All right, I'll go ahead and call this meeting of the special fiscal committee on February 15th,
the order. Bucky Stafford, Sherry, and Council of District 3. I'll go with about 30. That's a rather
big number. It's about the last minutes. City Council, District 1. Trustee Namp, Deputy Mayor. Deverell,
District 4. Council. Lepia, MacDowell, Clark-Sambas.
Jeff McKinnon, City Control. Lisa Langer, Council of the City. Thank you to you guys. First thing on
our agenda is the agenda review and approval. We want to give a special welcome to the City Control.
Thank you. And so on my proposed agenda, first there was a 2025 year after report from Jeff. And then
talking about the December deliberation session, which
Isabel led for us what to do with those results and how to get the rest of them that we kind of need
and then talk about overall scheduling of this committee this year. So I need a motion to approve this
agenda. Or no, does it look good? Anybody have any concerns or additions that they want to make? Great, so.
Jeff taken around in our 2025 year report and any administrative update. I wasn't sure if I should be
here this morning, so if you have anything I want to leave a little early to make another meeting that
should be good. Great, thank you very much. And before I actually I have some spreadsheets that I want
to share. I don't want to just sit there and read a lot of numbers, so the intention is to just have
it start a conversation, see what kinds of questions you have.
Also see what kinds of reports you would like to see in the future. Now I did want to make, I'm going
to go ahead and share my spreadsheet. I'm going to paste the link in the chat, which should be open
to anyone. Is it what was in our packet? It is, but I want to address that actually.
sure that I can do that. Sorry, this is the first time I've shared screen on this on this my new city
computer. So the learning curve is five. You know what I have to
Actually, I have got admin rights to my computer, which I don't. Can you just share the link that it
should be in it? I should get those out. Okay. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. The only downfall is we might
not see. Here, let me give you that and this just in case, and then I can manage the zoom.
Okay, great. So the first thing I just want to address is an issue related to accessibility of documents.
And this is just, you know, as we all work through this process of creating accessible documents, there
are always going to be complications. And so with spreadsheets in particular, there are various guidelines
to make spreadsheets accessible, including making the
that include keeping the spreadsheets very simple, like not basically having them be tables. And then
the guidelines actually best practice is to actually use Google Sheets to make them officially tables.
Google Sheets when they have tables, I'm going to show you right here. Oh, sorry.
You'll see that Google Sheets, when you actually define a table, there's a heading there. There's a
title of the table, which is obviously best practice for accessibility. The problem is when this got
transferred into a PDF, the print process for Google Sheets that transfers to PDF does not include the
table title. What you got are the spreadsheets without any title, which makes them useless.
This is just another accessibility issue we're going to have to work through as the whole city we transfer
to fully accessible documents. I just wanted to get that by way of explanation. I'm going to show five
sheets. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on any of them, but I did want to point out that
the on the first tab labeled sources, there are two links to the expenditure data and revenue data.
They're actually on the city's public open data portal. And I find those incredibly useful. They are
really as good as anything we have on the inside. It's data that's directly extracted from our financial
system in the city and posted publicly every night.
So anyone can have access to near real-time, like within a day, overall budgetary expenditure numbers
and revenue. I just wanted to point that out. Let's start with revenue. My first sheet here is revenue.
Let me also just say we have about 160 different funds in the city. Most of them are not
interesting to most people, but very specialized. So the funds that I included in this particular
spreadsheet, this report, are just ones that I thought would be particularly interesting to members
of this committee. Again, if there are other things you're interested in, just please let me know. So
what this sheet is showing is the difference between, this is revenue,
When you pass the 2025 budget, you passed it along with estimates of revenue for each fund and each
department within each fund. What this is, is this is a comparison of what was essentially approved
by the common council in approving the budget versus what was actually received in each department.
Again, every single number here
could tell a story. If you just ask me why, just to pick a random example, legal had a lot more revenue
than expected. I would have to look into that in detail. I want to see what kinds of questions you have.
I will say that one big difference that you will see in revenue that's actual versus what was approved,
shows up in the Comptroller's Office Department under the General Fund. It also shows up in the Comptroller's
Office in the Economic Development Lit Fund. Well, it's different in the public safety. I'll get to
that in a minute. But the reason why both the Economic Development Lit
and the general fund to show up as having so much more revenue than expected is because of what's known
as the supplemental distribution, the supplemental lit distribution. The state is constantly, state
actually is who collects local income tax for the rest of the state. It's collected at the state level,
and then the state makes distributions to local governments based on a formula. Every now and then,
the balance in that state account or the state collects the money gets too large.
And the idea is that money should be returned to local governments so they can use it. So the state
will then once a year, if that balance gets above a certain threshold, provide it to the local government
unit to use. And we don't budget that. We don't assume that we're going to get that because we don't
know what it is. And so what it does is it provides an extra opportunity to kind of make up for
Deficits in other ways and so the reason why you'll see in the controller's office line almost a million
one point three million dollars and in the general fund and one point seven million dollars in the Economic
development lit fund is because of that special distribution or some amount of distribution So in other
words, we hope we receive more lit than we had projected And just
FYI, we will know what that distribution is by approximately May 15th for this year. So we'll know what.
For 2026. For 2026. The supplemental part. The 7th. May. May. May.
So you know, the Department of Local Government Finance every year comes out with a budget calendar
where they give us all these dates that are of this information is due to local units. And they have
not published, they are themselves late with that budget. But if we base it on last year, which I've
been told from DLGF reps that it's likely to be accurate, that that date is accurate. So I guess before
we move on to,
The one other difference that we see is a big deficit as far as revenue goes from police. That's because
in past years, the dispatch local income tax was in a city received into public safety lit fund and
then maintained separately in a police budget.
That is definitely not best practice. Last year, the city created a separate PSAP Lit Fund and started
to manage the Dispatch Center funding in a separate fund, which is really the way it should be. Because
that revenue was originally budgeted in the Public Safety Lit Fund, but instead it was actually then
receded into a separate fund for Dispatch Center. That's why it shows up as a large
negative in terms of the amount of revenue received. Okay, but that bond is not cheating. I did not
include that. That's the PSAP one? That's the PSAP one, exactly. But so the sister creation of the new...
Sorry, so the revenues came in before
we have that separate fund? No, in prior years. In prior years, it used to get receded into the public
safety lip fund. But then last year, it was receded into a separate PSAP fund, but it was initially
budgeted as being receded into the public safety lip fund. That's why instead of being receded here,
in the Public Safety Lit Fund, it was received in the MPCS. That's where it is. It's not actually less
money received than inspected. It's just where it was deposited. In terms of tracking revenues, one
thing that took me a couple of years to realize was happening that was a complicated factor is the inter-fund
transfers that count as revenues from one fund or come out of another.
Is that something that would be, that would be a contributing factor to some of these differentials
too, in like this close file, or yeah? It could be, although a lot of times those inter-fund transfers
were actually anticipated. Right, exactly. For example, for 2026, you have a fairly large sanitation
plan transfer from the general fund. Got it. So those wouldn't typically show up here if they were approved
in Plan 4, as that is just
things that happen differently in the displayer. Yeah. Yes. If you're interested in a report on the
inter-fund transfers, that's something else I can provide. That would be helpful because I've gotten
some inquiries from a constituent who is a CBA and he knows that the general fund expenditure went up
in 2025 by about 20 percent and wonders exactly how that wears out. Tracking that would be a good idea
because it seems that
I think there were definitely a lot of moves from the 2025 also 2026, but in particular, a number of
items that were moved from the general fund to the public safety and the economic development. Is all
of this revenue in here like tax revenue?
