[Music] [Music] [Music] I [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you for joining us for our budget listening session with the city of Charlotte today we'll have a little bit of housekeeping a quick overview of the city's budget and after that we really want to hear from you so uh if you could raise your hand if you're on our web X uh that will add you to the speakers list at any time you can also drop questions and comments in the chat box and if you are joining us on YouTube and streaming us live you are able to uh add comments there we will pick them up here and we will be sure to get those questions over to our panelists with that I'd like to have our panelist to introduce themselves for the day and after that we'll have a quick presentation hi I'm Ryan Bergman I'm the city strategy and budget director good morning Hannah bromberger I'm the assistant budget director good morning Sarah Hazel Chief sustainability and resiliency officer good morning I'm Tiffany Blackwell I'm in the office of strategy and budget thank you very much guys and with that I'll turn it over to our budget director Ryan Bergman good morning so today I'm going to give you a brief presentation on the city of Charlotte's budget uh one of the questions we commonly get is uh help understanding the difference between city services and County Services and who provides them so this first slide is a way to show the biggest city and county Services when a resident pays their property tax bill uh you only pay one bill but a little less than 2third of the money goes to the county and a little little bit more than onethird goes to the city which is what we are so as a city we operate what you might think of as the harder Services um as opposed to soft Services soft people services that the county provides so the city is providing Public Safety police fire roads uh Solid Waste trash pickup we also do affordable housing uh the county does Social Services Public Health uh they also do court support jail detention and then one of the biggest drivers of County Services are contributing to Charlotte meinberg Schools you can see on the table on the right that uh Charlotte mecklinburg School support from the county is the biggest program from City and County property tax dollars uh for the remainder of the presentation I'm going to dig specifically into the city budget oh so this is a a pie chart on the right which shows where your city property tax dollars go so the city portion is split into two things what we call the general fund which is how we pay the normal day-to-day year-to-year operations of the city so think paying a firefighter or a solid waste worker a lot of the salaries of the city employees and then additionally there's uh about 20% of your property tax bill that goes to pay for our capital proog program so that's how we build roads that's how we build sidewalks Street lighting uh fire stations police stations it's also how we do the majority of our affordable housing investments so if you look at the pie chart on the right you'll see transportation and housing as very small pieces of the pie but the reason for that is because the capital support chunk that is kind of pulled out is almost entirely transportation and housing investments the other question that we commonly get is why are police and fire such a large part of the general fund budget and the answer to that is that they are very Personnel heavy organizations because they operate on a 247 cycle unlike a lot of our other departments uh we we have to have a lot more employees to do the same work around the clock for instance if you want one police officer in one part of the city at all times you actually have to employ five police officers to do that job so looking a little bit closer at how the city budget is organized I talked about the general fund which is basically the day-to-day year-to-year operations of the city you can see the big departments that the city provides through the general fund along with their funding Public Safety solid waste Transportation are the big ones and those are things that are supported primarily by property tax and sales tax we also have what's called Enterprise funds so these are things that operate a little bit more like a business uh they're not supported primarily by they're not supported At All by property tax dollars and so you have Charlotte Airport which is a a regional airport run by the city of charlet but if you don't use the airport at all if you don't park there take a flight there then none of your dollars will go there uh similarly water and storm water are uh part of Charlotte one water which is a regional organization that goes beyond the city of Charlotte's borders even though it is part of the city of Charlotte's budget and so your property tax dollars do not support Charlotte water only your water bill if you are a customer is what supports it uh similarly with storm water as well cats which is our Transit System is a little bit uh more complicated because it is also supported by uh user fees when you ride the bus or you ride the train it's also a regional County organization rather than just a city one but there's a dedicated half cent sales tax that everyone in the county pays to help support our transit system finally when you look at special Revenue funds it's things that are restricted usually by um a Federal Grant or a St State Grant or state legislation restricted to only be spent in certain ways so a couple of examples of that would be we receive 911 funds from the state those can only be used for specific uses on our 911 program and can't be used for other things another example is uh meals taxes and hotel taxes that we receive those are legally restricted by by the state to be used for things that will boost tourism activities such as uh professional