City Council Special Meeting - Budget Wrap Up   4/2/2026

Good evening.

I'll call the Charlottesville City Council special meeting of April the 2nd, 2026 to order.

Councilor Fleisher?

Here.

Vice Mayor Oschrin?

Here.

Here.

Yes, I'm going to push it right back on you and say, yes, this is your meeting, but just for the benefit, for the public benefit, this is the last work session that is scheduled.

We labeled this the wrap up.

It is the intent in this session just to make sure that any questions that remain have been answered.

The items that are open for discussion that we're looking for answers on is closing out the review of the vibrant community fund process and how council is looking to utilize your strategic initiatives fund which you've all contributed information that Ms. Hammill has ready to pop up on the screen when you're ready to go there and then of course are asking is there anything else because next Thursday you're slated to vote on adopting the budget

Okay.

So I think that with that being said, I like to kind of address, make sure we're all on the same page of the tax increase.

We had initially looked at a two cent tax increase, but we saw options where we could do one.

And I just want to make sure if we have that information, we can bring them, make sure everyone's on the same page with that.

And if I can get,

a head nod or yes from everyone as we go down the line to make sure we're all okay with that.

So this is just a spreadsheet to help us with the math.

This was the base budget.

The two cent tax increase was 2.4 million, which got us to the total budget of 279 million.

The last work session where we spoke about this, if we backed out a penny, that's a little over 1.2 million.

And as you know, the revenue team had revised revenue projections on these revenues that equated to just a little over a million dollars, leaving you short about 228,000 from making up the one penny.

And so the math will work here for whatever other adjustments you want to make as we put them in, the math will work to help us stay balanced.

And then the other column is your strategic initiative funds.

And down below here, which we'll get into later, are the agency adjustments and what we've heard from everybody.

So you said we need to come up with the 228?

But you had given us suggestions for how to do that.

I don't remember which work session that was.

So the little over the 1 million is what is currently in the spreadsheet.

CAT Scenario C, that was a scenario whereby we would hire five budget for five drivers to be hired in July, five drivers to be hired in January.

Okay.

that would provide savings of just under 370,000.

The other option would be to just take the difference from citywide reserve.

The schools number, that was the amount that was over the 2 million that we had originally spoken about before the budget was released.

And then the council strategic initiatives that was

How did we get to the $100?

Yeah, so I think that we had agreed upon the revenue adjustments and getting the 228 from the citywide reserves.

So let me ask one question because I wasn't here on the 19th.

I did watch the video.

It seems acknowledged that

If we do the funding as proposed for CAT, that's not going to get spent.

Well, I think what we're expressing is that we don't know that as fact.

Well, we know realistically.

And realistically, as we know anything up on that page, we know there's going to be some amount of money unspent.

Yes.

And the estimate of five and five, five being hired July 1, even that is probably overly optimistic.

But I guess what I'm getting at is

if we're sitting there saying we know realistically that there is probably gonna be at least 100, it may not be $369,000 worth of leftover money because of the inability to hire everybody right away.

It's probably gonna be a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Yes.

Okay, so.

We need to resolve this for tonight.

So, Lord, what's your suggestion?

I'm just making a comment.

The balance out of the city-wide reserve, I think I had actually sent an email at some point suggesting that as being a good option.

If that gets us to a one-cent reduction, that's fine.

But I just think we need to understand that we're also going to see some significant savings over what we're proposing to send to CAT.

Okay, so you'll find with the

Revenue adjustment and... 228,000 and change coming out of the reserve.

Jen?

I suggested a proportional amount to get to 228 from Citywide Reserve and Strategic Initiatives Fund.

So that's like 48,000 from Strategic Initiative and 181 from Citywide Reserve.

Okay.

So we have, Jen is proposing about 40, 42,000 from the strategic council strategic funds.

Yeah, I don't, I'm not, I don't want to mess with the CAT.

