All right, we have a quorum right now. I don't know the status of Councilmember Rallo, but we have three
this year, so we might go ahead and call to order this session with the Special Fiscal Committee here
on February 27th. Hopi Stasberg, District 3. Senator, do you have an alert? I have one. This is about
Pinkmon Smith. Councilmember District 1. Pressure map. Deputy Mayor. All in on the sand. Deputy Burke.
Jeff McKim, City Controller.
Lisa Langer, councilor. Wonderful, thank you all for coming here early this morning. So the agenda was
distributed on Wednesday. So we need approval for that. As we discussed at our last meeting, we're kind
of gonna try to have these two shorter meetings a month, one focused on council kind of budget related
stuff, one focused on reports from administration and more controller's office kind of stuff. So this
is a council related stuff with the main focus of dealing with our morning
Mr. Rollo. I haven't drank any of mine yet this morning either. Anyway, so to look at this prioritization
data, both from the December meeting and reflected from the Google Forms for some analysis and refinements,
talking about the March deliberation session, and then taking public comments about that,
and then just any notes about adding anything to the fiscal committee calendar, and then adjournment.
And so the goal is to keep like to adjourn at that 30. So if somebody was willing to move to approve
from the agenda. Move to approve, sorry. I don't know. This is the head. Gretchen's interested in running
for office. I'm not.
Great, so we move in second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. So if somebody was willing, maybe Colleen,
could you time keep me a little bit and let me know when it's 9 15? OK. So we can make sure to go to
public comment by 9 15 to still have a few minutes for public comment and then some time for the calendar.
So my thought on this data and this analysis is kind of,
and an overall goal of being able to have an effective deliberation session where we talk about this
with all nine council members because if conversations like that can get kind of crazy. So I thought
some of the things we could do was consider whether the suggested outcomes were actually outcomes. And
if they're not, consider figuring out how we can rephrase that concept to encompass an actual outcome
that meets the intent of that feedback.
group-like outcomes together and how we should evaluate what bucket they might go in and how we should
consider them in terms of that priority. And then should outcomes be from one bucket to another? So
my example of that, for example, actually, this is an easy one, make homelessness brief, rare,
and non-repeating was under housing and homelessness and was also under
Public safety. Public safety. And they ranked very highly and it ranked very highly, both of them, obviously,
like council as a body wants to prioritize that, but then like how we do that. And so like I highlighted
like a few of those things that I thought were really similar. But I took about five minutes and pulled
out the ones that were easy. So and I also kind of figured that since it's just four of us, like literally any
What do people have to say about the data? And we can just have a more open in the feedback session
as opposed to types of feedback, if that makes sense. So what observations people know? Well, just along
the same lines as your example, under environment waste reduction and creating a composting program
the same thing pretty much. So I think those should be, I wanted something more specific, but you reduce
waste by composting. Yes. And so that brings up another kind of nesting of outcomes. And so my goal
is to take notes on what you guys said or say, because I don't think that we should think decisions
about that.
in and of ourselves, but if we bring them up as ideas. Let's see then waste reduction, if you add the
two points on composting, it brings it up to one of the top ones. Perfect. And that's like the kind
of discussion that I think we should have at the council level. Like this is an observation that these
go together and then it increases in priority lists. How do we look at all that in terms of the overall
prioritization? You know what I mean?
But that was the type of thing we could recommend. I mean, what are we doing? Well, to recommend that,
right, to recommend that to the full council, but to not decide, like, let's combine these things like
this. You know what I mean? I don't think that I'm... I understand what you're saying, but I think that
we could be much more efficient if we think about and present a more
a synthesized view of this survey. And I would argue that this is an example where we could just synthesize
it. We can still give everybody the full survey if they want to, you know, if we want to, but I mean,
I guess. I agree. I think as long as you're being transparent and with the opportunity for like, I'm
just saying like, you just like take a different decision making mode where you're like, Hey, here's
what we think made sense.
then I'll go to something we're missing. Otherwise, let's move forward with this. I guess the question
is then how do we wanna present that at this group meeting because I was expecting to kind of present
it more like we thought these things went together, council member, you know, as well, council member
Piedmont Smith, whichever in that meeting pointed out that combining these two things raises the priority
level to top priority should we put
waste reduction through conferencing on our like full letter. I don't want us to time you this meeting,
but I would say, just put them together. Okay. And say, they see details. All right. You know, if you
want to put a narrative with it. Okay. Else you're going to end up with nine of us. Yeah. Parsing these
details, which I mean, unless, unless you three think they don't go together, of course,
It's just my understanding of what is waste reduction. My goal is to figure out by the end of this meeting
how I need to write the documents for the other things. That was my question is how should I write that
document to prepare for that meeting? Chef, what do you want to talk about? May I make just a meta comment
before we get too deep in this?