Or is it just a combination of revenues and you can split it out? It's a combination of a whole bunch
of different things. Now, it can be split out. Actually, if you look at those detailed data sets that
I put links on the front, you can actually see the detail. But it depends. For example, the general
fund has a lot of revenue sources. Property taxes is the biggest one and local income tax is the second biggest.
there are probably 50 other revenue sources for the general fund. Some of the others are much
more straightforward, like there's only a small number of revenue sources. Parking, for example, there's
only a small number of revenue sources. Yeah, I guess I'm kind of looking at say like ITS versus animal
shelter, like animal shelter probably has an extended revenue of people actually coming in and adopting
pets, but like ITS would just have revenue from
Yeah, it definitely the property tax and income tax would not show up under individual departments as
far as the revenue goes because those that revenue for property tax and income tax would be receded
against the controller's
So that's all going to be anything in ITS that's going to be other stuff. It's not. Wouldn't it be the
grant? Wasn't there a grant? Yeah, I'm assuming that that. It could have been. I don't want to speculate,
but yeah, they've got lots of different sources. Just echoing the everyday conversation, this is probably
beyond the scope of this report, but it is something I forget what this administration, certainly the
previous one I had asked on several occasions,
have a better understanding of the multiple revenue streams that make up each fund. We've tended to
take a fund-oriented approach to budgeting, which is like, here's all the funds, and here's the amount
that is in them, and here's how we're gonna spend it at the end. And it's like, really hard to get your
head around the whole thing if you don't understand the diversity of revenue sources, where there's,
like, all the income transfers that are planned for, all that. So that's gonna be a better picture of
all that. And we don't necessarily need to know, I don't think, all 50 revenue sources for the general
fund, or maybe the ability to drill down
But other categories, like so we talked about the major categories of property and income taxes, things
like fees or, you know, things like that, like it's still in that way. Certainly, I mean, yeah, yes.
Yeah, I actually request like next quarter. More so for project planning, I think, for 2027, but
One thing I've done, or I've already started working on it, and really more for me to make sure I understand
it all, it's just literally a diagram where boxes representing the different funds and a little arrow
that says, general fund to sanitation was this much, general fund to that Jack Hoffman's fund is this
much. I mean, that is certainly the sort of thing that. And I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think
The ability to have a go bond or not also impacts where we would pull money from sometimes for different
projects. So that probably had a ripple effect last year and we've heard some good news on that front
from our financial advisors. So maybe there's opportunities there in the future, but that also has an
impact on such as this money goes here every time. Sometimes we have to move things around to compensate
for other losses or restrictions.
So Matt, what you were saying is currently we just assume that certain revenues go into certain funds,
and we wanted to take a look at. We don't have the full picture. I'm not sure we've ever really had
a presentation of like, for every fund we have, here are the one or more revenue sources occupating
that fund. And whether it's required to go into that fund. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I know, for instance,
or I think I know,
I think the Alternative Transformation Fund, which includes the sidewalk of the committee's budget,
for instance, I believe that is in part populated by a general fund, an inter-fund transfer. That's
something I've heard in the past. I can't tell you comprehensively that type of information. That's
what I'd like to know or see. Yeah, in past years, actually, it's been a transfer from the cumulative
capital development fund and then this year from the general fund. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, there are a number of transfers out of some of these big fun. I'm sorry. Yeah, there's other revenues
that I'm interested in, too. We don't have a lot of control over those things, but like parking revenues,
I think a good example, or even change meter rates in the day. If you think about that and like high
use areas, for instance, and so use and parking garages, same thing. And those are on an escalator per
code. But so you can start to, you know, you can start to think about, you know,
The more you understand the revenue, you can start to think about the levers for any kind of adjustments,
I think, would be better. Yeah. Yeah. And parking could justify an entire long meeting. We just didn't
understand what was there. Can I just follow up on the ITOS negative revenues? So how does a negative
revenue show up in this table? In the actuals?
It was negative $236,000. I would have to look at the detail. It could be that it could be a refund
or a transfer out, something like that. Something unexpected coming out of the account or the fund.
Yeah, I can certainly look into that. I would like to know that. Okay, anything else on revenue? Okay,
let's go to the, sorry.
All right. This is essentially the same thing. And again, this is derived from the publicly available
data set on on the city website. But it is the difference between the budget that was adopted,
then amended, which would either be through transfers within within a fund and within a category, or, you know,
And then the actual is what was actually spent and remaining is what was spent, what's remaining in
the appropriation essentially. So again, every one of these can tell a story, but just a couple of big
ones, let's see.
The remaining is not cash balance. It's what was remaining from what was working. Exactly.
This is appropriations, this is not cash. I will get to fund balances two tabs from now. Essentially,
in terms of good management, we should have positives everywhere in the remaining because if we were
going to have a negative in the remaining, then we should have amended the application.
Yes, exactly. Yes. Ideally, you'd have zero in a way that makes your budget is perfect. But obviously,
it's not always going to be that way. I guess the one thing I would want to point out here in particular
would just be the human resources budget because there's a large extended appropriation. The appropriation
for the employee salary increases was budgeted in HR.
And so this was just unexpended appropriation associated with the salary adjustments. I think if there's
anything else that was. The public safety with police.
shows a big unexpended balance. There are a couple issues there. One is the PSAP. I think I had mentioned
that the PSAP is now expended out of PSAP. There's also an unspent line that I noticed from health and
insurance. I don't know why I have to spend it. It's going to take me some time to look into that. It's
something I noticed yesterday. It might have been a transfer that wasn't made. It might have been that
the previous controller decided to
budget in a different way for health insurance. I don't have any insurance, just a particularly large
number. When we created the PSAP fund, we put 4.5 million in there, but the expenditures, many of the
expenditures still hit the, yes, what?
No. In fact, the expenditures for dispatch, the expenditures for dispatch all were appropriately recorded
in the PSAP lit. I know PS lit and PSAP lit. It can get a little confusing. I guess what I'm saying
is that was a temporary transition thing where these expenses and revenues were budgeted in one fund,
but actually receded and spent and out of a different fund.
during the year. So that's not going to be an issue in 2026 because there's no, every PSAP and PSL every
budget on Saturday. With respect to, I know this is the same as our cash balances, but with respect
to the remaining appropriated but unspent fund at the departmental level or the fund level, if that
makes sense, what is the administration's
approach to those? Is that a required approach or is there flexibility there? Recalling the Hamilton
administration in particular, I think there was like a sort of internal policy executive branch of like
the departmental level. If you had unspent appropriated money, there was like a shared agreement of
like you could spend half of it on priority items that were consistent with, you know, the funds used
in your department. The other half would like revert to the sort of
office of the mayor to decide what to do with uh obviously also subject to getting to um additional
like appropriations or fund transfers where that was required but it consists with funds uh purpose
does that is am i asking the question right about like this yeah and i will say i have not had that
conversation so my understanding or our experience has not been um when jessica was here she there was
no percentage on
you know, you get to keep half or you get to not keep half. It was simply at the end of the year, you'd
look at and he says, probably not through this process too, maybe not. Look at the money that you have
on spend and, you know, encumber what you needed and then anything else you would give back
to the controller's office. So the administration didn't have, or rather the mayor's office didn't go
through and say, gosh, here's this pool of money and I don't spend it here, here, here. It was more,
it all came out of the controller's office to say, here's,
here's all the money that wasn't spent put back into the fund. And then the controller made the decisions
about, you know, departments that had deficits, we would use it to cover that. And I don't think there
was any, there was no discussion in any year of here's some extra money, what should we do with it?