sports so this is a a little bit broader look at our property tax dollars our sales tax dollars and how everything is split up uh the bottom two buckets there are essentially how we pay for our Capital things our our streets our affordable housing investment our sidewalks and that's done uh two ways it's done either by cash funding or through our debt program which is the difference in the buckets there on the right the sales tax is also split amongst the three buckets but then it also has that transport that Transit investment that I mentioned a minute ago with $154 million so when we get into our Capital program the main way that we do transportation and housing Investments is through our bond program so every two years we go to the voters and we ask them to support a bond package last time it was about 226 million of that 50 million was affordable housing and then the rest was broken down into a number of transportation and neighborhood programs such as corridors of opportunity or our sidewalk program so we are currently in a budget year that does not have a bond but we are planning the upcoming budget right now and so in the upcoming budget we will have a bond and so anticipate that in November uh you will be asked to vote yes or no on a bond package of housing transportation and neighborhoods and what is in that bond package how much is for housing or Transportation are are the types of decisions that city council will make in this budget process that we are currently collecting feedback on on through our engagement activities and so this is a little bit th this digs a little bit deeper into it I'm certainly not going to read it but when we have an overall bond package like I mentioned it's made up of a number of different projects on the bottom you see the affordable housing but then you also see things like sidewalks Street resurfacing uh programs for congestion mitigation public private Partnerships where uh we contribute some road infrastructure in order to generate significant private Investments and jobs for the region uh you can see that uh we have a plan that's for 2024 but uh until we incorporate it into this upcoming budget it's still just a plan so a couple of the big drivers of those programs affordable housing uh is certainly one of the most popular with uh our bond pro programs passing the last few times uh uh very easily so the the public has supported them we've had 50 million in bonds since 2018 uh prior to that you can see that the investment in affordable housing was significantly less so what do we actually do with these funds it's primarily a program where you use the funds for Gap financing so if a developer has a project we may provide a little bit of funding to make that project work financially in exchange the developer is legally required to hold a certain number of units affordable for a period of time typically 20 25 30 years and after that if they don't maintain affordability beyond that they actually will have to repay the funds and so through this program um which I I believe is about 20 years old now we've we've created over 12,000 units that are affordable in Charlotte based on um affordability standards from the federal government so when we're building a budget um the the first thing we're trying to do is figure out our Revenue situation so we have an economist we use uh economic data to basically forecast what we expect next year's Revenue to be and that's what we're trying to run the city off of and so we also work with city council to uh consider uh changes in the current service level so city council may want additional investments in certain priorities or areas or it may be determined that investments in this type of service uh aren't necessary and we may phase it out we're also constantly looking for efficiencies on how can we provide the same service to Residents utilizing less people utilizing less resources or maybe even in a simpler Manner and uh finally uh city council as we mentioned we may uh get requests from the annual prioritization process that city council has where they would like to see additional Investments as an example uh Charlotte business inclusion uh was a priority at the last year City Council annual strategy session and so in this past budget there were additional Investments there when we're developing a budget we are trying to do so based on uh the historical Financial strength of the city of Charlotte uh we're one of our only peer cities that is a AAA rated organization which is the highest possible credit rating and so what that means is that the city is trusted financially uh by the financial markets and that allows the city to borrow cheaper than uh other cities may be able to do which does save the taxpayer money and so to achieve that we do that based on making sure that our ongoing Revenue uh is enough to support whatever our ongoing expenses are and we're not using our uh savings account to do things that are recurring costs we maintain reserves enough for approximately two months in reserve for unforeseen circumstances like we had a few years ago with covid and we maintain Capital affordability in the future where we don't just load up on debt to get as much as we can right now we have a model that ensures that we will continue to have affordability not just this year but for future city councils as well so we're constantly benchmarking ourselves versus our Pure cities in the state of North Carolina uh what you see are three charts uh on the left it has the city property tax rate for the 17 um S I can't remember if it's 17 or 13 I I olizee but every city in North Carolina that's uh uh more than 75,000 people and the City of Charlotte uh actually has the lowest city property tax rate currently out of all the cities over 75,000 if you look on the right the city of Charlotte is currently