I'm thinking to have a really effective, to make this useful in the context of budgeting, really need
to kind of structure the outcomes in a way that is useful for budgeting. And so what I'm thinking is
that you ought to think about each potential outcome from the perspective of these four criteria.
One, that it is primarily a government activity or driven by government activity. Okay, hold on. So
one is like the question, is this activity driven by government? Yeah, because there are a lot of priorities
that are in that document that are great things, but are mainly driven by community action. So I think
from, so is this a government activity or driven by government activity? Is the outcome measurable?
Is the funding out, does it have a fund? The outcome measure.
is the funding allocation to that outcome measurable? And then this one's probably obvious, and the
outcome is important to both the council and the administrators. So I'm just suggesting that as kind
of a lens to look at these priorities in a way that would maybe make them more useful and predictable
in the context of marketing activity. Yes. So just to follow up on that,
So is it a government activity? It doesn't necessarily include it being a priority, right? Government
doesn't want that. It's still the case community in various ways. Social service, you know, I mean,
it is part of, you know, government funding, but still we don't do social services so much as other
non-profits. Yeah, I mean, you do, you do.
on some social services. So I mean, that at least is something that is measurable. But for example,
there was one that was in here, which is great. We were just talking about EVs and adoption of EVs in
the community. And local government has only limited bearing on that outcome. So I would say that's
a more challenging one from a budgeting standpoint.
Thank you for that list. But I also mentioned that there's redundancy in the food topic. Yeah. It's
under environment. It's also under community health. Local food culture has been promoted. Community
health and vitality. So we should, I think it probably belongs more under community health. Okay. Strength in foods.
So I have all this data in a different format too. So I'm trying to telecode those. Neighborhood having
access to nearby grocery stores probably falls into that too, though that didn't actually even go stalled.
Okay, thank you. Going back to what you said, Jeff, thank you for those things because if one of the
products that we want to create in the end, this council is a priority list specifically for 2027,
Those are really important things. I am interested in, not right now, but before that meeting, understanding
more about how to assess the outcome being measurable and the funding allocation for that being measurable.
Because I think the funding allocation being measurable is something that I
I at my seat at the table, I'm not sure that I can assess that. And so figuring out a way for you to
help us assess that at that meeting. Wow. I like the suggestions. Most of my comments throughout the
entire process have been that what we're doing really probably isn't very useful to actually make decisions.
And that's not to say that it's
terrible or, you know, that it doesn't have some value and maybe it's the best we can do for right now,
or let some iteration of it. But, right, even all our adaptive plans, which are sort of the best thing
we have, and it's the actual reflection of our shared priorities, mostly don't, either don't have outcomes,
or they're very inconsistent. They're certainly not like smart outcomes in a consistent way. Even when
you have smart outcomes, like let's say reduce, you know, eliminate deaths and serious drug use by 2039,
that is a smart outcome. It's, you know, the things and I think the acronym, but it's still not all
that useful for 2027 budgeting because it doesn't have like interim outcomes or, um, you know, uh, metrics
like there are like lead measures for how you achieve that. And so I feel, um, like we're just like
totally hamstrung with respect to actually producing, uh, something actionable and like meaningful when
it comes to outcome based budgeting until we have.
a relatively consistent and comprehensive tool or approach to how we actually set short, medium, long-term
outcomes for major categories of governmental priority and how we measure those things. That's one.
I know that's just like a big problem and it's not like an easy fix, but I do think it's an important
name. And then the second is,
Just that, something I'm glad with, and I mentioned in our last deliberation session too, is that when
there's a discrete funding allocation for a thing, inter-competitive services fund or setup fund, that
is easy to measure, and it's very clear. But I think there are also lots of outcomes that we are trying
to drive that are essentially policy that are appropriate to consider as budgetary priorities, even
though the budget allocation is primarily staff time.
Noting that, so we want to lose it by overly focusing on, can we point to the fund and the dollar amount
going to this program, for instance, or this grant? I'm sorry, that's another thing I just don't want
to lose if we make some use of the big area that the federal bank grows.
I wonder if it might be helpful for you guys to think about. One of the things we've talked about for
the new website that we're working on is different kinds of data dashboards that show, for example,
other cities have places where you can see what are the current infrastructure projects, what stages
are they at, that kind of thing. And so as you look at your list here and think about some of these,
one of the challenges I see if I were on your side is how do you define the outcome if you don't know
what the starting data already is? It's hard to say.