I think that if it wasn't spent and someone didn't have a need for it and it wasn't encumbered, we didn't
make an extra plan to then go out and spend it. And in fact, I will say I had one,
staff member who did approach the office of the mayor saying, hey, this wasn't in my budget, but I have
extra money left over. Can I spend it on this, this, and this? And my response was, well, we went through
the budget season and, you know, this isn't budgeted. It hasn't been reviewed by council. I don't think
it's appropriate to say we've had this extra money. Now we're going to spend it on something that hasn't
been reviewed by the public or by the control or me at this late stage of the game. That usually happens
in late November and December.
And so we see inter-fund transfers, which is part of the story when we see that. And to uncover something,
that's like a formal, like, contractual obligation or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah. You didn't
quite get your contract wrapped up in the money, but you're saving the money so you can still do it.
Right, which makes, I know, makes a lot of the analysis. Right, and just thinking of things like, I
think this has come up in the engineering context, for instance, where, like, they're busy, they're
understaffed, whatever it is, they can't quite get to the project that they thought they would get to
this year. We did budget and improve it, and then it's,
December and then they kind of what happens if they can't cover the money, you know. So the way we did
it last year and our new controller may do things differently is, you know, if you, let's say that you
had a, let's say you had a consulting project you wanted to do and you didn't have your, you hadn't
yet secured the vendor. So you didn't have a purchase order, which would be the normal way you would
do that. And so for a big engineering project, that might be like the rewrite not have
I don't know if it's true, let me walk that back. An engineering project involves a lot of different
expenses. So as long as you have a contract and a purchase order of different income rate, if you don't
have that, you have to at least have last year a letter of agreement or something. So you have to know
who's doing it and have some kind of connection lined up like, yes, we're going to make a contract next
year to work this out. You can't just say, I continue to plan to do this project. I think that's a harder path.
But there might be other ways for engineering a project that works a little differently. Yeah, that's
what it could be. I will say just as a matter of budgetary philosophy, over the past years, past four
years or so, the local units of government have been kind of a wash and mark of funds. And so there
have been some kind of extra funding sources that just aren't available anymore. My personal kind of
First of all, is that we're going to be, things are going to be very tight coming up in the next couple
of years, especially from SEA-1. Both the loss of ARPA, or the ending of ARPA and the SEA-1 changes.
So I don't foresee us being in the position where we want to encourage extra spending that hasn't already
been budgeted. Yeah, I may have mischaracterized that also. What I was just trying to do.
exactly what you were describing, the reverse of the controller. And then they weren't, it went up throughout
the process, you know? Yeah. But, um, going further back under Kazam, we did have an angled reversion
appropriation. So that's interesting. But in February, March, we would get, here are the reversions,
and here's how you want to spend it. Right, Dave? Yeah.
All right, if there's something else on expenditures, and again, you can please come back to me with
additional questions once you get a chance to look at the data more. I did have a tab on taxes, just
because I wanted to just look overall at property taxes and income taxes, just because those are the
big sources. Yeah, I can get that actually
all fit up on screen. Okay, there we go. So we've got property taxes and I'm excluding TIFF here. You
will see that we have, property taxes generally go into four different funds. Well, they go into the
general fund and the parks fund. Those are property tax in 2026,
you have budgeted revenue into the motor vehicle highway fund for the first time. That has not been
a typical practice in the past. Those three funds, some of the property taxes of those three funds are
fixed by law. The state will determine how much property taxes we get out of those three funds and is
up to the city. It's up to the local unit of government to determine how those
those property tax are allocated among those three funds. Typically, they've just been split between
general and parks, but for the first time, they've been also allocated at the NVH, but it's a fixed
sum. Anything that's out of property tax that's allocated to motor vehicle highway comes out of general.
Can I ask about that ship? Was that just a bit
I don't know, like logistical in the sense of like where we're using general fund previously, but then
I assume where we buy the fund is going to repay any projects, that kind of thing. Honestly, I don't
know why that decision was made. Okay. And then cumulative capital development is a separate rate controlled
fund that's separate property tax rate for capital projects. So those are your basic property taxes.
You will see that
property taxes have increased at a kind of a steady clip for the past four years. And then, but in 2026,
our projections is that they'll actually be decreased a little bit based on SE81. And we'll probably
see a little bit larger decrease at 20%. So property taxes as a whole with respect to those general
funds have basically crusted and will probably
go down from now. So this table is redact tax revenues? Yes. This is just property tax revenue. Then
we have the bonds. The general obligation bonds also come with their own property tax rate. When you
pass the general obligation bond, it also comes with a separate property tax rate to service them.
Those property taxes that are shown under bonds are in addition to the property tax shown under chain.
It's a general fund property tax rate is crested, but it looks like the parks want to start going up.
Well, that's a choice. That's a positive choice. It's the total.
So it's not like there's a statutory rate for parks and the statutory rate for general. There's a statutory
rate overall that then gets allocated among those three funds. Oh, sorry. So in theory, we could, like
this council, reduce the rate that parks gets to increase the rate that the general fund gets? That's
an annual budgetary decision. Two questions.
I understand the GEO bonds rates are based on what the amount of bond was. Do you remind us the Community
Development Funds rate based on how that's set? And then the second question is, are all of these treated
identically that are listed here with respect to interaction with constitutional limits on property
tax revenues, like for different types of property? Or are some of these accepted in some way from not
counting against that consideration, I think,
Yeah. So there's a question. Well, let me answer the last thing first. They are all within the property
tax caps, the constitutional limits. They all behave identically in that way. The only debt that's really
accepted from those property tax caps are school referendums, school levies passed by referendum. Are
TIF incremental TIF revenues pretty differently in some way too though?
They are treated differently. They're still the tax caps still apply. Yeah. Okay. And I'm sorry, what
was that? Yeah, that's something that that you said. Yeah, there is maximum. We are at the maximum.
And it's just it's a it's what's known as a weight controlled fund. So it's just a certain amount of
It's a certain rate per $100 of assessed value, net assessed value. So that's what it brings in. And
it's fairly strictly limited by statute as to what can be spent, what can be spent. All right,
let me comment. So could you describe, so the STA one was tax deductions, larger homestead credit. And
so it's, what residents of Bloomington will see is that they're,
that their property taxes are going to essentially flatten out or cap. My reading is that property values
have essentially kind of capped as well for mineral camp. In other words, housing at least is flattened.
So I assume SS value would be essentially
as well. You're talking about just assessments having to be flammed out? I guess, yeah, taxes, assessments.