Yeah, instead of just splitting 228 down the middle and taking half from citywide and half from strategic initiatives, I made the machine do the math that does the proportional halving of it, so.

Is there any reason why we don't want it just to all come from the reserve fund?

No.

I think taking it from Citywide to serve.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'm fine with that as well.

Can I ask a quick question first?

For the, I mean, no, thank you for bringing up one-time money.

We do.

So this 415 is actually in the base budget.

It's not, it wouldn't be one time.

So this portion of it is correct.

We're still safe with our creditors.

I mean, what would happen is if we got to a point where we spent all the Citywide Reserve in one year, then, you know, we would be looking to add something back to the base, but

In this case, I don't think we're gonna spend everything we have in 26, and so it's an easy carryover.

From the citywide reserve.

Vibrant and then how you plan

What's an adjustment?

If you were to change the allocation that was recommended through his presenting that to you

Because what we were asking you to do is if you were going to add to you're using your strategic initiatives fund to add to leaving the recommendation whole, but if that is not the case, then that's what we need to reconcile.

So if the recommendation came, I'll just go with birth sisters was $30,000.

If you all decided that you wanted to give them 28,000 instead, that's a change.

So just to explain how this works, there's just a few dollars under 370,000 that's currently sitting in the council strategic initiatives fund.

And so we topped that off as part of the proposed budget with an additional 130,000 to give you an even half a million as of July 1 to use as you see fit.

And so based on what we heard from everybody, these are the totals that are being requested in the three scenarios.

I know Councilor Snook and Councilor Payne, you had other thoughts.

Yeah, I'll go.

Michael, I know you were still reviewing them.

If you want to chime in and give us your thoughts on if you had any changes or

From, excuse me, from reviewing what everyone else put, I didn't have anything that I wanted to add in addition to what anyone had put.

There were some that I was more skeptical of in terms of if they needed additional funding just to weigh on the side of being able to have more of our strategic initiatives fund.

But that's where I was at.

No, there were six specific ones.

I was in disagreement.

And then an additional question was, is there anything that, along with the increases, is there anything anyone was open to reducing within the VCF in terms of their allocation?

So, yeah, I mean, I'll just chime in first.

Can I just ask, there are three of you who have advocated cutting the Virginia Discovery Museum by $6,400.

I can speak to that.

They were a 91% funded

organization, their request for funding was for operational support and they're in reviewing kind of deep dive into their documents, part of their operations is their executive director who had a really huge bonus this season and so was disproportionately, if that was operations, it didn't seem like they needed that extra 6,400 which

That was paid this past year.

The salary base was also quite high comparatively, but the bump was significant.

I think that gets us into some real micromanaging of, of these kinds of outfits that I don't think we're necessarily competent to do.

And then I think the Virginia, that the Vibrant Community Fund Committee would be in a better position to do than, than we are.

but that's a general criticism that I have of the whole process here.

Yeah, I guess so it sounds like with C&E and Seville Tomorrow there was an agreement for reductions offsetting increases in other areas.

Yeah, I didn't have any reductions for C&E and C&E and Seville Tomorrow did not get the 91%.

Which was it?

I'm not big on comparing to previous years just because the pool of applicants changes every year, so

When we hear requests for restoration of funds, I think about it as one time money, not programming money.

and really I was just looking for if there are any areas where with increases we decrease something else but the other one the Beacon Kitchen 40.5 thousand just in the context of they recently received nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars in a state grant and in the state budget there's 2.7 million to be allocated for them if we wanted to think about how much they're allocated just in that context

62, 63.

So we could not give the extra nine five and the extra two?

So I pulled up the $960,000 state one was for the Beacon Kitchen and it goes to New Hill Development Corporation for the resilient food system infrastructure grants and the Commonwealth as the grant program.

The $2.7 million in the state budget I believe is also for the Beacon Kitchen.

What confident we are?

The state one?

That's my memory.

OK. That's stronger.

So I would be open to, I mean, it sounds like they did well this year.

Yeah, so which is good.