I wish that our roads were 30% better if you don't know what are we currently spending, how far does
that get us, and would that even be possible? And so you might think about for some of these items,
what would a good number be to know that would inform that, even if it's exactly what we need right
now or exactly the outcome, just what's some data that we could
start to think about. And if you can't come up with a data point, that might be a good indication with
the, you know, it's a broader goal, like world peace. And, you know, we just want like, you know, fewer
wrestling matches in this particular room or whatever. Sorry. Can I make a quick comment also? I just
wanted to respond to Council Member Flaherty's last comment. I totally agree.
is one of the biggest resource, budgetary resources, obviously. So that, yeah, that absolutely counts
as far as resource allocations go. I think that we don't want to really can't get into the business
of kind of parsing that too thinly, like this person spends 29% of their time. But if you're thinking
between 100% and 50% as allocations, that's certainly a very legitimate
a way to look at resources expected to do that function. And to understand that the controller has already
said we won't add new positions this year. So it is a zero sum game in terms of staff time. And so if
we say we want to do X, and staff say, well, gee, this is how I actually spend my time, then we'll need
to weigh, of those things, the things we'd like to do and the things they currently do, what are the
priorities? That's good to know, Beth.
But that is a statement of clarity. I have one other question I asked you, after the last meeting, that
I think would have been in the half, was the budget, or outcome-based funding and passports last year.
But I think Deputy Mayor Napier is the only one in the room who was on that. So my question, I keep
bringing this feedback, but without kind of like a comprehensive and uniform system for like talking
about outcomes.
and how we measure them. I feel like we're going to struggle to take a holistic view. And my question
was that often it's with city things that like there's thousands of other cities. Some of them surely
are trying to do this. I assume y'all like looked around from like best practices. I think in the last
meeting you mentioned, you know, best practices around priority-based budgeting or something like that.
So is there anything to share? Can you tell us more about what those conversations were like last year
with respect to like,
I think the big takeaway was the cities that we looked at that had done it were all much bigger cities.
So some more resources to do it, but also they took longer. So it was a multi-year process. And I think
that's the unsatisfying part to all of us is we'd like to get somewhere faster, which is why I think
it might be good for us to pick
a small number of things that we're all really interested in that we know we can track data on better,
and that we have some starting data where we can say, okay, we know we've spent X on sidewalks in the
last few years, and here's what got us. X on roads, X on whatever, things we already know that we spend
money on that we care about and that residents care about, and then engineer some smart goals from those.
and start there, then we can pack pieces on the return. Thank you. I'm going to follow up with the covers
and do like, and sorry, I'll have to ask more. Yeah. Other comments about the data or about like, like
the process of the conversation or any kind of output that we ultimately need to develop in terms of
also priorities for funding set up.
Well, I think, um, given the, the high ranking, um, um, he developed city plans to not exist and, uh,
kind of all over the place, um, variety of outcomes that council members recommended for public safety.
I think it's clearly be a plan for public safety.
And some of the yeah, so I there was nothing to base those on. So again, the we started with outcomes
that were in our plans and then council members just added outcomes on the basis of what you know, what
our personal
Priorities are, I guess, as a public servant. So I just, I want to highlight that we need science and
public security. I would also say that some of these things are very complicated to develop and to do.
And we want to, I think my philosophy would be 10 really good data points that we all agree are important
and that we want to track or 10, five reports or whatever it is.
keeping the list narrow. This is a very ambitious, gigantic list of outcomes we would never believe
to accomplish. Well, that's why we need to know when we were trying. So yeah, but I just want to reiterate
that the number is often much fewer than we think. So it's possible. I feel like I learned that lesson
in my first six months instead of all. But these are other things. We're going to mix them all immediately.
And then Ty taught me some important lessons about how realistic that was.
So to make the best use we can out of like this data set and where we are right now, I think, yeah,
I think we should take the step of recommending like here are the priority areas that we'd like to focus
in based on the first delivery session and this asynchronous data that we've produced. And maybe like
a goal for that meeting and we could even come up with some suggestions, but that's what we've got to
just share is sharpening
these outcomes where they're not already sharp to like, what would that actually mean in 2027? So whatever
it is, you know, it's, it's, it's the public safety plan. It's like, okay, allocate some money for that
and begin working on it. And then you don't need to be complete. We need to assess like, what's the
timeline? Something like that. It's done in a community involved way. Um,
you know, and then similarly for, for whatever the other top three or four, whatever it is, each category
that we try to actually get to something more discreet where they're not already discreet about like
what the implication would be for the budget. Well, we don't know everything on that front, but I think
it could be a start and especially for the administration to explain some of the meaning. Um, and yeah.
Well, and that's where I kind of feel like in terms of what, what council needs to hand to the administration,
need to hand them something like, this is important to us. And then what I want to expect at budget
time is the administration saying, this is what you told us was important, and this is the specific
action that we're going to spend money on that's going to work toward this outcome. And so it's that
idea, especially the zero traffic fatalities by 2039, it's like, I'm sure there are lots of things already
that are built in that are working toward that goal. So that goal is demonstratively important to council
And so then it's like, I mean, I would argue that that should be one of those like top 10 things that
we can start tracking, right? In this more definitive, like, we are working on this street transition.
We are working on these curb cuts. We are working, like, these are all these things that go into this,
like, making things safer, the traffic timing. I mean, we hired a traffic engineer. Like it's awesome.