So I'm just thinking like, so, you know, just the big picture. So, you know, we were obviously not going
to annex areas, you know, one and two, the county. So that's, so we're limited in terms of expanding
our tax base from that. The state has imposed these deductions.
before, you know, property taxes are going to apply now. We're going to be deriving more and more from
LID apparently. That's the key point. That's the content. And I guess my, so just evaluating that, when
we went into the process of creating LID and deploying it, we have various buckets of where it was going
to go during Hampton administration.
and it would be great to have clarity as to exactly, you know, where that goes now. I mean, is it going
into just the general fund for, obviously for, but you know, exactly where is it going relative to where
we planned it to go in the past? It is radically different. Exactly. You're in a very different place
now. I know, I know, but I'm just, I'm trying to wrap my head around, like, you know, where the landscape
going forward
is going to be pretty different. It's going to be very different because right now there are essentially
four different lit rates that you receive. It's called certified shares, which is just kind of your
basic lit. That goes into the general fund. It's not accounted for separately in terms of expenditure.
It's mixed up with property tax and all the other receipts into the general fund. That's your certified
shares. There's your public safety,
which goes into a separate fund. There's the economic development, which is probably what you're referring
to. Yeah, that was added. Then there's the PSAP that's specifically for the dispatch. With SCA-1, apparently,
and I don't know that we want to get into this discussion. No, we have time for it. It's already time
for it. Exactly. Well, I'm just trying to impart that's what I would like to build in the future.
A more detailed report about what and how we spend it right now. Yeah. Just a general discussion and
maybe agreement on our priorities going forward. To me, we budgeted for public transportation. I think
it's absolutely essential that because what we're talking about is a regressive taxation. We ought to
be spending it to the best of our ability for low income people. They're going to be deriving more and
more from people.
Well, just to be clear, I think, you know, we do have that commitment to BT. Yeah. But I believe it
expires right about the time EDLIP also expires. So all that money is going away and we'll have to redo
it. And just for the benefit of the public, I don't think any individual property owner who's maybe
listening to this should assume that their tax bill will be lower as a result of the SEA 1 changes.
It very much depends on whether your business, residence, the value of your property. And then, of course, as those
taxes go away and counties and municipalities are forced to reintroduce them in different ways. The
end result, even though we have less money as a municipality, may not be that residents also are paying
less. So just to caution folks, that may be true for some folks, but it probably won't be true for all.
And Jeff, those four categories of rents are all going away. As of now, they go away until it for calendar
budget year 2028.
All right, let me just, I'm just going to zoom through these last two. The next tab is just fund balances.
I'm not, I don't think we really need to talk about them, but they're here for your reference. This
is basically, I pulled together the end of the year fund balance for a number of interesting funds from
2020 through 2025. You're welcome to look at that and we can ask questions or you can ask questions.
Then I put together another tab, which was our 2026 debt maintenance. And we've already talked about
the GO bonds, which come with their own property tax levy. We have TIF bonds, which are paid for from
TIF increment revenue. The one bond that is really paid, we've got food and beverage tax, convention
center lease, which is paid out of conventions, out of food and beverage tax.
Bond payments that do essentially come at the expense of other things are the CD-LIT bonds, which was
used, which was used among other things for fire station improvements, purchase of showers west,
et cetera. And that comes out of, that doesn't come with its own tax rate that comes out of your CD-LIT.
And then these three parks bonds, solar panel bonds, golf car lease, which is over this year.
and then the Twin Lakes Reparations Center. I don't want to go into detail on debt here because I would
like to have a separate conversation about debt where we have our municipal advisor here to talk about
our constitutional limits and give us a lot more detail. I just wanted to give you what we know are
our 2026 payments. Thank you. Sorry for taking so long.
I think it sounds like there were a lot of questions, but I'll yield back to the chair. Yeah, are there
any urgent other questions from? Go ahead. Just one that I hope is short, which is, or relatively, which
is that my Republican appeal, which I think is on fall, had made a few public comments recently about the
the comprehensive annual financial report, is that right? Which is distinct from an annual financial
report. There's a level of detail. It's now called the annual comprehensive financial, ACFR. So I guess
first confirming that is distinct ACFR from an annual financial report. That is a second. Could you
speak to some of, I don't know if you've seen his comments from the previous meetings, but noting that
we're, I guess, behind on filing an ACFR, is that right? And give an update on that. Yeah, we are, that
has been actually
finishing that has been my number one priority since taking the job. And we're still working on it.
Understand that it is kind of a three-way relationship. We provide information and artifacts to our
Gatsby Gap firm that does the Gatsby Gap, essentially our accrual-based accounting. They then provide
information to the auditor, which is the firm called Pro.
And then crow asks us for artifacts to test. And so we were, you know, we respond to any requests for
additional artifacts we get within a day. But
We are still probably, from talking to the two firms involved in this, probably still a few weeks out
from completion of the ACFR, which is an audited report. So that's a big difference between the AFR
and the ACFR, is that the ACFR is audited. And so every bit of it gets tested by the consultants who
are doing the audits, as opposed to the AFR, which is just something that
And both of those are statutory requirements for our unit, yes. And just to reiterate this, I think
this has been said, but for the benefit of the public, these audits have to be done sequentially by
year. You can't do multiple years at once. And we started with a backlog, so we've been playing catch
up and we are all looking forward to being caught up and then we intend to stay caught up forever. Yeah,
so the 2025 audit would be
and ACFR would be due by 2nd or 30th of this year. We intend to be current. Are there any penalties
for being behind? No, no, and it is. I mean, there are a lot of things that have happened and a lot
of communities that not all, not all, but there are a lot of communities that are behind, but we work
very closely with our state Board of Accounts representative.
It's just something that's very important to get done. So that the AFR for 2024 is already available.
The AFR for 2025 will be done, I think we plan to finish it on March 23rd, or February 24th, sorry.
60 days. And then submit it before March 1st. And that's on the controller's website. Yes. Thank you.
Great. Let's go ahead and go to public comments specifically about this year and report. So if you want
to stop the screen share and go back to that and see if there's any members of the public. If you want
to speak, there's no members of the public and here with us, but anybody wants to raise their hand on
Zoom to let us know. Looks like Mr. Keough would like to have a comment. Go ahead and state your name
for the record and you'll have
Can you hear me? Yeah, my name is Kevin Keough. Thank you members of the fiscal committee for
this opportunity to speak. I want to be very clear about my intent today. I am here to advocate for
a process improvement that I believe is essential to sound fiscal governance, informed decision making,
and public trust.
As I stated in prior meetings, the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report is not just a compliance document.
It is the single most important accountability tool that elected officials and citizens have to understand
the city's true financial condition based on actual audited results. The ACFR for the year ended December
31st, 2024 was due on September 30th, 2025.
That deadline was missed. At the official committee meeting on November 19th, 2025, the former controller
publicly committed to publishing the report by December 31st, 2025. That commitment was also not met.
The controllers subsequently resigned, and as of today, February 14th, 2026, the 2024 ACFR still has
not been published.