Yeah, me too.

Great, thanks for checking.

So you said both line items, you're zeroing out what's there?

Just those, the increases.

Do you wanna go line by line to see, cause there are places you don't agree.

Yeah, let's just go to the ones we don't agree.

Yeah.

But not on the same amounts.

If there's three that equal, then we're not gonna talk about it.

Right.

So we're gonna fill in where there's three so that at least you have a concept of how much you've spent.

and then we can pull anything out if there's a reconsideration because what you're doing is you're eliminating things and that's helpful.

So only in the places where there's three have the same amount, yeah.

Come to CCF.

Well, now do we have to, since we did that logic for- Off by a digit.

Thank you.

Zeros matter.

Sorry, Joanne.

Wait, now that we've used that logic on CNE and, no, on Beacon, on Beacon, do we have to revisit Discovery Museum?

Okay.

Okay, great.

Oh, you're like, stop it.

Not under your- Just so you know, where you agree,

So a nice round 20 something.

The, I wanted to,

to support them at a certain percentage to increase their, they were at the 48% level, I think, but I wanted to spend more elsewhere.

All right, it's back to me, yes.

One, two, three.

The next one is,

Oh yeah, that's my proposal to add to the 27% are underfunded arts and culture and depth to support them to make it to an arts council.

That concept is gonna apply to

a few of those that you'll see 7,000.

Yeah.

I like that idea of using it for the arts for some of those.

So effectively, you're going to be talking about 200,000 out of the strategic investment fund.

That would be the study and one for the funding.

Right.

We're capturing the other thoughts here as well, just so that you don't lose sight of it when you're looking at numbers.

And just to remind us again, we had 360 left.

I'm just under 370.

So Natalie, where were you on the Charlottesville Valley for those projects?

And then the other ones are Lighthouse.

Were there three, I'm sorry, for ballet, were there three?

Not yet.

Not yet, okay.

thinking of White House.

And then Music Resource Center was another one.

Oh, and New City Arts Initiative.

And so it's like the commission before the commission.

It's like priming them.

Priming the council, trying to get them to stay in the game long enough to join the council.

Yeah.

I mean, not knowing what the state of all of them are.

In Jen's column, can you just temporarily delete the two that we zeroed out and that'll give us her total at the bottom?

I was thinking like, okay.

Okay.

Sorry.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

You can put it back.

So you're not, you're not sure right now Charlottesville badly.

We, this is the time.

Yeah.

Can we save the, I know arts are important.

Let's save the arts ones to see where we are before we do that, if that's all right.

Just because there are specific ones, questions about, just to go back to building goodness, what,

And there were a couple like this where it was a larger request and then 4,000 was increased.

That was, again, the percentage thing that got them over their half.

They were awarded 48,000 of 100, and that got them to 52.

I feel like it was a 9% increase.

I can't remember my math.

So it got them over the halfway point of their original ask.

That also occurred with Cultivate.

Yeah, I think I had Building Goodness, Cultivate, and Legal Aid Justice Center specifically is like I was

So back to City of Promise, was that one of your six?

There's three zeros.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's right.

I suppose I should say publicly what I've said in writing to Council that if we're looking at a strategic initiative fund, City of Promise has a proposal that actually constitutes a strategic initiative.

But $10,000 doesn't fund that strategic initiative.

and so 10,000 here, 7,000 there and so on, we end up not having enough, as I suspect at the end, in fact we will end up having a net reduction in our strategic initiatives fund because we're committing

Other of our strategic initiative fund, we're committing more of it than we are putting into it.

And so we're shrinking the size of the strategic initiative fund if you go through with this plan, thereby eliminating or minimizing the ability to actually embark on a strategic initiative.

I've said a number of times that if I wanted to make a list of the top few issues where I think we ought to be taking a strategic initiative, the kind of thing that City of Promise is doing is actually one of those instances.

but not to the tune of $10,000, perhaps to the tune of, you know, they had requested $200,000.

