e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e this is our special called budget Workshop led by deputy city manager Mark McDaniel and I will turn things over to him thank you mayor um I'm going to turn over to Christian just a moment but I wanted to say some introductory remarks so uh we talked to you all about having some mini budget work sessions uh early on in the process as opposed to waiting until the proposed budget comes out and so this that's what this is all about this first one though is going to really talk more about how we put the budget together so that everybody's starting from the same uh point in in how we do this so we're going to get a little bit into the week needs about our process um and then we're also going to take you through a an example of a department that we're putting through the party based budgeting right now Environmental Services future workshops in the one hour that we'll try to schedule we'll do a deeper dive on individual other individual departments uh but you're going to get see um just kind of how the you know sausage is made a little bit in terms of how we put the budget together uh we have three of these already scheduled we will schedule more um but we only have those three scheduled so far so stay tuned on the additional uh budget sessions and also if there's particular departments that you want to um go you know deeper in in terms of understanding um let us know what those departments are we make sure that we schedule them because we've got 26 departments and I think it's going to be hard to fit all of those in but we sure want to fit those in that that you all want to see the most so with that I'll turn over to Christian Christian thank you Mark and as Christian's getting started just a reminder this is something new we're doing this year out of response for management is doing out of response to our comments after last budget so use these wisely I know that um we all get tired at meetings but use the hour and then also provide them feedback um as Mark just asked for because these will only be as good as we make them Christian thank you yes you took the words right out of my mouth both of you um so we know I want to acknowledge I know it's been a long day especially for some people who have been here since the EMS meeting this morning but we hope this can be helpful um speaking on behalf of the lab we are really excited for your excitement in engaging more robustly and earlier in the process and so these work sessions are a response to that and like the mayor said um they can evolve and develop as needed in order to make them most helpful to you today's agenda is fairly light and consumable and Mark hit it on the head um you've recently seen fiscal health information as part of the council Retreat so we're not necessarily starting from there um but because we're starting to share earlier with you and we're still very early in the budget process today's agenda is a hybrid of like practical foundational knowledge and then sort of the Peak at something newer um with regard to PBB which is our you know newer initiative so with that I'm going to quickly go over the budget calendar which I think we're only taking it through June here but I want to share some of the work that's been done so far um so we'll talk a little bit in a few minutes about what prior your commitments are some of you already familiar with that term um but the Departments have been working on on prior your commitments since January and and some even before um and that's a foundational part of the budget process that again we'll I'll Define in just a few minutes but ongoing work's been happening since January um February and then on the priority based budgeting side we did a kickoff earlier than our typical budget kickoff because there's a lot of again foundational work that has to be done with that new initiative um and so then last month we um began to load budget information into quesa which is our budgeting system um and continue the PBB work work and uh also last month which is just kind of a funny thing as far as being in the Weeds about what budget's doing we did a budget kickoff like usual um and we introduced this new thing that was fun called the budget fair and so in the budget Fair um we did a science fair theme because that's how cheesy we are in the lab um and we wear lab coats and so this the fair the event was um sort of meant to respond to the varying levels of information that departments need when they're kicking off budget so some people really need a deep dive into certain subjects and some kind of have their fiscal staff and their stuff together um and so people could spend as much time as they wanted sort of learning about revenue or allocations or prior year commitments we also included the other parts of the lab so we had comp plan there like some of the planning initiatives um so anyway I just wanted to share a few pictures because the staff really had fun with the with the budget fair and then David did his um inspiring normal kickoff comments too so now we're in April yeah it it was I'll take my $20 um so then in April now uh we are officially budget developing so right now a budget you know departments are are entering budgets into questica and so the analysts are working hard to review that work as it's happening um and then on the PBB side we're in the middle of peer review which we'll talk about later in the presentation and so over the next couple of months we only go through June on this calendar and we'll continue to roll forward with our with our work sessions as we we go