At this point, we are approaching 14 months after the end of the calendar year 2024. This is not a timing
issue. It is a governance issue. Audited financial information delivered that late is no longer decision
useful, particularly when the city is already discussing policy choices and will begin development of
the 2027 budget later this year. I was particularly concerned by the statement made by the former controller
November 19th meeting that there's no way for the City of Wilmington to produce the ACFR any earlier
than September 30th deadline. That is simply not consistent with recognized best practices in government
financial reporting. The Government Financial Officers Association, the GFOA, explicitly recognizes
excellence in financial reporting through its certificate of achievement program. One of the
core expectations of that program is timeliness.
My research shows that multiple Indiana peer cities, including Fishers and Carmel, meet these standards
and have earned that recognition by publishing their ACFRs within the roughly six months from the end
of the year end. This tells us something important. Producing a timely ACFR is not theoretical. It is
achievable. It is being done right here in Indiana by cities with comparable complexity. My request
today is straightforward.
I urge the committee to formally take ownership of the ACFR timeliness as a governance priority.
Specifically, I ask you to direct the administration to establish a process and expectation
that Bloomington's ACFR be published within six months of the year end and the city pursue the GFOA
certificate of achievement and excellence in financial reporting. This is not about an award. This is
about discipline, accountability,
and restoring a reliable financial feedback loop, one that allows the council to govern proactively
rather than reactively. Timely audited financial information adds value, it strengthens budgets, it
improves decision-making, and it builds public trust. I respectfully ask the committee to lead on this
issue. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Mr. Keough. Is there anybody else online
who would like to make a comment?
specifically about the year-end report. All right. I don't see any hands being raised. Jeff, do you
know if any idea when that 2024 will be finished? I just said. Yeah, I know. I would say it is a number
of weeks, not months, but not days either. All right. Thank you.
So I just want to explore a little bit. So you said that it's a sequential process. Yes. So we can't
run parallel to, we can't do both. So if we hadn't finished, if we were behind on 2022 and 2023 when
we came into office in 2024, you can't start 2024 on time because you have to go back and finish 2022
and 2023 first, which is why
As Mr. Kia points out, we were not able to finish 2024 on time because we were working on the previous
years. We are all anxious and looking forward to being caught up. I assume working on previous years
because that was under the previous administration with a previous controller, finding all those artifacts
become ever more challenging. Is that accurate? That's part of it, but not really.
Here are two factors that make it complex. One is that the standards changed over the years. There are
a number of new requirements that have come out, particularly with respect to capital improvement, management
of the value of capital improvements. New standards for leases in particular have added a lot of complexity.
And then also new standards for, and this is one of the things that I had to work on as soon as I came in,
standards for management of subscription-based IT arrangements. In the past, you buy software and they
say it's a purchase, but people don't buy software anymore. They subscribe to it and those subscription
arrangements require additional accounting that didn't exist before. There are new reports, new processes
for governance of IT-based subscription arrangements.
and so the city has a fairly decentralized procurement system. Any question that comes from an auditor,
for example, has to then involve gathering data from a number of different departments. If you haven't
been through the process before, it's not just find the invoice that matches this, it's sometimes find
processes, find proof that you went through the proper process,
before the invoice of the first disorder was even created or that it was reported in the proper way.
So that was a very broad scope. Yeah. Well, thank you for your work on that. The administration worked
to try to get us caught up on the 22 and 23 before we get to 21. Jeff, could you address that option?
Because I wouldn't like that to sit out there. 22 and 22 are done. Yes, I know they're done now, but
they had to be done before we do 24. So it was a leftover. Is there a way to maybe
those after because I would really like to move on to the December deliberation at this point. I will
just say, can I just say that there have been no major issues found so far? Thank you. So moving on
to the deliberation session that we had in November, as a council, we're trying to prioritize outcomes.
Isabel, you
did a great job organizing that activity and going through like the comp plan and the environmental
action plan or the climate action plan to get us started with some outcomes and then council members
chose their own outcomes. And then for those three groups, the high performing government, housing and
homelessness and economic development, we were actually able to do the activity, which was each council
member ranking those outcomes. And so I
Recorded those that data here. And once again, this was this was originally in a table and I was advised
by staff to move it out of a table format because it was more than just numbers. I also, you know, recorded
which council members said what in terms of their rankings and then I scored that
First ranking scored three points, second ranking scored two points, and third ranking scored one point
per council member. In theory, the highest score was 27, and council members had chosen the exact same
outcome as their number were ranked. I don't feel like there's necessarily time right now or we should
take time right now to look through these specifically in light of
my discussion questions of is the data useful? What do you notice about it? Are there other ways to
present or use this information? But I would like us as a group to be like, was this concept useful
and should we figure out how to get this information about the remaining outcome areas from our colleagues
and ideas on how to do that if we think that we should essentially finish this activity.
So should we finish the activity? Yes. Yes. I think so. I think it's a good baseline of understanding.
I agree. The next deliberation session right now is scheduled for March. As far as I know, there is nothing
that is set and scheduled for that deliberation session, but I was also wondering if it can be effective
to not have to have it as a deliberation session, but have some kind of a virtual reaching out or,
I mean, we have several committee members here because it's kind of this two phases of coming up with
a list of outcomes to prioritize and then everybody actually prioritize.
what do people think about how to finish the backtake? Say what meeting type? Yeah, what meeting type,
whether we should say, let's do it as a deliberation session and then I can talk to council member Sari
about that, council president Sari. I don't know if Jeff or Gretchen can tell us at what point does
this prioritization stuff from council become
less valuable in terms of when you receive this information from some budgeting for 2027. I have a broader
comment about the whole PBB process that I want to make that I think is right here. I think you know
we've been following the resource X methodology for
priority-based budgeting that involves four steps, like importing, cleaning the data, performing
a comprehensive inventory, identifying the true cost of programs and scoring program effectiveness.
That is an eight plus month process that I don't think actually is going to give you the answers that
you need in a way that helps with budgetary decision-making. I'm wondering if we don't want to instead
this year,
try maybe choosing a certain number, a small limited number of priorities, say 10, that can certainly
be incorporate the priorities that you've already been identified and then have us associate the various
budgets with those priorities and just report on those rather than try to go through the whole process,
which like I said, I don't think is going to give you the information you want in a time of need. Gretchen,
I don't know if you have any more.
Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked a lot about how incredibly detailed this work is. And I know Lisa
has seen how it is for even a relatively simple budget. And so I just want to make sure that we don't
spend all of that staff time and then wind up saying at the end of it, well, that still doesn't show
us what we want. And I think that the work you've done on outcomes is really helpful to the administration
in that it's showing us
what matters to council and what we care about. Not all of these are things that are budgetary items
or things that could be even in a single year's budget. But it does help us go through and see what
among these lists do you have programs or areas of work that we could track spending on and could report
on efficiently without having every department member come to multiple department meetings and having a
an interminable process where we're overwhelmed by numbers but don't actually get the information about
that. I think the exercise is illuminating, not everything in here is a budgetary item. I think Jeff
and I are on the same page of how can we narrow the list to what are the 10 things that you really want
to know. I know the mayor, of course, has her ideas of what those things are. We'll have some overlap
in the Venn diagram. How can we use the systems we have to track that without
you know, spending countless hours. I don't think you care whether, you know, one person spends 1% of
their time on this and 2% of their time on that. So your proposal is basically like, you know, thinking
say in the context of this activity that one of our top housing and homelessness outcomes based on that
activity was to increase housing diversity within neighborhoods. So you would say like if we kind of
collectively chose that as one for you to focus on that for that one, you would break out
those different program expenditures, but you wouldn't necessarily break out those program expenditures
for like everything. Is that what you mean? That would be a great example of a goal that would be very
hard to... Well, yeah. I would say you've done a lot of work on this end, and what would be helpful
at this point would be for Jeff and I to look through this and say, okay, what are the things that we
know are tied to specific budget
to programs or to activities or that should be tied to programs or activities that we want to track.