the only city out of every city over 75,000 that has not had a property tax increase in The Last 5 Years and if you look at the bottom that's an attempt to figure out the full cost of local government services so that includes your city tax bill your county tax bill your Solid Waste fees your water bill uh and comparatively there city the city of Charlotte continues to maintain the lowest cost of government services per household so the city of Charlotte operates under a council manager form of government where city council collectively hires a city manager who is the functional CEO of the organization where he is in charge of hiring all of the other city employees uh other than the City attorney and the city clerk and so the city managers tasked with developing a budget based on the city council's priorities and things that they have told him that they would like to be in the budget annually we developed that budget it's proposed and then city council gets a chance to adjust the budget um as they are the ultimate decision makers and here's a little bit about that process we're going through the engagement steps now we've met with city council for a workshop once we are meeting again with them on Monday uh It All Leads to a proposed budget presentation by the city manager the first Monday in May then there's a few City Council meetings where they will typically adjust the budget what is it missing or do they want to see more Investments less investments in uh leading to a final budget for the July one start of the next fiscal year and so that was just a quick rundown uh we'd also love it if uh if you have a phone uh you can use the QR code to take uh our budget Community input survey it's also on our city of budget uh website we also have a balancing act where you can do our jobs uh to see if uh how you would like to uh cut or add to city services and it's it's a kind of an interactive tool that uh gives you all kinds of options including property tax increases or decreases city services um you can also email us any time a question or a comment uh to the uh email address on the screen what we do is we collect all Community engagement activities and we produce uh a report to city council that we basically give with the budget so if if uh you have a comment that you email us uh it it is in included so that city council gets a uh a general feel for the Public's sentiment as we go through this process okay great so now we'd love to hear from you um again you can use the raise your hand feature if you're on the WebEx you can also place your questions or any feedback or comments that you left for us to just receive um in the chat or in the Q&A um feature on the WebEx as well and then you can also raise your hand if you'd like to speak and then we can um have you come off mute and you can speak directly to the panelist whether you'd like to provide feedback or ask any questions we'd also like to welcome and appreciate any feedback from YouTube and we have um team members monitoring the comments there and we hope to be able to respond to those as well so thank you so much I do think we got a first uh some a first couple of questions from our YouTube viewers so thank you so much for joining uh the first question is what time is the budget workshop with Council on Monday so it occurs prior to the regular meeting which starts at 5:00 so the workshop will start at 2 run from 2: to 5: uh some of the topics that we'll be discussing on Monday include uh a report on the budget outlook for our transit system uh a look at our financial partner applications that we receive from nonprofits in the area and then a look at our bond strategy and bond Outlook so we can share with City Council okay great okay great and then another question what happens to the results from the survey can you explain a little bit about that process yeah so from the survey we we produce a community engagement packet that goes to city council so they can get a feel for um the general understanding and perceptions of um the engaged residents that do take our survey uh and uh sometimes it's not immediate but uh public sentiment certainly uh imp and what counts you know five or six years ago and affordable an affordable housing existing sports facilities um it it in my presentation but the city has legally restricted that basic into the tax the 1% meals tax and then uh for the uh Charlotte Hornets so when we uh invest in a package that uh does Renovations for the Spectrum Center for instance and and council did approve something uh late last year it is done from funds that cannot be used on basic city services such as police fire or affordable housing thank you are there any plans to fund new line striping on city streets and I think maybe just a step further maybe we can talk a little bit about the process for like Street reservice in that sort of thing sure absolutely good question um so the Charlotte Department of Transportation has a Street Maintenance Division and so they handle uh a lot of the coordination uh inhouse and with our contractors for resurfacing and for our our line painting on our streets and there's two primary funding sources that help address um Street lines and resurfacing uh and those are the first one is the Powell bill which comes from the North Carolina Department of Transportation there's a formula associated with the Powell bill um some of the largest cities in North Carolina have a little bit of a of a modified formula but we receive money annually from the state for uh Street Maintenance efforts and uh Line Street resurfacing and line painting are are both parts of of that funding and then we also have a couple of programs in the city's capital investment program that help supplement that PO Bill funding and help support uh Street resurfacing and our line maintenance so