And all of those things like contribute to this larger goal. And so like some of this stuff like that,
it's like,
I'm not like, do we need more budget allocation to that? Or do we just need to bundle it and hear the
things that we're doing? Just to back up a step, the way you frame that is, you know, you put together
the priorities you give them to us and we tell you what we're going to send out upon your priorities.
I just want to remind us also, those priorities need to be agreed upon. So, yes, you know, you're going
to send us some, we're going to have some
And I think the Venn diagram of how they overlap is going to be considerable. Yeah. But there are likely
to be some things we're interested in or not of interest to you. And some things that you were interested
to us that, you know, yeah. Yeah. I guess my main point was like, if we're doing a high level priority,
I kind of want you guys to tell me programmatically, like how you can do that. Like you were talking
about staff time. It's like council shouldn't dictate how
you know, this staff person spends 50% of their time on this thing. That's something that somebody else
needs to dictate. And you guys just need to say, like, this is how we're trying to make this priority,
like, not micromanaging those pieces. So that was my, the point. I think what will likely happen, even
just in looking at your list, but I realized thinking through, because I went through thinking, where's
the low end? What are things that we can see? We do know how to measure that.
that does have any budgetary impact. I know there's something there that is possible. Is to think of
it a little bit as a multi-step or iterative process where if you have a priority that has to do with
staff time, that might start an investigation on our end into how much time does that person spend on
all things. If you ask me of the 800 people who work in a city, could so-and-so spend 30% of their time
working on throwing the blank?
that's a pretty, you gotta kind of pick apart that a little bit. So there might be some information
gathering that informs some of that priority setting where there's a priority that feels like a priority,
but then when you find out, oh, the person who would naturally do that spends 80% of their time on something
else that I already think is a priority and that we're already doing, I don't wanna change that, that
could shift things around. So we'll do some investigation and
I think that's a really good, I think the staff time question was a really good one because it's sensitive.
People feel very proud of the programs they work on. Every program has someone who's deeply invested
in it and saying, as we've all learned to cut any program is very difficult. It's very hard to say we're
going to stop doing something because someone will always say, but I value that. And so having your help and
getting on the same page about, you know, here are some things that we really think are important. I
think that could be a really good exercise for both of us as leaders of the city. You know, I just wanted
to add that I think that there are things that we could breathe on and policy decisions, no costs whatsoever,
are very low, very large in cost. And that is things like, Ray Alexander brought this up, when a sidewalk's
a block for construction,
Is there a sufficient notice that people could cross in that game without blocking the street? That
would be something that would be no cost, but it sort of requires people to coordinate and have a plan.
But pass legislation about that division. Well, is it being done?
I mean, what is adequate, you know, the aggressive barriers, and then what happens if, you know, someone
steals the size, which has been a recurring problem in the last 18 months, people steal the size. So,
you know, there's lots of, lots of things baked into that. Or how do we hold people and, you know, partners
accountable when they miss the deadlines that we need them to meet in order for us to do the final work?
Yeah. Well, here's an example that wasn't addressed in the initial reception. That is,
Well, maybe it is, but blocking sidewalks, scooters blocking sidewalks. It happens repeatedly. We have
neighborhood enforcement officers going around picketing cars. Because they're not supposed to be parking
on streets in certain neighborhoods, couldn't they just remove the bicycle or the moped or whatever
and find out, are we doing that sort of thing?
make sure sidewalks are accessible. You know, these things come at, I think, very low cost. And if we
could agree on sort of a menu of these things, that it would improve. I think it's less of a cost issue
than a, how do you, when you have X number of folks who are out ticketing, parking will be everywhere
at all times. We don't know if people are going to take the scooters. They sort of, and you know, I
will just say, I'm in scooter control. I don't ride scooters.
have a dog and a scooter, but I do talk to people who say scooters are really important for people who
don't have cars, so you need to get around. So when you weigh that against some of the alternative
transportation stuff that people lobby for, is it more important that students don't have cars on campus
and don't drive them back and forth around town, or that folks from Crestmont can get to the grocery
store on a scooter, or is it more important that... And I know that it's... I'm just suggesting that
they don't block that, sorry.
Yeah, but it's kind of like the I'm getting part of property. Yeah, I don't like it. No, I don't get
it. But I'm just out of. Yeah, it's things. I'll take more steps. Right. Yeah. Anyway, I don't want
to have like 15 more minutes before going to a public comment. Are there members of the public online?
OK, wonderful. So other observations about how things go together
on the actual data, other suggestions for nesting things. Cause right now I have heard very few suggestions.
And so if I'm kind of thinking like, I'm going to take some lion's share of the time to produce a document
or a kind of recommendation for how things nest. Right now that document would be like 80% what I think.
And I don't, I don't feel comfortable with that. You've got multiple zero traffic fatalities. There's
like two or three times. I got those highlighted.