Like, what is trackable and reportable from this list? And that might be much less. And we could come
back and say, here's what we could track. And maybe that list has five things. Maybe it has 20. And
then we could little it down from there. Of course, as I mentioned, obviously, the mayor will also want
to have things on the list. I think that many of that list will have interest in saying that.
Well, at the December session, one of the things that I remember us saying was that some of them are
nested underneath each other, and then the difference, I think, Matt, you said the difference between
the outcomes as cited in the plans should maybe hold a different weight than the outcomes just mentioned
by council members at the event.
And these lists probably could use a little bit more refinement comparing if we don't have time for
today. Well, I think we could we could definitely let's let's pick words with sidewalks and say, oh,
we have plans. We're making more plans and perfect plans that would tell us here's what you should do.
Big picture. First, we want to assess what are we actually spending. That's the big one in all of the
different pockets. And then we could come back and say,
Here's what the plan says we should be achieving long term or over a five year period. And this year,
you know, this is what our spending has gotten us in the past. And this is what we would need to spend
to keep up with the goals in the plan. So I think it might be difficult for those of us who don't know
all the fine points of those programs to randomly say, well, in one year, I think this transfer, I think
it would be easier to start the numbers and then look at the big plan and have staff who have expertise
in those areas.
back and say here's what we think and then you can look at that and say well I think your goal should
be higher or no that's too much slow it down or you know. But this was useful. Yes I mean anything that
helps us understand what we can work on and where we find common ground and what we value and want to
know about is always useful. Okay great. So first of all I do want to be careful about the words we
use so priority based budgeting is not
really what the council agreed on is outcome-based question. Well, what we on the council are still
trying to wrap our heads around is we need to focus on outcomes, not programs. We can say, we need more
police, but what is the actual outcome for the community that are seeking?
So I think this is still very valuable to go through the other categories to do this with council. And
then we can wiggle it down to what's measurable and what's doable within one year. And we can also take
this and we have another year in our term, same council, as a basis for adding measurable outcomes and
therefore, uh, budget prioritization next. Wow. Yeah. Some other reflections. Well, um, I think that's
agreed with a lot of what I'm bringing the outcome based versus priority based approach agreement I'm
hearing from, uh, deputy mayor controller as well with respect to like a nice breakfast last time we
met about this. I'm very cautious about not creating work that is in actionable, uh, for us.
Um, and I think we should finish the exercise because I think we're in a sort of interim space where
it is going to be, continue to be useful. But I'd also like us to dedicate more meeting time in that,
for more space in that same meeting to continue the conversation around like structurally,
where do we, where are we trying to end up? Uh, and I think the high level things here is that I think
we have alignment on some of these, that city goals and plans are
our best source currently for shared outcomes between executive and legislative branches. However, even
where we have those plans, we lack consistency, but they're structured. So there's no, for lack of a
better term, there's no consistent logic model for these things. So that these resources are spent on
these activities, programs, or outlets in order to achieve or try to achieve these near-term and long-term
outcomes. Like that format isn't the same or consistent across plans. And then there's whole separate
areas where we don't have plans of that type, but I would say public safety,
is one, right? And so, like, defining where we're trying to go on these things, if we can get a shared
vision, even if it's five years down the line, like, would then help us understand, oh, we actually
do want to have a legislatively adopted public safety plan that covers these areas, and we're going
to prioritize that in 2027, you know, like, whatever that ends up looking like. And then just the last
note that I think, yeah, and I think the deputy mayor noted this as well,
that conversation a little bit with an assumption about that everything costs money and we have to just
pick which things we want most. And I think often one of those outcomes that is not true, it's like
actually just policy and how we choose to spend staff time and, you know, the laws we choose to have.
So I think we're making progress, but yeah, I want to very much keep that structural aspect in mind
as we iterate our way towards like a final version.
I'm sure things will always be, you know, iterated upon. But I think trying to get that vision of where
we're headed is very important, if not more important than like prioritizing a subset of things to workshop
this year. So are you advocating for doing these last four segments as in-person deliberations of the
full council? Yes. I mean, based on how long it took the first time, it sounds like that you want to
have an additional conversation about
You know, that first time we did split conversation, I would say, around some of these structural elements.
Like I was, I certainly wasn't, I think others were speaking to them as well. So I think we could split
the meeting across those topics. Maybe this committee could also further advance, conceptually, like
a straw man to workshop the, the, the, the, the people speaking in the room, and people were actually
kind of reacting to something as like parties. There's a version of what this could look like three
years down the line. What do people think? All right. Other thoughts on?
to finish the activity and we're doing it in March. I think Council Member Sari was good with that,
that deliberation session. Could we talk a little bit about the process of the deliberation? Because
some of the deliberation sessions we've had seem to be a spin-off into chaos. We're looking too many,
too much. Tell us what you really think, Dave. Too much, wow.
Sorry to say that. I mean, I respect the effort. I really respect the effort and that was a lot of effort
on your part as well as part of it. So this is not a critique of that. But just to say that, you know,
I'd really like to have the full council, the administration sit down and just go through without, we're
representatives. So we've sort of, and we've gotten a lot of them in the past. So I don't see a need
to have breakout groups and have
all that go on, I really want council and administration to go through and find out if where we were
on the same page. In other words, here we are. And I would say that if outcome is overall important,
but there are programs that I would like to know, have they ceased to happen, you know, as the administration
decided not to put, you know, continue effort into this. I mean, our comprehensive plan,
as directives in it. And they were taken out by the previous administration and then maybe, you know,
budgetary constraints just say, let's just stop doing that right now. I'm not aware of it. I just assumed
that these things are going on. I mean, it's not a criticism. I mean, feel free to ask any time. I'd
be happy to look into it. I don't have a thought that doesn't bring it. And nothing comes to mind like,
oh, we looked at the plan and said, we're not doing that, but I'd be happy to talk about anything. Okay.
That's something I think I'd like to explore meeting
screen. So the liberation session piece of finishing this would very much be like the December session
that we just had repeated except for these other four and whatever changes come from the feedbacks that
I would like to make. Well, I was going to go in a little bit of a different direction in that I think the
chaotic part of our December 10th deliberation session was when people started getting up and writing
things on post-it notes and putting them on sheets of paper. I think that we could do that ahead of
time with some, let's say here, virtual feedback collection if we're allowed to do that kind of thing
under open door law and have that data already available when we have our deliberation session so that
we can then
discuss compiling it in a way that you had for the first four topics here. And I think only after we've
done both of those things, would it be most helpful to sit down with the investigation. Because we do
have to do that as a council to have a unified rules. So that would be a proposal for trying to collect
the information in a non in-person sort of way.
and then process the information together perhaps with administration, perhaps also then including some
of those structural kind of questions and the long range where we go here. That's good. And so thinking
in terms of the timeline,
sure if we could get all of that information from our colleagues in time to do a March deliberation
session, but would an April deliberation session be too late for admin to get that kind of feedback
around the phone consider budget? I mean, it's, I think it depends on how much back and forth you're
wanting to have at the end because really some folks are already working on their budgets.
