3rd. Well, yes. The voting is in October. You're right. Yes.
Is there a way to get it done soon? No, no, no, it is absolutely huge. Yes, it is huge. It's creating
this like 280 300 page financial document of financial statements. And then that is audited. But I think
meeting the deadline for the first time in since 2019 would is
the most that we can hope for. That will be a win. Yeah, so I'm happy you promised it earlier. No, sorry.
Thank you. No, don't thank me. No, really. I think it's important because I think it's something you've
got a lot of public comments on this question. The audit, the audit, the audit, it's like, well, the
context that was always missed in that is that we were kept, that when you took this position, you had
three years of audience to get that. And so it's like, yeah,
Yeah, we all want it to be over there, but we are moving very fast. I'm just very appreciative of that
work. Thank you. Any other questions on audits? I wanted to go to talk about updates throughout the year.
Yes, I threw up quarterly. So I searched the whole state. I searched the whole state.
South Bend and Evansville. I'm sure there's others that are just trying to find, you know, like people
aren't pulling them out of the packets or whatever it is. Or in some cases, I know they're there, but
like the city's document center is like, I can't find it. What is the there that we're talking about?
So I pulled financial reports from Evansville and South Bend.
There are monthly plans. Yeah, I didn't have any good ideas of examples. And then I got some from some
other cities on our side. They all definitely have like a budget, you know, actual versus budget reports,
you know, and then also like revenue, just so budget versus actual and then
revenues and expenditures on budgets. We just need that report. And then fund balance. Why would it
not have revenues? I mean, because we will definitely report to you on revenues. It's just when we run
departmental budgets, revenues are tied to departmental budgets. It's tied to funds. And so you can't
really see the revenues.
when I run the departmental budget for moments reports. Yes, it can. Just forget that I even said anything.
Yes, you will get revenues. I'm just wondering if we, so if the entirety of the budget will be time
to ask, should we not report
on spending for outcome or something like that. Once we get everything, the system all set up and all
the departments, you know, aligned, they're spending a lot of programs. Yes, that is what we can do.
And then I wonder if just the council, not legitimately, I'm sort of against
the dashboardification of the world. So take this with a grain of salt, but I would probably disagree
with it another time when you say, this is a great idea, I'm like, that's a terrible idea. It gives
us a chance then you have like a, so imagine you do that monthly, you could also have a monthly report
that mirrors that. It's like, here are the metrics that we're tracking, that we want,
I've used this one or the other day or reduction in veteran homelessness or whatever. It would be great
to get it monthly. The number of veterans who are homeless went from 14 last month to 13 this month.
That's great.
I don't disagree with that concept, but I wonder if that's in the controller report yet. That's what
I'm saying. Controller can report money spent on it. Right. And then I'm talking about outside of budget.
Oh, okay. So outside of fiscal. Yeah, correct. Oh, great. Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm just saying as
a council member, as an interested in counseling thing. Yeah. But it is related to fiscal in the sense
that, you know, we're tying budget to equity. Right. So it would be great to, like, that's a great way
to use our report time. It's like, wow, stuff is happening. Right. So here's the question around that, which is,
maybe a lot of product for this meeting, but you know, it's brought up now is how frequently that kind
of stuff makes sense. And when, so it's that idea is, you know, like literally every once a year, I'm
like reviewing the last year's answer. Are we talking about fiscal reports? I think fiscal reports should
be monthly. Yeah. Or quarterly.
I think that that makes sense. Um, but also an annual report. So that's right. Necessary. And that's
why you should have to outcomes because then it really builds. So we're not creating a new process where,
you know, making a complimentary process.
But if you do, when you say, because you say, if you say quarterly and also annually, what's the difference
between the, you would want a fourth quarter and then a summary of the year? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause
the fourth quarter, like they're all the year to date. And then so then we can discuss how the annual
will be different than the fourth quarter year to date.