We're getting 96 already.

We're getting 96.

As best I can tell, that might fund one of the two positions that they are being asked to put into the Charlottesville City Schools without getting any money to do so.

within this rubric, no.

But I would like to have there be a full discussion of the proposal so that if we end up at the end of things saying after we have discussed it, and by the way, we have not seen any of the paperwork on any of these proposals.

Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying you prefer

Right, to actually make a strategic initiative.

$5,000 here or there is neither strategic nor an initiative.

And if we're simply saying we're not going to make the Strategic Initiative Fund a strategic initiative fund,

So be it, go back to what we used to call it, which is a council discretionary fund, if you want to go back 10 years or so.

I would note that some of the requests we got are like 2,500, like little bits like that to certain organizations are important and valuable, even though in our grand scale of here's 2 million,

But it's Council's strategic initiative, not the agency's.

I think we need to be focusing, and the intent originally of this fund when it was created some years ago was that it would be something where the Council could spend enough money on a particular project at a particular time to make a difference.

and not a couple thousand bucks here or there.

So where at the City of Providence, where are you now?

Okay.

All right.

I'm in the same place.

I agree with the point Natalie made earlier about I'm most interested if there's like an award for 12, ask us 12,000 and 4,000 covers that, but 96,000, I don't see what the edition adds.

So I'm fine with it.

Okay.

So sorry to clarify us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, and heart and soul.

Cultivate.

Oh, cultivate, okay.

This program was about preventing eviction, essentially oversimplifying eviction services.

And the 6,000 gets them over the halfway point of their ask.

But the ask is 100,000.

That's why mine says 6,000.

The Legal Services for Low-Income Residents is how it's titled, but the... Eviction?

Okay, yeah.

I'll do the six.

91%.

Yeah, getting them closer to the full, no one, getting them closer to the full ask,

And it's just, at least for me, it's the extreme need and I'm a substitute driver or deliverer for Meals on Wheels.

But that's why I supported it.

That may be one that Michael's point could be taken.

The 1,000 or 1,500, hold on.

There are 27% funded, so it bumps them up from 54 if you do 15 to 69, but they ask for 20, so it may not

My reason for giving was related to the map to health priorities of mental health as a priority for the health system.

I can go to a thousand.

Love it if you went up to mine, but I think we're going to be over what we,

Well, yeah, sure.

I'd love it if you changed it for $800, $500 to that.

So what's our total?

112.

We have 337 left.

So I guess an argument could be that there is $370,000 left last year.

So we spent 98, what was it?

94,350.

VCF adjustment and then we spent... 45 on the...

YMCA, Negress.

And then the rest of it just sat there.

So I would be interested in activating that.

Yeah.

But I would just say, to be fair, you had other pots.

That's true.

Some of the smaller ones every now and again, but they wouldn't have been.

strategic or initiative are the reference made by council.

An additional 49.

Yeah.

Putting all the sevens as it goes.

Yeah, that was.

That was a different one.

That was Live Arts.

Right, we have to go back to that one too.

So the 17 for me was 10,000 aligned with what I see for,

Plus the seven.

Plus the seven, yeah.

Is that?

Yeah.

They.

Doing it or is that good?

That brings them up to, the 17,000 brings them up to 25,000.

Their ask is 30.

The 7,000 was the 50,000 divided evenly amongst the arts and cultures that were only awarded 27% or less.

The 10,000 baseline was... Something we had talked about before that seven came into play.

And that is absolutely the worst answer possible.

Right.

Oh no, I'm not saying we shouldn't have a work session on this system.

I've talked about that.

Given the bounds of the system as it currently exists.

Yeah, I mean, I know that they particularly this year is a tough year.

I mean, I'm open to it.

I think that the thing about Live Arts is that it is an organization that brings people downtown, it does stuff for kids, it adds culture, so it's not just like business, house, it's like that's the

But one of the pieces of the argument about the arts is that in virtually every case they have the ability to put on performances that they sell tickets to.