So sooner is always better. And we do have two union negotiations this year to wrap up as well. But
we want to get done well ahead of budget season so that we're looking at all the numbers and needs and
requests at once. So I would say mid-April would be pushing them. Yeah. I think we could do it by March
11. I think that we could maybe do it by March 11. Lisa?
After we talked about this meeting in terms of material meeting, whatever, could I go out say to another
council member not in this room and say, Hi, I need you to give me like I need you to brainstorm whatever
outcomes you want to see in addition to what we're already listed because it's already has the outcomes
listed from those other four categories. So like, look at these. What else do you want to see in public
safety transportation that like I can do that.
Let's talk about a process for that. I'm not sure that I'm exactly following. Basically, I just don't
talk to them. Maybe there are full committee members here. Each of us can talk to one other. Right.
With respect to serial meetings, I want to sit down and lock the statute because the requirements are
very specific. It discusses one of the most diverse in meetings.
of a council, you know, in that context, no, we couldn't. Yeah, that's a good one. I'm wondering, is
it an email that they should do things, you know, yeah, I defer to our council and follow up. Yeah,
what you want. I'm just not exactly sure what that would be. I guess I feel like it's more reliable,
a more reliable way to actually get timely feedback from our colleagues is to
contact them one at a time and have that kind of like one-on-one connection, at least initially to get
the outcomes. So I think that that'll be the harder part to do is if people wanna come up with additional
outcomes for those areas. As the ranking, I mean, and we should be able to have that kind of thing as
like a Google form, right? Like you could just make a Google form and send it out the way that we've done with
I mean, we did that kind of stuff, other like surveying all council members, as long as it's not some
kind of a shared Google Doc that we could edit all at the same time, but a questionnaire is okay, right?
Yeah, I think so, as long as it's aggregated. So that part, I think we can get feedback on pretty quickly.
It's the outcome conditions. And I guess I'll be clear, some of the more structural things that I'm
most interested in, frankly, of like where we're trying to go aren't necessarily things that inform
this year's budget, except for with respect to maybe some small expenditures to develop things that
are needed. But I don't think we're going to be in a place that doesn't have a long-term vision. We're
not going to be in a place that is necessary. Yeah, use it as a framework for decision-making. So just
so we can wrap this up, the goal is to collect virtual feedback.
and I'll be in touch with Lisa about the best way to do that, making sure that we follow the door law,
but I think that it would be preferable if we could reach out individually to folks and please about
outcomes, and then have the March deliberation session about basically processing and coming
to understandings about the actual problem. Is that right?
It kind of allows the opportunity to workshop longer in the process. Dr. Gretchen as well. Yeah. I'm
happy to work with another committee member. I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. For that. That's the
line. Just to immediately advance. Yeah. Yeah. That would be great. Yeah. And so Gretchen and Jeff,
I believe that date is March 11.
and I will first have to check in with council members. Sorry, last I knew there wasn't anything. Yeah,
that's March 11th. The last I knew there, or last I investigated, there was not a deliberation session.
Okay. Let's go to public comment real fast around this deliberation session.
topic of conversation that we have just been on. If there are any members of the public who would like
to comment on that session or the reflection that we just had, please raise your hand. I don't see anything
that was done. Wonderful. Again, that was March 11. We'll cross our fingers if that still works.
Next, fiscal committee scheduling. I put in just a little note about the overall 20-27 budget calendar
here at the end, just kind of recognizing that it is part of the charge of this entity to work to create
a timeline and activity framework. It looks like we already injected one thing in here, which is the
March 11th deliberation session.
Does anybody else, including controller or Gretchen, want to add any other dates in here that might
be relevant and committee members, do you want to add any other types of conversations that you think
are really important and also recognize we're going to have to talk about this again because we have
like 10 minutes left for our meeting. I want to throw two more dates on your calendar. These are really
DLGF dates, Department of Local Government Finance.
On July 31st is when we expect our estimate of property tax cap losses, which is becoming much more
significant post-SEA long. That's kind of a major piece of information for us in terms of budget creation.
Then August 16th for our local income tax distributions. Did you say August 16th? August 16th. So that's
for 20.7. Yes.
That's the supplemental distribution. No. That's the projected distributions for 2020. So in other words,
we're building the budget before we know those numbers. That is normal and terrible. Yes. And the July
31st is similarly, it is projected property tax cap losses for fiscal year 2027. Yes. Correct.
Wait, the supplemental distribution in May is for $20.26. Yes. Right. That's May 15th. Right. Exactly.
What's the date in July? Sorry. July 31st. I think what I'll try to do is I will try to make a budget
year calendar like this and just have it tacked onto every meeting that we have.
try to kind of keep that up. So if there's any dates like that, that crop up. But I also will want to
review that with you to make sure I'm being at home. Knowing that I can't really make a table because
then it's not accessible. So it's just going to be work on that. There are ways to make tables accessible.
It just needs a little extra work. And soon we hope to have some templates where there are sample tables.
So we can just use the templated table. What I also understand is that it's
If it's not numbers within the table, then it's a little bit harder anyway. It's technically accessible
and maybe still a little bit harder to really understand if it's not just numbers. I would say that
ITS just rolled out a new tool. There isn't a possibility on a new tool called Gruntle that's available
as an extension in Google for docs and spreadsheets. It's really good. It'll tell you what's not accessible.
Sometimes you just click a button and it'll fix it.
Yeah, it is an excellent tool. Wonderful. Committee members, any other? Yeah. Not defending the process
necessarily, but in 2024, the 2025 budget, part of council sharing priorities and then having back and
forth negotiation with the administration led to
a number of like shared agreements about things we were going to do in 2025. And like that included
like what came in, like the geo bonds and how we went through all that. And like, I think some of those
things happened in the way they're expected. Some did not, some may have been delayed. And I think like
auditing that in some sense, like maybe to this committee could be helpful just like looking back and
like, here's what we had agreed upon. Like another one that came up at a council meeting last year was like,
this sidewalk operation plan that the courts developed, I thought we had a shared agreement in 2024
that we were going to expand that into like an infrastructure plan that would go into the transportation
plan update for like pedestrian infrastructure, infrastructure and capital planning and like that didn't
have ultimately so maybe there's going to be misalignment there to read it, you know, what was documented.
But like it's one example of a number of like things that like we had kind of, I thought negotiated
and reached agreement on
But then I think there's some disconnects out of line. So I think we can be back at that to understand.
I think we can inform or should inform how we think about anything. I'd love to see that list because
I think that that is still happening. I think it's just taking longer than we thought. And some of that
is consultant availability and the pace at which they work to do their analysis. But I would also be
glad for the opportunity to say, what did we say we were going to do? And did we do it? And if not,
what happened?