I would take out all the things that don't fit any votes. Don't fit into any votes. Take them out. Butter.
What did the council members feel about that? I think an appendix is like the raw data. Yeah. You know,
for simplification, maybe only present the sort of top three or whatever for the meeting. Or if there's
like three or four very close and some interpretation about whether things should be grouped, then yeah,
put it down to, you know, four or five if you need to. It's like we need to kind of discuss how
how to actually start a list out there, but yeah, drop the load with that. How should I navigate pieces
like, like Gretchen mentioned, low hanging fruit. So what if there was something that's a low hanging
fruit that got no votes? If it got no votes? Yeah. If it got a vote and it's low hanging fruit and that
person sees their item, it's important to them to drop out, they can follow up on it. This is about
council priorities. Okay. So drop that low hanging fruit with no votes.
keep low hanging roots with anything even. I guess, I feel like you can still drop, put the whole data
set in the appendix, everybody can see the whole thing. Well, I'm just writing that down as a joke.
Oh, yeah, sure. Because I mean, I haven't looked at it and thought like, oh, I think that might be low
hanging fruit. And that's something that like, I can think that something might be low hanging fruit.
And Gretchen, my God, it's so not low hanging fruit. Well, those could be,
And some of those could be encapsulated under another framework. So are there any of those that you
see right now? Crimes reduced, not only is four a four. Now, I don't want the public to think that we
don't want crime to be reduced. Or public safety is enhanced, which got zero votes. I think everyone
agrees that she had an authority. But yeah, that's like, yes, it's too vague. And what does that really
mean? And so I think that that's where, I think that we do
I agree that we need a public safety plan, but I think that it would take too long to have a plan. It
would maybe be more effective to have a conversation and agree collectively on some public safety outcomes
that go toward this overall concept of public safety being enhanced. What does that mean for it to be
enhanced? Can we as council and administration and police department and fire department,
all of those like pieces of public safety, like what does that mean? And honestly, 2DPOC might have
some ideas about some of that because they have to collect a tremendous amount of data. Well, I mean,
if you're saying for the purposes of this year, can we make something slightly better here? Yes. A step
in that would be what we talked about earlier is like, okay, let's take these public safety tokens and
in the deliberation session, try to like workshops with a more distinctive degree on. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's what I mean is not like never do it, but just like that might not be something we can
do in 2027, but can we move in the direction of doing better in public safety in the past? I was just
going to say from the administration standpoint, even if some of the things are actionable for the purpose
of this exercise budgeting for next year, they're still interesting and valuable for us.
You know, for example, a trap 24 to 44 workforce, that is an economic priority for the administration.
It's very hard to unpack decades long goals like that into budgetary things, but that goes back to the
question of staff time. So when we think about like that as a priority for our economy, that might mean
that there's more staff time for that long-term investment than there might be for some other
short-term things that seem easy, but if you do them all, then you've eaten up all that person's time
with give this person a cookie and give this, you know, smaller, less effective efforts. So, it's all
interesting to us. And I'm just sharing that in case anyone's item gets bumped off the lift. That doesn't
mean that it's not getting attention and isn't informative, just not for this purpose, perhaps. Well,
yeah. And I kind of feel that way too about some of these, because I mean,
people have to pick the top three. And there are some of these categories that have a tremendous number
where I'm going like, I'm having a hard time deciding between one and two here. I'm having, you know,
I would really like to rank five or five, but I can only rank three. So definitely some kind of, and
that's where I think nesting can be really valuable and drawing those pathways of relationships.
So that, yeah, as well, what were you gonna? Oh, I was gonna say,
I talked with the mayor last weekend about public safety and the need for a plan. And I think that a
good first step might be a deliberation session of council on that topic. Like, what do we mean by public
safety? What are our top goals? How can we improve? Just getting an understanding also with the public
being involved in that conversation.
style. So that could kind of get the ball rolling. And then maybe- We should produce an extensive public
outreach informed report on this topic. And as you invited housing, people who work in housing at the
city to the housing one, I would strongly suggest that you invite the people who work on public safety
to your television session and involve them in the planning and the work. That would be informative,
I think. Exactly. And they were all involved in that report too.
more. So do you guys think in terms of a deliberation session about public safety, it would be most
effective to have that deliberation session model more like the housing sessions with small
group conversations with a population mix? That's what I was thinking. In terms of that deliberation
session on public safety, it would be most effective in terms of type of sessions to have
The like the housing months last year, the small group conversations around various topics as opposed
to like council and guests sitting around having a conversation. Otherwise you get okay. Right. Right.
Um, All right. Other feedback around, I just grouped downtown stuff together under economic development.
Um, so there's several things that are all, you know, basically downtown is vibrant. Um, you could probably
put, uh, some of the, um, that was under economic development, but then there's community health and
vitality that I think also has some downtown stuff. Um,
and I would put the Kirkwood conversion into that downtown stuff too. Now, what do you think about that?