the Charlotte Department of Transportation does annual surveys of our streets and the condition of them so not just um potholes and degradation of the asphalt but also condition of the lines and So based on that information um the Department of Transportation prioritizes where that money should be invested and which streets should be resurfaced or um or restriped okay great does the city set aside money to fund miscellaneous projects that might pop up throughout the year so as it relates to capital projects um those are things that typically need planning and design and then land acquisition and then execution of construction so the time frame for those means that we wouldn't just suddenly build something new in a year we would we do have money set aside so that we can do feasibility or design on something that pops up uh as for uh smaller scale projects that we may need to do or repairs there is money set aside within Department's operating budgets for instance C do would have money that they can uh take care of a sidewalk that uh project that needs to be repaired um so really uh it's funds that on the smaller scale that are set aside within existing budgets and on the bigger scale uh we have the flexibility to shift our planning to other projects and typically the time frame means that it would be the next budget year before Real Construction funds are needed okay great um another question we got this is a great question I heard that the city is planning to bring temporary and permanent restrooms to Uptown is money being set aside in a new budget to bring more yeah so uh there's been some uh committee work on uh Uptown safety uh and one of the things that was uh uh decided from that is we need to look into options uh to uh give people additional options um within Uptown so General Services has worked to uh provide uh portons uh for now uh in these areas in uptown and uh City staff is actively exploring ways to bring uh more permanent Solutions uh to Uptown so that is something that uh I don't know if it'll be in the budget process before the budget process or after where I would expect there to be a uh a staff recommendation uh to uh to bring those more permanent Solutions uh forward in uptown we also have another great question from uh one of our attendees in webc so thank you so much for your question with the growth of Charlotte are user fees enough to cover the Enterprise funds what are the other funding sources for these Enterprise departments yeah so uh Aviation uh is is I'll just kind of go one by one Aviation is very strong financially um they are totally dependent on the airline industry so uh things did get a little bit tough during covid when travel was kind of shut off but they were in such good Financial shape ahead of that and with some uh Federal support they were able to uh get through it um they're just as strong as they were now so they are supported by the uh Airline fees the business fees out there um so it it is certainly enough to support their activities they're continuously expanding they have a a very strong long-term Outlook um Charlotte water and storm water uh because it's a regional organization that goes outside of the city of Charlotte's borders uh it would be inappropriate for us to use use city property tax dollars to support the water system um so uh it is supported by user fees it is uh enough to cover the system however uh when you look at charlot water just like uh so many other uh entities out there they're dealing with the same cost of inflation on construction materials labor as other organizations uh so they do have a uh a model that results in rate increases rate increases necessary each year to support what they need to do so typically those have been three in the threes and fours um they are going to talk to uh the City Council budget Committee in a couple of weeks uh April 1st uh just before anyone asked that's at two two or 230 um but uh they basically plan the user fee amounts that they need to support their long-term goals so yes it it will be sufficient and uh comparatively Charlotte water is very uh affordable compared to Pure pure cities nationally um and so it it has certainly been sufficient uh cats uh the transit system is a little bit different as I mentioned earlier user fees from people that want to ride the bus and the TR and Light Rail have have never been even close to supportive of the cost of those services and that's just not the way transit systems have ever been designed there's always been a some kind of a tax subsidy that helps support those systems so cats has been supported by a half-cent sales tax since 1998 that has allowed us to essentially operate our transit system as it is now but there has been a lot of discussion a lot of public discussion over the years of is there another funding source needed to support expansion of bus services or rail services so that that has been kind of the big policy decisions um that have uh have been at the city council level over the last couple of years and will continue to be and just as a reminder um cat's presentation is next Monday the 25th at 2 o'cl and then then those other presentations that Ryan mentioned are the following Monday April 1st also at 2 o'cl great thank you so much um can you talk about some of the green or energy initiatives that are being proposed through the new budget that's a great question we don't have probably specifics about the new budget but maybe we can speak about what's in our current budget Sarah sure um I'd love to so typically over the past couple years the um proposals that have been moved forward have been around sustainable infrastructure so um examples include sustainable facilities so really reducing our carbon footprint um through the way that we build buildings a great example from last year was The Net Zero