That is not true for many of these other organizations.

It's not true for the Women's Initiative.

It's not true for the Sexual Assault Resource Agency and so on.

It is true for most of these arts agencies.

I just, I think that it,

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to compare them.

It's not a perfect system to me.

I mean, at the end, it's $10,000 in one, like a $260 million.

But it's a second worst argument.

You know, I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, I love live art similar with Loaves and Fishes.

I kind of want to keep, I mean, if you're bringing up sexual assault research as a G, we can, they're not being made in their request either.

I will.

To Lloyd's, granted we haven't done this, which is also a very fair point.

I mean, I think it was like 2018 or 2019, the Strategic Initiatives Fund I think was used to seed the Food Justice Network, which ultimately resulted in the creation of Cultivate Charlottesville, which I think had a bigger value add for the community than like $2,000, $3,000 here.

We allocated $500,000 and paid over three years, $55,500 basically for three years, and that was one of the times.

Another strategic initiative fund expenditure, as I recall, was the initial $500,000 to the New Hill Development Corp.

Okay, this is a question just to give you some idea of what you've used this money for.

And I guess here's a question that we should think about, maybe not for this conversation, but when we talk about this whole process later is how do people bring strategic initiatives to us?

How do we find a way to allocate this money so it doesn't sit around for a year?

Legitimate question.

Of course, one thing we could do is to say, you know, let's let's us think a little creatively about how we might solve a particular problem.

And in some cases, people have come to us with specific suggestions like the, you know, C3 program, for example, or the New Hill development was one.

Maybe we say we've got some proposals that might give us a chance to address the achievement gap.

Let's think about how

We had a number of requests a couple of months ago when this discussion began for the budget, saying we should adopt something like the Harlem Children's Zone.

That's obviously something that would be an initiative.

We haven't done that.

But when it would be there may be a line item budget, though.

If they're using the money for staff.

Sometimes you have an initiative that says we're giving you basically seed money.

Got it.

So what I didn't wanna, you know, you know,

get too bogged down in you know how we can improve this process because it's and in you know like the ideas that we're talking about but I would suggest that maybe we have like maybe a four o'clock session on this or

So now you have 500,000, but only 130 is in the base budget.

So you have 500,000 because you've had carry over.

So if you spend all this to get you back to 500, you're going to have to add the difference between 130 to 500.

So if we could go back to the, so we can just kind of wrap that up.

Okay, so which one was that?

What else do we need?

Is this the one that- I had had, just like Live Arts, I had- They were pulled, the process, I mean the- The 7,000 is, they're one of the seven and I had originally already allocated eight.

So, yeah, 25.5.

and I think that's it.

Unless we wanna just, yeah.

Okay.

Everyone, can everyone sleep tonight?

I'll sleep either way but I've said my piece.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, I think you make a good point but this today is not, it's worth having a bigger discussion in a different venue for fixing it on a bigger scale so we don't have to go through that every year.

Yeah.

The answer to the question of what does the schools have,

Forecast as potential increase from the Senate Board House budget proposals ranges from $500,000 to $900,000.

Well, I just think that we can have that discussion.

You don't have a mechanism for you as the city to receive those funds as it stands today.

You would have to add language to the budget appropriation if it was to mandate a return of some portion of funds.

Today, we operate with a gain sharing agreement

that if schools ends their budget year with a surplus, we split 50-50, but that's an agreement that we have executed with them.

I do a lot of research on this.

Once you appropriate the funds and just absolutely make the appropriation of the school,

The only way that you should get any portion of money back from that is that the school board consents.

Now we can build language into the appropriation to make that possible.

There's also what you can also not appropriate all the funds at once.

It gets appropriated on a periodic based, quarterly basis, monthly basis, however you want to do that.

That's one way to make sure the funds are not fully appropriated.

or you can even appropriate the base amount and then put an amount in a contingency that's not yet been appropriate.