but um budgets are due from the departments in May I can't remember the exact date but soon in May um and then we'll begin to figure out how to Overlay we're starting we're already figuring it out we'll begin overlaying a priority based budgeting scoring into sort of the existing budget system um and then in June we have a budget Blitz uh which is sort of like a three-day marathon of hearing about the department budget requests and um start to talk about decision packages so not like in years's past we'll be visiting with you throughout this process instead of starting to visit with you in August so you'll see earlier previews of a lot of this uh through these work sessions Christian before you uh move from that slide if I can ask a question I know in the past this Council has uh expressed some concern about making sure that we get community input prior to any finalization of those budget considerations is that incorporated in this chart that we're looking at so I know it's not specifically called out but we do we are doing earlier engagement this year and maybe to maybe at the end of today we can talk a little bit about the fiscal year 25 budget engagement schedule would that be okay I'm looking at amethyst and Michelle yes they say okay is that all right can we talk about engagement yeah fine as long as it's flushed out later great okay so development of Target budgets so the the city has traditionally engaged in target-based budgeting and we're still doing that um so providing departments a framework uh in which to build their budget is a structured and reasonable way to start the process and it ensures that any additions to the budget um are made through a transparent process in this city we use decision packages so um people meet their target budget and then if they want to exceed that Target they have to explain why right so um in order to build the target we start from this is a okay I want to shout out to one of my budget analysts for thinking of this cake and ology that you're going to see I really like it um a Target budget is predetermined from the prior year budget so fiscal year 25 budget is built from the fiscal year 24 adopted budget um and then there are several stages of adjustment that happened and this just occurred in March so um these are the targets that that departments are working from now so stage one is the adopted budget fiscal year 24 budget and we'll we'll look at it in a second um but that's the starting point for every operating Department next one-time costs um one-time costs are uh expenses that were incurred in the year but we can take them out they don't require any more funding so typically this happens um when people get decision packages that maybe have startup costs um startup Capital computers cars um and then sometimes we I'm I'm looking at some more examples um in fiscal year 24 you know we had an extra fire trainy class like that's been back backed out so things like that that are one time um and then can be reduced and so from fiscal year 24 to 25 um there were about is almost 10 million $10 million in onetime expenses that we backed out between the adopted budget stage and then this onetime cost stage okay um the third stage is prior year commitments which I mentioned on the budget calendar so these are budget items that impact a fiscal year budget because of things we've agreed to in the past um the best example of these are police and fire contracts so when there are scheduled salary increases those are built in as prior your commitments you also you see things like um CPI increases for the zoo or for the you know for Botanic Gardens or solid waste like things that are CPI increases that we know are coming those then get added back in So adopted budget less one-time costs plus prior year commitments and I think I don't know if this was the first year but it was certainly the first year in a while that we solicited prior your commitments from departments instead of just we have our own list but we also solicited from departments to ensure that we weren't missing anything and didn't get surprised later in the process because one of the things that's happened in the past is we've seen decision packages from departments saying like hey this was supposed to be a prior year commitment you guys missed it so we tried to be a little more collaborative up front um I believe prior year commitments for fy2 um were they totaled $45 million in the general fund the big drivers of those are um police meet and confer the CBA um and pay for performance those are a couple of the the top drivers there um and then we go into cost allocations where we allocate costs um out to the Departments to identify you know sort of the total cost of services there are various internal departments who allocate their costs like it property management and we do an admin cost allocation um and so in the general fund we typically hold departments harmless for those kinds of allocations unless they can be directly responsible for them um and so this year allocations to the general fund 7.2 million addition to the Target and then finally the cake topper um salary and benefit projections so this is when we uh we solicit HR for any upcoming potential increases like health insurance sort of the drivers pay for performance um retirement so for for instance this year's budget has a 5% sort of placeholder in the target for health insurance um and a 4% placeholder for pay for performance so those are already added into Department's Target budgets and that's what makes the cake so adopted budget less onetime Cost Plus prior commitments