police station um that was funded as well as continued efforts around electric vehicle charging for our Fleet um and some Community facing efforts that align both with reducing our emissions from uh the transportation sector as well as uh the building sector great and to see the full list of what's included in the manager's recommended budget that's presented to City Council on May 6 so um included in that budget will be a summary of all those key initiatives as well so thank you another question how does the city plan to continue funding programs that have been funded by federal covid money once it runs out great question uh so so anytime that we've accepted a Federal grant historically uh it has been done with a plan for what occurs after the grant so um if we're running a program for three years the program may go away or the city may elect to uh continue funding the program from other sources so that's the way that grants have historically been uh been taken care of with the significant Federal arpa dollars uh American Rescue plan act dollars that we received as a city uh city council very carefully prioritize those dollars in ways where there wouldn't be a big cost at the end to maintain services so they've utilized those dollars to invest in things in the community in a one-time fashion um such as nonprofits in the community or uh construction of uh new nonprofit centers uh but the majority of the funds have been used for things like affordable housing investments where it's essentially additional dollars just like the Housing Trust Fund where we are making one-time um Gap financing so it's not something that when the money is gone we have to continue to put money in year by year um we also use the funds to shore up some of our city operations uh during the pandemic uh deal with some of the healthc Care impacts that we we we had uh we provided uh uh Hazard pay premium pay to city employees during the height of the pandemic so uh those are investments that were designed in a way where we're not going to fall off a financial cliff and so uh we have until the end of the year to um obligate all of our federal funds and so basically have a contract spend them or a plan to spend them and uh we anticipate that there's uh they're designed in a way where there's only a limited amount where we'll have to make big decisions on if it's a program that continues or doesn't continue great is there any opportunity to rethink the county and City split giving the long list of infrastructure projects needed to be built by the city even if it's for a period of time and reverts back to the current structure yeah so so I presented that as a as a split like a percentage of your property tax bill but it it's not a decided split what it is is city council sets their own property tax rate the county which has its its own board um its own elected board sets their County property tax rate and then you just add them together and that's what uh you happen to get to right now it's a 36% split but if the city or county raise taxes then and uh the split would slightly change um so it's not really something where you can change the split for a little bit because uh each tax rate is designed by their board to support the services and priorities that that board wants to fund in any given Year great another question I heard something or maybe I read it about an electric fire truck can you explain what exactly that is uh yes I'd love to so um as part of the city's strategic energy action plan which is council's adopted policy in 2018 that really focuses on reducing our emissions and um and in turn reducing our impact on climate change and really supporting a a healthier environment one of the big pieces of that was was the city leading by example and looking at how we reduce our emissions in our own Fleet and so um when we look at our Fleet and we look at the makeup of our Fleet many of our vehicles are large um one such large uh heavyduty vehicle is a a fire Tru and so two years ago I believe and and budget can fact check me on this that was a part of a a a package of Investments That City Council made both building an all electric fire station so powered by electricity instead of um a component that's natural gas and then that fire station will have an all electric vehicle so instead of fueling using fossil fuels um it will charge and um it will be powered by electricity and so um that's a really good example of sort of moving forward some of the um new technology and um doing that in a way that gets our um our both you know get to see it out in the community but we get some good experience with uh some of these larger vehicles I will add although this is in the question we just received our first electric semi um so that is also very exciting so hopefully you all will see C dot um using that around town and a follow-up question how will the fire truck be charged will it run out of charge throughout the city so um just like any other kind of fuel the uh fire Tru will charge and then you know it'll it'll have a period of time that it can run on that charge and so um it will continue to to fuel up with a pretty heavy duty charger that that's being installed so it's not like the charger you see for um light duty vehicles or um in a in a parking lot um it it charges fast uh and it will be charged when it needs to do its job great we got another question about who are the city Auditors so we have two types of Auditors um we have our external Auditors which uh is an outside organization that is hired to to come in and check the city's financials uh make sure everything's in order uh Cherry Becker is the name of uh that organization they annually present to city council any findings um we we've had a very clean audits historically and recently um and and so that's uh that's one fail safe that's