One thought that I had, and I'm just sort of thinking out loud and I'm not committed to the idea particularly, but if we're talking about another 500,000 to 900,000, that's at most one and a half percent of the amount we're going to give them.

I don't think that that's worth getting hung up over.

If they're gonna get $2 million and $3 million from the state, that might be a different matter, but we know that the schools have, you know, they had a number of things that they would have liked to be able to do that would have added another $500,000 to their ask.

I'm inclined if it's less than a million dollars to basically not

900,000 at the upper end, and then one cent on the real estate tax rate is a little more than a million.

1.2.

So do you have a recommendation that we

We haven't done anything in the past.

So the request for the information was my response to the question posed in your work session.

The answer is there's $500,000 to $900,000 that they could receive above the budget.

So the question

So is there- No action would mean they keep whatever they get above the budget.

What's the board council's desire to try to come up with a,

resolution or statement or something to get you know to say if you get you know nine hundred thousand dollars back then we get all of it half of it or we being local government.

I would say treating as a gain share

That's what I was thinking.

The question I guess is if they get that money, are they then free to spend it if they want to?

Or are we saying if they get that money, they have to share it with us?

It would seem to me that we're just appropriating it to them and they spend it for whatever reason they decide they want to spend it.

Once you appropriated funds to them, you have no mechanism to claw that money back using kind of a vulgar term, but claw it back unless the school board consents.

We can include language in the appropriation that would...

There's a couple of different ways to do it.

Language in the appropriation ordinance that gives you the ability to pull back half or whatever portion you want.

is maybe cleanest, I would say.

Legally, I don't care for that as much.

It's not something that's been necessarily tested using that kind of contingency.

Yes, for allocating on quarterly basis.

for public comment, or is it not, I'm not sure the scale of this decision.

Does that make sense?

I don't think we have a sense of that at this moment.

Does my question make sense?

Kinda, when you say a thing, what does that mean?

Yeah, like is this going to be a shock to someone's system in a way that is bigger than might sound with just us chatting about it now?

It's a change to the system.

Today, the school board office is preparing to potentially receive $500,000 to $900,000.

In addition to what they have already.

And in years past, they have been provided the opportunity to always receive that and no expectation of anything coming back.

I'm in a different situation today.

I am not anti-schools, anti-investment in schools.

I am responsible for this budget.

And I've cut and could do things just the same.

Being that it's a conversation that we haven't had with school board jointly or with the public and all of that, I think if we decided today to expect to take it all back if the state gives them a healthy chunk of change, that would be a sharper shock to the system.

But if we decide to do the game sharing style

With plans for changing the protocol for next year, that gives time for the processing to happen where it's like, okay, next year they've got the expectation that they get this.

Well, we get all of that back.

But I think if we did all of it this year, that would be alarming.

And so that's what I'm,

I say, if we do want to take anything back, which I think is a valid position to take, since it's kind of feeling like we're close to passing everything, instead of giving a long runway for this, we should do no more than 50% this year.

So we can get what the history looks like, but excuse me, I would say to be fair, I think we're, this year is more of a situation in terms of the budget amounts because there has been a change in the administration.

So I don't think every year you're going to be looking at this big change in the state budget.

I think this is sort of an anomaly.

So Michael, it sounds like you support the gain chair.

I think I'm leaning kind of toward the contingency idea and how that looks in practice.

I'm going to sit down and put pen to paper.

Essentially, you would budget the base amount that we are required to budget to them.

Yeah, and have people coming Monday.

Which means 50%.

I think the whole point of this was to see if we could avoid, if we get a longer runway to see how much they were getting, so we could avoid a tax increase.

And so if we can

If there is overage and we can save half of it and that can contribute to their numbers next year, our contribution to, you know, if we saved it in a way, if we used it in a way that could help us.

pay for it the following year, then that is helping do the job.

Well, I think it would help pay for stuff we want to do this year, because we're going to find out in like the next month, right?

But in the like trickle down of it, then we didn't have to, you know, schools are going to ask for 2.5 million next year.