allocations that were holding people harmless floor and salary and benefit placeholder projections and this is how it looks currently so fiscal year 24 adopted budget this is general fund this is the billion number at the bottom fiscal year 25 Target as of right now and again we're sharing early and sometimes the hazard of sharing early is you know there could be a couple of tweaks here and there but um the fiscal year 25 Target budget is a billion 48 almost a billion 49 so a three and a half% increase across the board and if you're wondering which you might be why Neighborhood Services is going down I also wondered the same thing when I pulled this data and um it's a mistake so I will fix it what the the priority repair program that we increased last year was loaded as a onetime uh one time increase and I don't think it was intended to be one time so we will fix that so I don't want you to be alarmed but I found that at the last minute um everything else you can kind of see there any questions about drivers we can talk about those but this is where we sit as of right now in April general fund budget development how we when we walk through the cake this is where we've landed okay um as part of building the target we also build the preliminary Pago Matrix so as you know pgo financing uses cash for Capital um saves us from paying interest on debt lowers debt um we've talked about pgo extensively I don't think you need a an education there this is a reminder that pay goes seven cents of the fiscal year 24 tax rate allocation um in our models now we're assuming 4% growth and these are some of the things that are funded in Pago you've seen these buckets before not every single thing is listed here but these are some of the bigger bigger buckets uh and so in viscal year 25 we actually have a good forecast here but this accounts for 4% growth but in viscal year 25 you'll see that the pgo total is uh almost 78 million and sort of how it's preliminarily breaking Out Among the big um the big buckets there big departments and we can deep dive any of the capital or P stuff in a future work session I'm sure it's of interest um but just wanted to show you how it's how it's loaded in the budget system as we stand today any questions okay okay so priority based budgeting this is the newer preview and um Environmental Services Cody has been generous in giving some of his time today to help turn I think turn a concept into something more practical because even for me until lately it's been more conceptual than practical in my brain um so PRI based budgeting is something that we want to use to augment our traditional you know Target based budgeting line item budgeting that I just walked through um I think with Target based budgeting like any any budget framework it you know has some limitations um and one of the primary challenges is that it heavily focuses on inputs and expenditures uh and growing a base like an already existing base rather than you know outcomes and results and optimizing resource allocation and so we're trying to knowing that we still need to do some you know you target-based budgeting and line item budgeting especially from an accounting perspective but trying to um provide a different vantage point or a different lens upon which you can look and make decisions without maybe digging into LM detail although you certainly can um but really understanding the programs within the city and what it cost to run those programs and how well aligned they are to your priorities so we have nine participating departments this year we moved from three last year to nine um and last year we really only applied uh priority based budgeting to the decision packages from those three departments but this year we are doing a much more robust work uh with the nine departments and so I want to show you a bit of that interrupt real quickly um is there a reason why we're only doing nine and not all yeah it ju I mean just truly learning how to implement I think we went from three to nine and we have a pretty good system now um and we were still using resource X as a consultant to help with that the goal is to then do a bigger chunk each year for like the next two years okay thank you um so quickly before um lay a little bit of foundation before Cody comes up uh or before he comes over here the uh the first step of priority based budgeting and sort of the biggest push of the roll out is the design of the program in inventory um a a PBB I'm going to keep saying PBB PBB program is a new and can be a separate concept from a Department's like normal operations or division so what I mean is a department has existing operational programs right and divisions but those might not be a one for one match to like a PBB program so for example like a program is what you do it has to answer the question of what you do so let me let me think of an example that someone who's not participating Finance hey Reggie I'm going to use Finance um so Finance might have an accounting division or like a treasury division but when you say like treasury like what what is that like what does it do so you might say Okay um a program PBB to measure alignment from like treasury might be payroll processing like that's the program and so there are many programs within accounting or Treasury and that's the way you align them um so that's all I mean to say is it's not always like a one for one in the way we're already you know organizationally structured um so actually I think the challenge with with PBB and program inventory at the beginning is helping departments accurately size their