out there um and then Additionally the city has internal Auditors uh the a uh Department of employees who are tasked by city council and the city manager to look into specific things anything that they come across um to make sure that things are running the way that they're supposed to um and uh there's a employee hotline where uh employees can Anon anonymously give tips to the internal auditor if there's anything they would like them to look at uh so that's a uh a very normal process and and it within uh local government and uh our current internal auditor is Tina Adams um and uh it's a totally separate Department that uh is consistently working with all the city's departments to make sure that uh uh everybody does their job appropriately and uh continues to improve great thank you um when will cmpd present its budget I'd like to know more about the new programs to address youth violence so the cmpd is a department of the city of Charlotte so they don't present their own budget independently it's presented by the city manager um on May 6th as part of the city of Charlotte's budget recommendation which then goes to city council as as far as uh youth violence and youth programming there is uh a lot of attention on that and there's currently a active referral with our city council uh neighborhoods committee uh to uh basically look at youth programs in general throughout the city uh I'm not sure exactly where they are on that but it's certainly a uh active policy discussion that is ongoing right now with city council do you want to talk a little bit about the ATV program would that be helpful yeah so um we have uh an alternatives to violence program that we piloted uh a few years ago based on evidence-based success in other other areas of the country and so it basically tries to go to the uh the personto person level at uh areas where there's historical trends of of violence and basically try to interrup interrupt that violence before it materializes with uh boots on the ground people that work to try to uh help with conflicts prevent conflicts uh work with atrisk people people before uh any issues uh prop up and so we've done that uh for the last few years and uh it's likely uh something that will be expanded uh in the near future great I think that's helpful another comment I always see residents come to Council meetings asking for more support for the city City's Animal Care Program how is that service funded So currently uh animal control is part of the uh police budget uh police of course is tasked with getting the animals um and then there's a independent shelter or not independent there's a shelter there that uh runs as a division of cmpd um we support the shelter uh Staffing um we've invested about $10 million in uh Capital Improvements of the current facility to uh make sure that we're adhering to state code and and to make uh the area a little bit more comfortable as far as uh HVAC and things like that there is a uh a a number of uh citizens that would uh have asked city council to make investments in a new shelter um and then a number of citizens that have asked for additional Staffing um those are under consideration uh the um idea of a new shelter or continued enhancements to the existing shelter is part of our Advanced planning fund where we can explore uh feasibility and options to uh present to city council great any updates on the cross Charlotte Trail is it completed is it still under construction any information is helpful a little bit of both um so excuse me the cross charot trail is a multimodal trail and Greenway that runs for about 30 miles uh starts in Valentine and South Charlotte runs a little bit through the town of Pine bille and then through Uptown and uh ultimately ends near the cabis county line uh there are 11 different segments that we've sort of broken the trail up into about half of those are complete and open and the other half are uh between design and construction uh so varying varying points um between there and uh FY this next fiscal year is planned to be the final year of funding and that will fully fund all 11 segments of the trail great that's helpful um we wanted to make a comment that we added a link for the some of the youth um violence programs that the housing committee is working on we've added that link to both YouTube and into the WebEx as well so feel free to if you would like any additional information on that um program or those programs it's in the link provided I'll pause it for a moment to see if there's any other questions I have to give a big kudos to this group I think this is the most quickfire and um most engaging probably questions that we've gotten as and the past few sessions so please feel free to keep them coming for the next few minutes oh I got a question can you talk a little bit about more what the housing committee doeses so what does that committee do sure so uh city council breaks a lot of their work down so that they can look a little bit more granular at things and so we have uh a number of committees made entirely of City Council Members um and each uh other than the mayor and the mayor proam uh everyone else is on uh two committees um so you have uh a budget budget and intergovernmental Relations Committee you have and I'm not get the exact names right but you have a transportation and planning committee um you have a jobs and economic development committee and then you have uh the neighborhoods committee um which I mentioned their role is around um safety their role is also around affordable housing investments primarily so once a month uh the first Monday of every month uh city council has committee meetings uh from ear early morning to uh into the evening and then at the end of that day they all get together and kind of talk about process and so um they'll get referrals from the