You're the one that- Sure. Okay. Yeah, I can agree with that. Okay. So there's a lot of downtown Vitality
Park stuff. I'm going to spread out a couple of our public space. This is under economic development?
Economic development has, yes, has downtown events are frequent and well attended. Downtown business
environment is vibrant and sustainable.
Downtown buildings and sites with light of disrepair have been identified and remedied. Okay. Only one
of those bad influence. Right. And then community health and vitality has downtown facilities provide
services and year-round programming, residential growth downtown that is inclusive of ages and abilities,
urban conversion, that's all that are, um, community health and vitality. And so some of those got votes
and some of them didn't, but I feel like they're all like downtown as a space.
Um, as a, as a public space and it could even be, I think downtown spaces could probably be nested under
public spaces are high quality, engaging and active because downtown is one of our huge public spaces
that we want to be high quality, engaging and active. Can I make a suggestion as you think about that?
To think about the difference between a public space like a park and a space like a, like Kirkwood,
which also has
economic outcomes, economically there are a hundred businesses along that road. So you can make it your
part, but that may not have the economic vitality. And so, you know, as you think about what goes in
community vitality, what goes in economic development should be aware that if you put everything downtown
under economic development, you're saying economic development is the goal of that project, you know?
And you might have different things that you want that are
Some are economic development and some are not, but obviously like anything we do on for food is going
to impact economic development and vice versa. The more vibrant it is, then we hope that has a positive
effect, right? So I think what you're saying is don't necessarily lump all things under the bucket of
economic vitality. And I was trying to put this priority list together. And so I guess that leads me
to the question of is it feasible
as council develops this priority document for us to list the outcomes underneath the buckets. I don't
think so. Okay. What I mean, it does illustrate for the public, I think, how much energy is going into
certain areas, but it's not ultimately, you know, your individual outcomes are the ones you're going
to be looking at, right? And when voting will not pull categories of
high-performing government or this or that, unless it's helpful to you guys. But it's not. At this point,
I don't think it'll help us much. Yeah, I don't think it would help us much. I think for the public,
it is useful. Let me just make sure I understood what Reggie just said. We don't need to keep things
in one bucket or another, is that what you're saying? Yeah. Here's an outcome we want to see and it
benefits both of us.
So if we want to group, say, like vitality of downtown is really important and have these different
pieces of like here's the ranking that it got, like we could group all of those things together as long
as, it's the way you're saying, as long as we understand that like some of that is kind of subgrouped
under community health and vitality and some of it is subgrouped under economic development, some sort
of your budgeting. Some of that money is going to come from like CFRD maybe or public
public safety officers and that kind of thing. And some of it's gonna come from economic development.
Is that my understanding? Do council members have comments about that? Okay, what else? Under housing
and homelessness, you probably already saw this. So we have two, I'm looking at the,
the top five outcomes in that category. And the second and third ones are really, like making homelessness
brief, rare and non-repeating, depends on increasing coordinated preventative wraparound services,
in my view. So if we take those together, then that is our top priority in homelessness. Okay, that
brings me to the,
maybe metacomment that we don't have time for, if I want to go public comment at 9 15, is increasing
coordinated prevention of wraparound services for the unhoused, actually an outcome. Whereas the outcome,
almost as it's briefed for non-repeating, and a method of doing that is to increase coordinated preventative
wraparound services. And it's also like, near term activity,
short, medium, long-term outcomes. Outcome versus impact. So working on different scales, like things
like zero deaths by 2039, homelessness is pretty fair, not repeating, public safety enhanced, or be
formulated as that is. Those are kind of like impact measures that are long-range and large. That's
not to say that you can't have outcomes that are leading for those, even if they're program and process oriented.
This is a nice measure where it's different than that, right? Sometimes. So part of what I can do as
a process of sorting this is to grab the things that might be programmatic elements of making homeless,
brief, rare, and non-repeated like decreasing working-day services. So I could pull some things and
categorize them together
underneath this making homelessness brief repair and non-repeating because there's some other things
that, I mean, I have those two highlighted because somewhere else in the document that I'm not going
to remember right the second there's, well, there's another homelessness briefer and non-repeating.
And then there's another one or two mentions about wraparound services or mental health services or
addiction services. Like there, there, there are a few of those pieces, which also play into the unhoused
struggles. So, um,
But I would do my best to pull those things into a document. And so in closing, so that we can go to
public comment, I will do my best to pull all these things together into a draft document for you guys
to look at with enough time. Oh, that means this weekend.
I will do my best to pull all that together in a draft document this weekend so that I can get a draft
out on Monday or Tuesday of next week at the latest so that you guys can have some feedback on it or
go like, hey, you forgot this one or you forgot this one or I think that this should be pulled over
here so that I can receive that feedback and make any changes before a packet needs to go out for that
meeting. Does that sound reasonable? And you can do that with individual emails to each of us individually or
five individual weeks here, right? So we don't have a meeting. I will do that. Yes. Lisa, can I do that
in one email as long as replies only go to BCC and so then replies are only going to leave with one
email or should I do that with three separate? Really four separate emails. Jeff, I'll include you in that.