programs and there is a brochure that we use at the budget fair that uses the analogy of pizza and I kind of want to grab it because it's really good because you guys y'all aren't hungry you already ate so it's fine for me to talk about pizza um so and I'm going to give you guys this because I really like these brochures that we made um so PB program what do you do if we're asking the question how much pizza do we have then how would you answer you would probably say like we have X number of slices you wouldn't say well we have this many pizza boxes like that's too big of a baseline of an analysis right like that's too big and you wouldn't say that we have this many pepperonis like that's too small and so programs in PBB represent the slices like what do we do how many do we have um and so we've been calibrating with departments saying okay that's too big like it's too big to say the courthouse or accounting it's too small to say like oh we file paperwork or we answer the phone or whatever so it's just right to say things like payroll processing or Court Reporting or you know so it's some of that calibration that's happened happened up front and that's the biggest push I think of PBB implementation it's it's the hardest upfront um Cody will talk a little bit more about what this has practically looked like but once people have a program inventory um then we cost those programs so that we know both the personnel and non-personnel uh costs for each and then the part we're in the middle of now is program scoring um and the Departments first score their programs based on a number of criteria and then um we go through peer review and I think at this point I'm gonna let C I'm gonna let Cody talk first to give some alignment and then I'm going to go back because I think it'll be more helpful so without further ado I'm switching to Cody's example of what this looks like in application all right thank you Christian so we wanted to take this approach of this new priority based budgeting and give you some some semblance or some understanding of what this looks like from our Department's perspective and I will tell you as a department director I was a little hesitant to try this New Path forward initially but over time through conversations with a for lab it's it's been easier to digest so when you look at our Department it's basically three separate funds you've got the Environmental Protection fund at 16.2 million for FY 24 you've got the solid waste fund at just over 82 million and you have the general fund at 4.5 and you can see that that's covering consumer health also note to mosquitoes if you see mosquitoes please reference over to us and we'll you can see the different programs that these different funds take into account but we wanted to take through the priority based budgeting concept to strategize a different way to sort these and to bring these forward so what we were able to do through that priority of inventory we were able to take our program divisions or our cost centers and try to go one level deeper and identify the 23 Key Programs or or structures that we would like to bring forward at this time all of these as an external facing Department fall in that Community category I'm certainly not going to go through all 23 of these but I picked a couple just to show you an example of how we're looking at each unit as kind of an independent business unit rather than doing a deep dive so one example is the southeast landf fill as as just one program of course it's critical to our overall community and a place for us to dispose of our our waste you can see in the little table below that uh there's a department rating we've been able to complete that and as Christian mentioned we're working with other stakeholders across the city to evaluate this and that will continue but you can also look at Cost drivers of Revenue and expenses for each of these different business units another good example is the one we just T talked about earlier with the supplemental Highway litter abatement program there's about 442,000 being invested this fiscal year we have to talk about priorities and budget overall as we move into fy2 to determine how much we want to invest in a program such as this again those priorities are are being considered and continued with the Fort Worth lab so just some quick perspectives we have seen this parties based budget concept as a useful framework to underscore program value again it doesn't dictate if a program is going to stay or go or increase or decrease in funding but it also continues to build that data with all of the priorities and goals that have been set by city council it encourages an active policy conversation and by utilizing Vantage points from other departments we're able to really have a deeper conversation to us to our to our department and to our staff these programs are the most important and the most beneficial to the city but when you bring in other perspectives you start to look at that across the entire organization of course it also helps to forecast our future needs and identify opport opportunities to op to optimize our resources so our next steps as a department we're going to continue to work with the Fort Worth lab to score the rest of our programs across the board and then of course we'll be back with that fy2 draft budget in a few months thank you okay so I'm going to go back now that you have a department example um so peer review is something that we didn't get to last year in our pilot program of PBB peer review adds legitimacy and credibility to process by helping calibrate the way