mayor or the city manager which will be to dig deeper into a specific topic and come up with a list of recommendations and so they might get a referral about reviewing our uh Youth Services programs for instance and so City staff will work to present to that committee um the committee May uh use that to make recommendations or changes and once they do it goes from the committee to full Council uh to vote on okay great um can you explain the housing transportation and Neighborhood Services bond process sure um so those are three General obligation bonds that we present that the manager presents as part of the budget process and as part of the five-year uh capital investment plan program so uh the first step is for the manager to present proposed uh projects within each of those categories affordable housing uh streets and neighborhoods and then ultimately if city council adopts the budget and adopts the 5year CIP in June then those bonds are put on a referendum in November November of even numbered count calendar years so this year 2024 um if city council approves the budget there will be a bond referendum in November and uh voters go to the polls and vote on each of those three bonds individually so um you vote Yes or No for the housing Bond yes or no for the transportation and streets Bond and then yes or no for the neighborhood bonds and U those bonds are about a a paragraph's worth of language that describe the types of projects that can be constructed uh and planned and designed with that funding um it doesn't specifically list projects and project budgets that's you have to go to the budget book for that level of detail um so what's presented to the voters is the types of projects um that if you vote Yes authorizes the city to to begin um those types of projects and ultimately those General obligation bonds are funded with debt so the city takes takes out um long-term debt uh usually about 20 years um to fund those Capital Improvements and we got a great followup question so to confirm will bonds be on the ballot this year if so how much is proposed for affordable housing and where can I find more information so so yes if city council approves the budget in June and approves the five years uh capital investment plan then yes yes there will be bonds to vote on in November but it's all dependent upon Council adopting the budget and the fiveyear CIP um right now what we have in the FY 2024 which is the current fiscal year um that budget book is online and we can share the link for it and we could probably give the page number of the bond schedule right now what's in there is a plan for um the next four years and when the manager presents the budget on May 6th there will be an update to that plan and so Ryan mentioned earlier that one of the topics on the budget Workshop this coming Monday on March 25th is the the look ahead for the 2024 bonds so there will be more Council conversation about the bonds next Monday ultimately the manager will make a recommendation on May 6th and then we'll have about a month of conversations with city council and if they approve it in June then there will be bonds in November um and we can drop that link I think we've dropped that link in the WebEx to the budget book for the adopted which is our current year which is FY 2024 another question we received are there any increased Investments to provide solutions to the homeless so uh homelessness is one of those uh issues that kind of crosses between uh City and County uh boundaries as far as services so the city is uh the main provider of affordable housing Solutions uh but the county is actually the main provider of homelessness uh Solutions uh through its uh Social Services programs uh that said there's a significant interaction uh within uh the two bodies uh there's been uh work a collaborative work done on a uh what's called a way home which is a uh uh a more Hol IC approach long-term approach to to housing and homelessness that the city May uh has been requested to invest dollars in um Additionally the uh the city does receive some Grant funds such as the emergency Solutions Grant uh to provide homelessness Solutions and uh a a good uh a a good amount of funds from our arpa funds that we received went towards uh homelessness Solutions and so uh it's something that is a city and a county activity um housing and homelessness uh the the homelessness uh is provided primarily by the county but there is constantly collaboration and interaction to look for additional Solutions okay great we got a follow-up question about the specific um Bond schedule we have the link in the in the chat but we'll put the um exact page number for the current FY 2024 Bond schedule as well we'll add that and then also we'll make sure that um you'll it'll be around that same page number assuming we have the same number of pages right for this upcoming proposed budget so you can look out for what that will be presented on May 6 so I think those are all the questions that we've received so far I'm going to turn it back over to um Cherry to close us out um but I want to thank everyone for their participation and we look forward to engaging with you um in the future I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to join us today um if you'll take a look on your screen we have links to our community input survey as well as our Balancing Act simulation uh please take a moment to take our survey so that we can provide that information to our council members um we can pile an engagement report and the comments that you leave there as well as the survey responses are provided to them if you have any questions you can reach us um by email at strategy and budget Sharlot nc.gov and you can also find a copy of our current year budget our proposed budget at CLT gov. me/ budget thank [Music] [Music] you he e