I can talk to both of you at the same time. I'll miss our next meeting. So. You know, I would, I would
be consistent with some of them separately. All right, take your time. It's not a serial meeting.
I mean, these aren't part of serial meetings, so it's not a serial meeting that you put out. Okay, great.
So is that something that everybody is struggling with the next steps of what I need to do?
Fantastic. OK, so let's go ahead and go to public comments on this deliberation session on these outcomes.
There are each one of the members of the public in the room. If there are members of the public online
who want to comment about this data or this plan to talk about outcomes, I see Mr. Keough with his hand
raised. I'm going to go ahead and time it on my watch for three minutes, and that will just be on my watch.
Thank you. I'll go ahead and number if I'm needed. Yeah, Kevin Keough. Good morning, members of the
fiscal committee. Thank you for your work on prioritizing outcomes for the 2027 budget and improving
the Budget Team Pride Assess. Given your charge to track fund balances and examine fiscal trends, I'd
like to raise the issue at the intersection of housing affordability, assessment mechanics, and levy policy.
Indiana's Constitution requires a uniform and equal system of property assessment and taxation. Indiana
Code requires assessments to reflect market value in use using objectively verifiable data, and our
system relies on ratio studies to ensure there is no systematic bias across property classes. I'm not
suggesting assessments be adjusted for policy reasons.
But uniformity requires consistent applications of valuation methodology. If income-producing properties
in one sector are adjusted downward based on income evidence or economic conditions, then income-producing
properties in other sectors should be evaluated under the same analytical standards. Likewise, if trending
factors or mass appraisal adjustments
are producing materially higher assessed value growth in modest single-family or small-scale multifamily
housing than the underlying market data supports, that becomes a racial equity issue and a question,
not a policy preference. This matter because Indiana is levy-driven. When assessed values decline in
one segment and levies remain constant or grow, the burden shifts
it does not disappear. Bloomington has identified housing diversity, income inequality reduction, and
enabling employees to live where they work as a priority outcomes. If assessment growth combined with
levy growth is placing a disproportionate pressure on the very housing stock that functions as our missing middle,
and naturally occurring affordable housing, that represents both an affordability concern and a fiscal
resilience risk. So I respectfully suggest three actions within the committee scope. Request a five-year
assessed value growth comparison by property class, commercial, large multifamily, student housing,
and small-scale residential.
Review the levy growth alongside general fund expenditure growth and fund balance trends. In 2027, in
that calendar year, have a public presentation explaining this redistribution efforts within our levy-driven
system. My request is not for preferential treatment.
It is for confirmation that the assessment methodology is being applied consistently and that the fiscal
policy decisions are aligned with the council's stated housing and equity goals. Transparency and data
clarity will strengthen public trust and strengthen our budgeting process. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Thank you for sticking just about to three minutes. I appreciate that.
Are there, is there anybody else with their hand raised? There should be one. You're doing good. Wonderful.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you to the other folks who are joining us online. So with regard to the disability
calendar, I added that in at the end. At the end of our last meeting, we
Jeff added in a couple of things about distribution amounts. Please make sure that I actually added
those correctly, that I've written them down and then interpreted them and put the right dates in.
I propose, so our next meeting is already listed for March 13th, focused on reporting from the controller
and other administrative type reports.
And then, and we had talked about meeting every other week, and so the rest of those dates in there
are every other week at 8.30, and then it would be alternating topics until summer recess. So how does
that, first, how does that meet the schedule look for people's calendars? Hi, Hultin. Yeah, no comments
on meeting.
or possible office sure it doesn't work nuts and anything that I can check with the W parts of the adult.
Okay, I'm Jeff and Gretchen. Gretchen, you mentioned you can't make the next one. I can't make the next
one. I may miss others here and there, but in general, it's an okay slot. And in the same way, it's
okay in general, there may be one that I'm not going to try to break. And we can also always, like,
a swap, a council topic one with a controller topic one. And I think that maybe during the spring, since
we're having budgeting kind of planning time, we might need all of them. But after summer recess, it
could be that there's just less work with the committee. And so not having two a month might be okay.
I kind of like the idea of making them shorter though. This feels like a less intense meeting right
now. I don't know how other people feel about it,
It also felt less intense to prepare for, because I didn't have to have two different pieces of brain
thinking about two different things. So I appreciate that. If other people have different feelings about
it, please speed it up. No, we just don't want to lose the string. I would have to go back and review
my notes from
Jeff's presentation in our last meeting before we have our next meeting with, you know, financial reports.