I have to scoot for another meeting. Thank you. Thank you. So that's essentially not a date, but a suggestion
for what you want this committee to accomplish this year. Yes. Great. Other thoughts? Accomplishing
it before we finalize by mid-year would be helpful, I think, to inform, do we need process improvements
like an agreed quarterly reporting on the shared priorities that we negotiate, something like that,
improvements if needed in some of those areas. Okay, speaking of that, do we also want to kind of put
down a goal of having some kind of a shared goal slash letter? And is this activity that we're going
to do in March just that constitute that? Do you know what I mean? Like if I think in 2024, we have
that like letter of priorities, I can't remember exactly how we did it last year.
Do we think, you know, this activity and these priorities is going to count as of this year? Do we need
to also then drive forward all of council coming up with a more formalized? I don't think that that
would could. I think this is the underlying input opportunity. Yes, I think that probably needs to then
be formalized by way of like a synthesis document. I think we have one round of feedback on and then
vote out of the council meeting for like formally adopt some set of priorities or books from council
or piece about them.
Yes, I agree with this. I also have this other one that didn't make it into the document or voted for
it, but I actually don't sure if these could vote, but whatever it is, I don't think. Yeah, yeah.
All right, so Deval, did you have your turn? Well, I wanted to make sure, I know we're past this agenda
item, but we kind of rushed past the summary and scoring that
that Hopi did for our deliberation session in December. And I wanted to make sure other, I think it
was helpful and it's helpful to say the top three outcomes in each category are this and there are the
points. I just wanna make sure the other committee members also think that's a good direction. And for
clarity there, as I said, it was on,
post-it notes in here and handwriting was not always clear. But I also was not consistent about how
many tops there were. But in each one of those categories, there was a clear kind of cut where there
were a lot of scores for this and then everything else got like two or three. And so there was like
scores and then a big gap. And so I just put all the top scores and this did not consist about how many. Yeah.
I think to the extent that we're going to finish this activity and mirror this process for round two,
I don't think it's the perfect, but I think it is a step forward on continuing to iterate and advance
conversations about priorities and outcomes we're seeking for this year. We're not going to have a perfect
system in place this year. I think it's a meaningful step forward and an improvement
Last year, they were that respected coordinated council input on Properties out to be like this see
Anything else about calendar and stuff Yeah, and so then the last thing to do of course is how are we
gonna meet and I
I don't fully know everybody's availability. This was basically the one meeting time that the four of
us had available on that chart or on that poll that I sent around a while ago. I don't know. One of
the things I was wondering is if separating meetings out to have meetings specifically more about
council priorities and budget, things that we have to do as one set and then having different meaning
that is like an only word. We're only talking about the controller and those budgetary things. I mean,
we talked about that year report today for almost an hour and we could have talked about it for a long
time. In terms of the funds and the bonds and all of those pieces and having almost like more frequent
meetings perhaps.
on more defined topics instead of trying to shove all of the information into one long meeting. What
do people think about that in terms of your own personal schedules? Is it, I guess, is it easier to
have more free, much more meetings or fewer, longer meetings? I'd be up for a bi-weekly hour-long meeting,
maybe alternating topics, like I'm going to drop like that, kind of like working with kids for a little
bit of a deep dive. And because I think this informs a whole other area we never really talked about
with protected councils,
role in budgeting. Well, I mean, setting priorities and outcomes is one thing, and then kind of understand,
making sure we understand and have visibility to the overall financial management picture and like physical
responsibility. Like that's another that we weren't really talking about at the meeting. And like, I
think there's progress we made there, including what we would like to see, or what goes into the council
oriented budget process in August, September, October.
So, yeah, I'd love to keep working on that and maybe, you know, again, an alternate sequence. I'd be
glad to do five-hour meetings. So it'd be better for you to have more. Sounds good. And this time works
well for me. Yeah, generally for me, good. Okay. Okay, great. Great, great, great. Great. Oh, let's
look at the calendar real fast before we leave that. Actually, let's sort of pull a comment real quick before we
or maybe while we're kind of peeking at calendar stuff. If there's any member of the public who would
like to comment on scheduling issues, anything that they would like to see from this committee.
I see Mr. Keogh has his hand up again. Go ahead for three minutes. I'm trying to find a way to stay
on my watch. Yeah, Kevin Keogh again. I just want to comment on the fact that you can't start the audit
until the other audit is complete. I want to make
sure it's clear, you should by all means, the city, I would encourage you strongly to get a start on
2025 on day one. And you could start that now and to really be looking at a process to get things completed
on a timely basis. You don't have to wait until that audit is done. The only thing that would hold you
up is the final adjusting entries.
But you should, by all means, be looking to closing the books and having these processes to deliver
these financials, and also working with your auditor to say what's going on. And I also encourage you,
maybe you need an executive meeting where you can discuss some of these tough issues. Do they have enough
resources? What are the issues that are preventing the completion of the audit?
Are there some internal control weaknesses? Do you have fraud? These kind of things should be discussed
way before you get surprised later.
So I would encourage you to do that, but I would keep your eye on the ball here. I don't think you need
to wait another 14 months to issue the next one, is my key thing. I think you should start looking forward
to having this one done timely. And when I say timely, that's within six months. And I don't think that's
something that is impossible to do. I think it's very doable and it's been shown other communities are
doing it. So that's my only point, hopefully. And I say that with,
My intention is to add value and hopefully you're not taking this as a complaint or anything else. And
it's also to build public trust. Those are my two, and I would really be disappointed if someone were
saying there's Mr. Keough complaining again. But anyway, we'll just leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you. Are there any other comments about fiscal committee scheduling and responsibilities this year?
All right, I don't see anybody's hand raised. So let's go ahead and think about scheduling. Is everybody's
Friday, February 27th at 8.30 available, 8.30 to 9.30? And then that would be on, yeah, February 27th,
8.30 to 9.30. And we can focus that on council-related stuff, make sure that we're all set with our
deliberation session. Yeah, does that work for
I think that it's a real interesting question right now is how we're gonna let's let's figure out using
through our
and with our council attorney how we need to deal with collecting that data first. I'm asking about
a second question. I know, but let's not deal with that. You feel like we won't be able to cover that
in the deliberation session? No, I think that we will. I just want to be offensive to the fact that
Isabel started this activity. I also want to be sensitive of serial media laws.
I'm going to start dragging something. That would be great. Yeah. Sounds good. It could be a lower priority
agenda. Okay. So Fed 27 from 8.30 to 9.30 is our next meeting and that's going to focus on the Council
of Liberation data stuff. Then I've got my calendar again. Two weeks after that is March 13th.
Was that also where people take 30 to 930 March 13th and then that would focus more on reports from
the controller and then some of those nuts and bolts things or funds and we can figure out at that point
what details might be useful. Does that work for folks? Yes. Yes. Okay, great. So those are our next
two meetings and we have the topics set unless there's anything else. I'm fine scheduling.
either twice monthly or every other week on Friday mornings at that time for the year. It was like getting
them down. Maybe that's pretty tricky. I just wanted to talk a little bit about your time right now.
So let's think about that moving forward. Let's maybe not, let's pencil that in, never check your schedules
every other Friday morning, moving forward, at least maybe until like summer recess kind of thing. Okay.
And we're a nerd.
Thank you guys. Thank you.