departments score their own importance and their own programs across the organization um and so Cody talked a little bit about us being in the middle of implementing peerreview we're about 15% done with that peerreview process we are reviewing 323 programs across the nine departments um and so that's a lot and then when you think about um reviewing each program against each Council priority depending on um what type of program it is whether it has an external customer base or an internal customer base um the review is different but there's four to five for each program so 323 * four or five I had the math in my notes but you can do the math in your head um so that he's like no I can't 1500 1400 something like that yeah it's a lot so um so an example like Cody said um his programs are mostly Community which means they have an external customer B I think they're actually all Community um in environmental they all have an external customer base um and so if you think about taking one program in Cody's group and evaluating it you'd say okay this is an external customer base so it's a community program um and so we'll evaluate it against the council priority of responsible growth which is one you know one of the the five um so the goals under responsible growth are there enhancing connectivity prioritizing preservation of parks Pro proactively planning for growth and then depending on the level of alignment of his proam program with each of those goals that leads to the score so perhaps you know what the highway litter abatement does does it enhance connectivity for communities maybe not I don't know um prioritizing preservation of open space and Parks how aligned is it for that and then are we proactively planning for growth through the highway litter batement program so maybe it's not well aligned or maybe it's somewhat aligned with responsible growth but then you do that process for every other Council priority and that's how you get to a score so there's some you know objectivity there so Cody's group on their own does that and then they do it in front of the peers that are also participating in PBB and so that's when you start to calibrate you know oh I ranked all my programs as extreme alignment with every Council priority or or not right and we haven't seen anybody that did that trying to people are trying to be objective but it helps to have to defend your score you know to your peers we we thought about doing it just with the lab but we thought well that doesn't really add a lot of credibility and legitimacy like we're we're one body but so we've had all nine departments that are participating in PBB um participate in the peer review the 15% we've done so far and the cooler part is that we also opened it up to the non-participating department so they could start to get a preview and we didn't really know if anyone would come um but we have had people come we had water fire code some others um so that's been FMS was there so they've come and sat in and so now they when they to you know to council member Beck's point when we uh Implement with other department they have a a huge Head Start because they can see how people have calibrated their programs and then how they're um aligned with Council priorities so it's been a neat process so the results um is that the the programs each have a quartile ranking ranking least to most a line and then we'll have a scoring outcome from the Department scores and the peer review and then that's something we're still conceptualizing like how do we then share it with City management and how do we share it with you and how do we overlay you know the people who are participating and the people who aren't and sort of give you like a good package where you're seeing more levels of detail and um different data from a couple different groups and so um we'll start I think I'm hopeful that in a a future work session we can maybe show you some examples of what it could look like and you can weigh in and say yes this is helpful um we also started our one-on-ones with you we've met with council member crane council member Beck and we have other scheduled for the week and next week um Mark and I will will'll talk with you too about you know what's helpful okay thank you again Cody so here's the participating nine uh in PBB so if code environmental Development Services HR and IT Library Municipal Court police and tpw HR police and tpw uh were our three pilot departments last year and so they did scoring of their decision packages um again it was uh I would say like I think I would say we're on like phase 1.5 because it was like kind of 0.5 last year um but we're really we're really implementing heavily this year and so we're excited um I think it's I've been watching it click for a lot of the participating departments it certainly clicked with the lab staff after a couple of peer review sessions and we've gotten a lot more efficient um reviewing you know, 1400 different criteria okay um let's talk about does anybody have questions about any of that no okay um I'd like to talk about engagement so maybe I'll invite Michelle and or amethyst to come up and talk a little bit about our engagement plans and how they might be different than uh you know what we've done before and how we're trying part of what the lab's doing is trying to streamline engagement opportunities around you know we have the comp plan going on we have budget ramping up and so we're really trying to be strategic about that so one of the things we really want to do with engagement and amethyst and I have been having these conversations for