That's the only thing that I'm so curious to remember what was happening. Well, hopefully, whatever
packet release goes out will give us some of that, you know, example reminder, like we were doing this
thing. Yeah. Or we planned to do this thing, which is how I tried to do the memo this time. And if I
was unsuccessful with that, let me know.
Lisa. What types of materials at this point, if any, are you contemplating for the deliberation session?
Well, probably this exact document that was in here with those rankings and then probably a similar
looking document that consolidates things.
Yeah, so this would, I like the idea of this would be more like the appendix to read through and having
almost like a memo, a memo type document intro of categorizing things together. Should we do whiteboards
and post-it notes again or? No, no, no, we did that part, sorry. Yeah, we did that. The brain is getting
in gear. We did that part with the survey. So now it's just gonna be more of a general
discussion among council members. I think so, but so the way I submitted the request to um Corby who
is I guess managing this was that uh I went to a roundtable discussion um with enough seats for nine
council members, Gretchen, the controller, and a public commenter. I did not assume that Mayor Thompson
is going to be there. Is that accurate?
Yeah, I don't think that she was at most of the meetings like this last year. I think that you were
at them and internal is going to be there because they're like the preliminary brainstorming kind of
pieces. It's operational. Yeah, it's definitely operational. So that's why I figured that it would be
you. Is there anybody else that anybody thinks that there should definitely be a seat included for?
Will the clerk want to sit at the table? Sometimes I feel like she does, sometimes she's like quite happy.
Um, I believe that it'll be definitely for, um, stole I think there. I can check if they're going to
ask. Okay. I'll check. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let me know if you think there's another one. So yeah,
I mean that like a memo style document that I will make sure has headaches and whatever it is that they're thinking.
Maybe be clear about finding questions. Yes. Yeah, this is how we need to move through this. I will
really try to get this done this weekend to be able to send it to you guys like as soon as possible.
And I may share it actually Lisa with you and staff at the same time as I share council members so that
then you guys can look it over for the accessibility sorts of things or you know those sorts of problems
at the same time as committee members are looking at it for content related concerns. Okay. Thank you.
Sure. And then the note that I have on here is that I think that we should probably try to calendar
some of our elected official salary ordinance discussions in here somewhere. And so just in terms of
our calendar, going by this date, we want to be able to have something accomplished around that, or
we want to have our first discussion about elected official salary ordinance, something.
Does anybody have a date in mind for that? And are there any other dates that we should knowingly add
to this calendar right now? Well, at the top of your memo, we have kind of the official budget date.
So if you add the date by which we have to adopt the elected officials. Thank you. I'll see you later.
So add this as a deadline for adoption. Which year, right? And I'm here for a month and a half.
That's right. Yes, you cannot change it the next year. Yeah, right. But we can do it as late as we want
because the other one is, what, November 1st? Yeah. OK. And so actually you should add that deadline. Yeah.
because we have it on here as a, this is when we want to do it. This is where our meeting is, but like
a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. This year. And so other are deadlines. So that the overall budget
is November 1st. And wait, is that the whole budget or is that just the salaries? Cause a couple of
years ago, we've separated. Yeah, we separated them.
It could be either way. We could do the salary ordinances at the same time. But they both have a deadline
of November 1st. The elected officer salary deadline is the end of the year. But the other salary is
November 1st. But we can change that the next year. But the rest of the budget is harder to change for
next year? Yes. OK. So Jeff, the budget itself,
and all that is due November 1st. The final budget adoption? I gave you the dates. We don't have to
do that right now. But there is a hard deadline for the final budget. So we could add some of those
in. Yeah. So maybe, Jeff, if you could come to the meeting next week with making sure that we know those
hard deadlines and maybe putting that in a memo, especially things related to your
job and responsibility with those filings. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I know I gave them at the last fiscal
committee meeting back and I can put that in. Yeah. You gave us the DLGA estimate, DLGF estimates stuff,
but it's the submission deadlines. The submission deadlines. Thank you. So when you refer to the meeting
last week, are you talking about the Wednesday, the council meeting? The gulp.
The deliberation session on heat levels. Okay, all right. Anything else about the new order? I just
realized that 8.4, that'll be out of town, but I can zoom. Okay. If you could just make sure to alert
the parks office. As we approach that date, as a reminder, anything else about the new order?
The official Department of Local Government Finance budget calendar did just come out. The last time
when I gave you the dates, that was based on the previous year's guidance. That information is up on
the DIGF website. Maybe you could include that in the packet for the next week. Yeah, and call it down
because it has 100 deadlines, some of which are applicable to you. Selling that down. Thank you.
Yeah, I think should go on here, you know, the long range plan of creating kind of a budget calendar
that translates from year to year so we don't have to every year like figure out how to make it up is
we just have to fill in the exact dates, but we know the concept of what it is that we're looking for
the data. Yeah, and we can, we can at our next meeting we can add the, yeah, our internal deadlines.
You're good. We're a government.