Yeah, I guess I was thinking that that annual report would be tied to the outcome part. Yeah, we could
do it as opposed to just like the mic part. And that is also, we'll have a lot of elements out of, but
we should know. We'll be tracking, we'll be tracking because we are budgeting based on line height and
outcomes. That's like the, like now with our new software and all of that, every
everything will be allocated to some, you know, line. I have Q3 or whatever. So you'll be able to say,
so much money that we spent on Q was on line. Yeah. And I'm not sure, like honestly, I wonder if we're
putting the card before the board steps in. Like until we figure out how that's gonna end up looking
as they work through their process over the next few months, maybe then we should,
Well, yeah, let's decide what we want as of today. You know, like, yeah, produce now and add things
in after we start off with a couple. That's not what I was trying to get at. So I would love for this
committee in January to have an annual report of revenues expenditures for 2025 for the year just now.
That makes sense.
Yeah, no, I want to do that. Yes. I started here and like, this is something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this
is probably your one. Yeah, you're done. Yes. This is what we did. Yes. Suck it. And then and then ongoing
quarterly reports that kind of have that information. But then as we get closer to outcome, maybe have
other ones, too. And I would add to that the not just the revenues versus expenses,
But the actual revenues versus the projected revenues. Oh, yeah. I mean, that probably matter too. Maybe
you were thinking about that, but I was going to say specifically, yes. Especially over the last few
years, I feel like, wow, our revenues have been really, like, our actuals have been really far, far
from our projected. That's the problem with that. Yeah, I do like that. Yes.
Yeah, it'll be like actual or expected in percent of what we've gotten so far. Yeah, exactly. And it'll
be great because then you can track things like tourism activity, like there'll be very easy coiling.
It's like, oh, wow, we did see a huge bump in parking. It'll be great. Yes. More football. You know?
That's not what I meant. I mean, I was referring to parking violations.
I mean, it's a lot of violations, though, but that would be really kind of interesting. I don't know
if you could split that in terms of, say, revenue from parking and to parking fees and parking violations.
Because those are two different revenue sources that are all in your parking. And it would be kind of
interesting to go, like, well, like, what time of year are we getting more parking violations? Yeah,
I think I can get that. The public parks must shut off all property. Where are supervisors?
I look at it, I think, to your part. I'd love to see it actually. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah,
because I mean, you would have qualitative evidence, but it would be best to just kind of like match
up the numbers they give and then just like get a whole picture of all this here. Yeah, well,
and it is, I mean, that has some reflection on staffing, too. Like, when might we need more staffing?
Yeah, so obviously on the tickets for parking attendance for like all of these like pieces.
So it's like we are not controlled. Those are statistical things, but I'm curious about them.
I love it. Dave, do you have any input for the tracking of the city's fiscal position? Well,
just to say, we appreciate the quarterly reports. I think I'm going to be interested in addressing the
deficit trajectory and a strategy to stop drawing down reserves. Yes. I think just
Going back to what I said before last time, in times of austerity, it's good to distinguish between
needs and wants. Sometimes it would be important to add staff. I made a pitch for continuing to add
public safety. But it was disheartening for me to learn during the previous administration,
that because of their failure to address the staffing shortfall, they were instead relying on overtime
pay. We were paying, as I recall, $800,000 or more on overtime. That was an enormous waste.
Not entirely, but obviously it had to be covered, but it would have been better addressed had we made
more hires. So, yeah, just to say, Jessica, I'll be looking at things like, you know, I guess it's going
to be incumbent on me to focus on and be judicious about appropriations and whatever code changes you
propose, the administration proposes to increase revenue.
I think I'm going to be also hesitant at the same time about expanding debt. However, I'll remain to
be convinced. It's not prohibitive, but I'll be open-minded about it, but my preference is not to expand
it. Anyway, I'll be interested to see how we meet this challenge going forward.
Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on plans for tracking the city's fiscal
position? Thank you, Isabelle. Now, this is a new hand. So just, you know, one thing I'd be interested
to not only in our fiscal report, but doing some FTE comparisons with other cities of similar sizes
and their departments.
and kind of getting a feel of where we're at, whether that's the clerk's office, the planning department.
And because I think ultimately we're going to have to probably cut some personnel. And as we talked
about the last meeting, this is not about the job that the staff are doing. It's more of the functions
the city can do. It's what Dave mentioned in needs versus ones. I've used the leap pickup of that was
a want, not a need.
So as we look through this and that lens, we sort of need to sort of look out on the size of these things.
Because I think we can always find great things to do. Like the chamber, I never catch up. There's always
more things to do. But at a certain point, we've got to go within our time and money realm. And the
city has to sort of look at this both financially and personnel related. Thank you. Thank you. Any other
public comment?
All right, 258. Any final comments for the good of the Oracle? When is our next meeting? Oh,
that's important. We have not scheduled one for December and at our last meeting I was thinking that
don't really need to since we're doing a lot of physical work at the December 10th session. I think
I just- Would it be useful to you to have another brainstorm on the 10th session before that, or just
to- Before the session? Yeah. I don't think the need is strong enough to have a moving. I agree. I mean, I-
Lisa, you can chime in here. Would I be allowed to, once I have a game plan for December 10th, to send
it to the committee and ask for their feedback via email? Is that allowed legally? Or do we have to
have a meeting? I think you would need to have a meeting. Okay, send it to one committee member and
request feedback. I can send it to each individual? No, you could choose like one committee member.
I thought the issue was just us being doing that at the same time.
No, it's. Receiving information. Yeah. I'd have to look at the statute. But it could be a case theory.
That's what we first heard about this. When we first took office, I think there was a different
interpretation around it. And I think that that has been legally updated since then. Oh, I see. I'll
volunteer to look that over for you. It's like, it's a precedent. Well, if you want. Isak, do you want?
Are you involved in it? I'm happy to be if it's helpful to you. I know I don't want to. That's all I
was. I was just offering help. I don't have to be the one to look it over. I'm also really happy to
if if you'd like help extracting all of the outcomes, happy to do that. So, yes. So maybe, yes, maybe
if we need more help, we should go this way to just not review it.
Yeah, how about that? She gets me back. Okay, well, from the conversation today, it doesn't seem like
I have to put a whole lot of work into this, right? Just put some examples into it. I think we need
to pull all of the outcomes, like actual, all of them from the document. From all the other plans. That
is smaller. Yeah, and that's where I don't think that it's really possible. I think it's a very easy
task to do.
with those tools available to do this quite quickly. So I can do it. I think I would probably end up
doing it just for myself and myself. I think I think it's something we should do because because I think
that we've in the last two years, multiple times we've we the council and we individuals have made this
argument about that. And then like,
Yeah, it's like, yeah, but we have to go down. So then we move it from the, yeah, they exist to like,
let's talk about it. So I'm really happy to help with that. I mean, I can just do that. How about I'll
just do it and send you, or send you here's what I think are all of the outcomes in the thing, and then
you can add or subtract or whatever it is. Well, do you want to split it like? Yeah, we can. You could
do transportation plan after the climate action.
And if we think of another one. Yeah, exactly. Heading hump was here. Well, is the heading hump going
back to where it made about what plans to use? Did council approve the heading hump plan? No. Approved
the property as a plan? Not the same way, no. Not the same way. Just qualify then. I think I've been
in here essentially on the heading hump plan. Qualified that council will go out and approve this plan.
I think, I think. Yeah, I think it's a slippery slope. So I think the Muscassel approved the plan. I
don't think that we should use those in the terms of this discussion, but I would suspect that some
of those panning songs objectives were also based on housing and stuff in the comp plan. So that would
be my educated guess that there's still a lot of overlap there. So we stick with the comp plan.
We're done then. So we're not having a meeting.