uh probably a couple months is we want to be sure we mirror our digital engagement with our in-person engagement so that we know we're reaching different audiences with both both of those ways so what we've been talking about is what are the tools that she can use online to get input and how can we kind of mimic those at our public meetings so um I'll talk about some of the things that we have in the engagement office and then she can talk about some of the tools they're going to use for from the lab so we have a new portal it's called connect Fort Worth and it will eventually house all of our engagement opportunities for the entire city so any project or program that we want to get input on we will have um a link on this portal for people to provide input so we're going to create a page for the budget and we'll have a lot of the engagement opportunities linked to that page um we're also going to do again the steer the budget where we ask people to do the pictures with Molly to um tell us about things that they want us to address in the budget um we thought that was a good way to kind of get people engaged and excited and it gave us some good pictures to use after that um we're having spring open houses those are all on your calendar we're doing five of those and it will have ways for people to engage with the budget but it will also have opportunities for most City departments to um provide input and information on different programs that they have and we like I said at the openhouse we will have interactive activities that mimic what amethyst and the Fort Worth lab team are doing with some of their digital tools and then we'll follow that up after the proposed budget comes out we'll do another round of open houses and meetings to let people know about the proposed budget and um get their input or their comments and answer questions about it one of the things we really want to do with the open house you know if we say we're having a budget meeting we don't get a huge number of people like knocking on the door to come to the meeting so what we want to do with these open houses is we want to weave in the budget input with fun activities that people can do we'll have activities for children we'll also have activities for adults so hopefully we'll get a good crowd to come out and they'll be very engaged but they won't really feel like they're they're um sitting through a budget meeting so if you want to add some more stuff sure amethyst loone strategy and performance manager Fort Worth lab um so I'm pretty excited about a lot of things Michelle just talked about so Fort Worth connect is going to be a game changer for us it's that One-Stop shop no matter what we're asking for input on Resident wise everything will be there so we'll have that one page that everything you can do the meetings will be listed all of the online activities that you can do will all be in one place really easy to find so some of the online activities we're really thinking about the budget in those two phases phase one being kind of May through the recommended budget and we're really we want to be explicit about asking folks to help us develop the budget so those activities are going to centralize around your Council prior priorities there'll be an activity where they we ask them to rank the priorities we'll have a little bit of information demographics where they live so we can provide you as council members in that specific information about your District so in my district of all five Council priorities these are how they rack uh rank in that area to help me make decisions then we're going to use the thought exchange tool to ask specifically about your thoughts concerns or ideas for the budget so that's where we'll get those very specific like more money for homelessness activities litter cleanup Etc and again will have information data demographics to be able to give you that information on a regular basis by Council district and the mapping activity that Michelle uh talked about will also be on that website so you can put a little pin a little green pin for something that you love and would like to see more of in that place or something that needs to be fixed or there's a need so we'll have you know a variety of different ways to interact during the uh subsequent budget uh work sessions we have with you and outside we're going to give you pings on that information probably two or three times between now and the end of July before you get the recommended budget so that you have a summarization of what the asks wants needs likes um for the city overall are but also for your respective districts so you have that information at hand as you go out and talk to your constituents about their thoughts about the budget you'll have what we're receiving on our end as well um and then again we will be at each of those open houses um at other meetings Etc as we go to deploy those same activities both in an inperson format and also um online we're also going to work with Michelle and her team to see what we can do for interactive activities and package those as kind of a meeting in a box so folks can deploy that at with a church group or a school group or anywhere else that it's not necessarily easy enough that you don't have to rely on staff to facilitate but we can still get that extra input um I have a question here I don't uh I mean I support the openhouse format I think it draws a lot of people out and you know helps accommodate their own individual schedules that's all great support that what I'd like to know in my district is that um and I'm sure other council