We didn't have to spend it somewhere else than we, you know, in the

I think she'll game of it all.

So I think we've got more, if I can recap real quick, we've got support this year to plan on using methods to expect a 50% refund.

No, next year is just if it is something we're building into the budget cycle next year, the earlier staff knows about building that language, the better.

I think we're solving for something that won't matter at that point.

If you make the change now, which

I'm not recommending anything, I'm answering the question that was posed to me.

The change this year is in essence the change next year.

because you're adding it to the appropriation.

And unless you have a reason to pull it out, it becomes a part of the boilerplate packaging of that budget adoption.

And it's just the numbers and details that change.

And you could also be in a situation where next year, they might ask for 6 million.

Way more than, and so the state revenue, you know, may not be so relevant.

Yeah.

So it's the, it's the introduction of the concept of a 50 50 split of anything extra is what we're talking about.

So then really the,

Now I'm thinking hundreds.

I can go there.

No, that is a thing.

It being a thing.

No, because they're not expecting any of this.

So just to be clear, the way the gain share works is they get their state revenue, the city match, they go through the year, they end up with a surplus just like we do.

And so when they end up with their surplus, that agreement is they keep 50% and we get 50% back.

Correct.

So this is just for the extra $500,000 that you built in the budget.

Do you want to, if they get $500,000, do you want that $50,000?

So I just, you know, just to kind of throw 90 or anything there, the school board members said that there's been a bonus proposed by the governor that we're having to cover the non-SOQ positions that will require them to use their fund balance of over a million dollars.

So if I understand it, that the governor

It's an unfunded mandate.

So their, let me see if I can bring it up well.

So their budget is federal funds, state funds, city match.

Those are their three sources, and then a few grants, but let's just say those are their three sources.

Then they have an expenditure budget, which they present to you.

At the end of the year, if their expenditures are less than their total revenue, that's their surplus, we get 50% and they get to keep 50%.

So this, for 25, yeah, we're in 20, 25, for example, they ended the year with a 2.8-ish surplus,

We got 1.4, they get kept 1.4 and we put that in our debt service fund to help offset the increase we needed for debt service.

So that's how that works.

Does that answer your question?

So where are we now?

Which one?

50% gain sharing.

Yeah, I'm at 50.

Sure.

50.

John, do you?

Just so I'm hearing you clearly.

So to the extent that they receive excess funds in the state budget, our appropriation needs to be cashed in such a way that we can recapture 50% of the excess funds above they

passed the budget.

Is that correct?

We'll figure out the precise mechanism.

It's going to be one of those three ways.

Yeah.

I mean, it's late on a Thursday, like Krisy said on Monday.

That's got me going.

Well, maybe just adding in the contingency language ain't so bad.

Yeah.

Good.

As I understand the way the gain sharing works,

It's not only a question of how much money they received if they didn't spend it all.

I mean, it's literally whatever their net quote profit, retained earnings, whatever you want to call it in this nonprofit world.

So if they get an extra $900,000, but they have costs where they spend another $400,000, the amount subject to gain sharing would only be $500,000.

So do we want to say it's not gain sharing?

Yeah.

Unless they also get hit with an unfunded mandate that they hadn't budgeted on.

We retain the flexibility to respond to that though.

Yeah.

You can always appropriate more.

You can't, as I was saying, once you're appropriate, it's not appropriate.

So I think that you understand more.

Okay.

Any other?

I speak Council.

Yeah, you speak Council, good.

Any other action, Sam?

Any other comments by Council?

So Monday, is Monday a public hearing?

Are we dealing with the budget all on Monday?

The tax, the real tax rate hearing is Monday.

And then it's the first reading of the budget ordinance.

And then Thursday is adoption.

Six minutes.

I'm just kidding.

At that point, we really was no, you know,

We can have a discussion, but it would be really too late to have staff look into anything.

All right, everyone, Kristel?

Yeah, that's right.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

Sorry.