members will too how many of these open houses will be in our own individual districts and aside from at large resident outreach are we going to be making specific Outreach to the registered neighborhood organizations as well right now we have five um open houses scheduled in for the spring and um we've tried to geographically spread those around the city and also hit areas that we aren't currently having comp plan meetings scheduled so we tried to spread all of those out it was 12 meetings total that we were scheduling and we tried to you know take it take a look at the map the planning sectors and the districts and find a geographic spread that was hitting most of the community when we do the five in the fall we will look at the locations that the council districts and planning sectors that did not have an open house in the spring and scheduled those for the fall so that's the plan right now just because of resources and Staffing that's involved with the open houses and on the connect Fort Worth right now we're building that website um the the portal we're adding projects right now it has the comp plan page but we're building others on the back end and then we're doing kind of a soft launch with the comp plan we'll have a bigger launch once we have most of the projects and the budget page up if you want to visit it it's www.c connect fw. any other questions repeat www.c connect fw. I would just like to make a comment on the meeting locations as we're going through the meeting locations for the comprehensive plan noticed uh some places in my district the closest place to attend a meeting for that particular topic was over a 30 minute drive for residents each way so let's let's please take in mind total travel time anywhere in the city to be able to attend these and uh not end up in a situation like that again okay thank you so my opinion is that no one wants to come to a public meeting anymore and you get the same people that come yes and it's just a reality of where people are we're such much more of an ond demand culture and furthermore I think the folks I talk to would rather react to our ideas or what we're proposing and say yes or no or maybe I'm in the middle rather than have to proactively say this is what I want in the budget and so really thinking through probably utilizing social media in a different way it's almost like the survey of these are our top five priorities these are the things we're funding this year these are the continual items that are going to come from FY 24 to 25 what do you think rather than just tell us and I I I know some other cities are grappling with this because everybody has the same struggle so we're not unique but it's it's really time that we completely revolutionize the way we do this because I'm sure it's very frustrating for City staff too that go to dozens of public meetings and the same 25 people come to those meetings and it's a it's a huge waste of your time and so I don't have an answer a solution today but just acknowledging that's a problem and then how can we all also pitch in to help meet that differently um because I know we've all talked about that Michael yeah I'll reiterate something I said the other day at the council meeting at the Fort wor food festival Eric flater's group was out there with the 2050 comprehensive plan so I don't know if they were out at Main Streets this week or whatever but I think we need to look at big events we know people are already going going to go to and get the reactions and they're having fun at those events and they're willing to spend five minutes I couldn't agree more um yeah rather than that way your staff doesn't get burned out or frustrated so often and having to be at all those yeah we've been working with the um Team doing the comp plan and um identifying places where people are already meeting great and going to them and not expecting people to come to us when amethyst and I were putting together the plan we know that that um we're getting different Generations at our public meetings versus you know if we had things more digital and we want to hear from everybody but you're right the public meetings are a lot more time intensive it takes a lot more staff and um sometimes the attendance is low and so we want to try and have multiple opportunities and ways for people to give us the input and um and then bring that together and present it to you also to bring this back to Priority based budget once we have all departments on that system I think we're going to be amazed at the different ways that we can explain the budget what's important in the budget and the decisions that we're actually making through that lens than we can right now with line item budget so I think that's going to be a GameChanger and you might see a third phase and that approach to the budget in kind of what do you want here's what we think the major decisions are going to be and then here's what the recommended is so I can see PBB really leading Us in that direction in a much stronger way that that anybody could explain to someone that maybe maybe the average staff member couldn't explain a line out them way to the public too Michelle might know this or Renee what's our number of individuals that have signed up for city news right now in the city of for worth I want to say it's around 30,000 yeah I mean that just gives you an idea of you know a city of almost a million people well the other thing we did at the public meeting is we've started asking people how did you find out about the meeting so we can see which of our tools is having the most impact and getting people there and um so we're using that information to kind of change the way we get the word out about the different meetings okay we can keep working on it thank you all very much for your hard work we appreciate it thanks great I have one correction to make um on this slide I put that code is participating and they are not we swapped them with neighborhood services so please don't think that they are and I apologize to Neighborhood Services too thank you to my many staff who emailed me during this meeting and told me that okay so um it looks like we might give you like 10 minutes of your life back but um I just want to I'm hoping that that little bit of a dive into Foundation I think normally at this time of year you wouldn't really even know where the general fund is sitting with regard to a Target budget so I'm hoping that's helpful um and we can dive into any of that that you would like um we're planning to meet again in two weeks knowing from my sharing of the budget calendar that department Department still will not have fully submitted their budgets at that time I'm wondering um what would be helpful if you have preliminary ideas as to um either PBB departments or non-participating departments uh that you'd like some early preliminary dives into that will help you as you you know start to think about the fiscal year 25 budget or any other subjects that you're interested in because we want these to be useful to you any comments on that any comments or questions I see no go ahead this may not be the right venue and it may be a very unpopular request okay um the street maintenance fee um as we're walking I know we have a task force setup and working you know on that I would love to sit down and better understand if we don't go down that path the street maintenance fee how can we find those dollars or do some scenario planning right now and so we can have those conversations and have a better understanding fiscally where we stand um with that piece and that I don't know if anybody else agrees but I'm really not in board with the street maintenance fee right now so I think having a better understanding of where we are and budgeting for 2025 would be helpful thank you and I think you you stated that our growth estimate right now is we're operating off of 4% assumption is that correct that's correct and you're looking right now at a 3.5% budget increase that's correct so just based on that I know it's not there yet but let's think about maybe next session talking about tax rate and what our goals are around that it doesn't mean we stick to it but operating on the Assumption if things continue where they are are we going to be at no new Revenue yes or no if we because there's no reason to do this last minute anymore there's no reason to have a fight on the dis not of the budget vote right so we can work through some of this um as much as we can and I think we all know that right now more than any other time I've worked in city government people are very focused on the economy inflation cost of living property taxes is a big piece of that so let's just meet people where they are and importantly when we make the tax rate decision and the budget decision we can defend it um especially this body being more involved in that decision- making process yeah I was just going to say the the 4% comes from the three and a half% basic cap um plus a half percent growth which is very conservative and that's where we start with the payo and so to your point uh when you look at that the in well we we heard already from the chief appraiser about what he's already seen he and his team were already seen in terms of appraisals so it's not going to be a year like we've seen the last two years it's going to be a tighter year um at the same time you know we need to address this EMS issue that you all are you know uh working very hard on um and then the street issue the Street Maintenance issue and this our last year for recapture also isn't it yeah yes so another thing to think about right right we have an increment to um so what we can do is play out some scenarios not really knowing what the final number is going to be and then have have that discussion like you said so that it's not all at the last minute I think that's helpful mayor and and council members I just had a light bulb idea uh we had one of the planned 2050 meetings in my district last week and I was you you all know I very seldom give out compliments for outreach but in this case well you know everybody knows that but we had a real good turnout out and mayor as you know I was dead social media so I couldn't do my usual I didn't do a robo call but whatever Tech uh tactics Michelle and her team pulled off it worked but it dawned on me when we talk about people not wanting to come to a meeting most of these attendees were probably 50 and older and so you know we'll want to be mindful of who what demographic we're reaching out to and we did have several people from woodh Haven who are new to District 5 and excited about being there and so but you I wanted to give them Kudos but when you think about who was there it was an older demographic so I think we might even have ways to just get people at these trails and marches and whatever so that we can meet them where they are but not it's they did a good job for these people who turned out and and and I had a protester there who did not step on the property he was he was out front but uh it was it was well attended so just just FYI any other questions or comments thank You' all very much this was helpful with that Council I think meeting adjurned