Finance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee 5/15/2026

Good afternoon, the May 15th special Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting will come to order at 2.03 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Council Member Sacca?

Here.

Vice Chair Rivera?

Chair Strauss?

Present.

Three present, two excused.

And clerk, your computer may have the volume on.

With that, we have three items on today's agenda.

We will be done in 56 minutes because unfortunately I am not getting to benefit from the same staffing that I've been traditionally used to with Sound Transit.

And so I'll be working directly with Sound Transit to move some of my amendments forward for next week as we are in the Enterprise Initiative.

So we have three items on today's agenda.

We have the confirmation of Dwight Dively as Director of Finance.

as the finance director.

And then we have a briefing on two annual budget related bills, the 2025 exceptions ordinance and the 2026 carry forward ordinance.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now open the remote public comment period.

Do we have anyone in person?

We do not.

And we have two online?

Correct.

Wonderful.

So up first is Alberto Alvarez and then David Alberto as you are promoted please feel free to take it away.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

In addition to your personal business deals improved by your political office you all take money from our budget as a salary.

Taxes we all pay.

Council has a legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment and to protect our freedom of speech.

Using no racial slurs or discriminatory language, Howard Gale voiced his opinion.

Council initiated threats to ban him from public comment for merely criticizing arrogant politicians like some of you today.

Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance are fundamental to our freedoms.

Criticizing a politician while not denigrating race, gender, ethnicity is all legally protected in our society.

You should write an apology and council must stop the rules that allow vindictive members to ban people for statements they don't like.

You all may not like it.

That is the truth needed to maintain personal freedoms and our power to hold government accountable.

Thank you all and have a good day.

Thank you, Alberto.

Always good to hear from you.

Up next is David.

David, when you are let in, star six to unmute and then take it away at your convenience.

Hi, is my mic working?

Yes, it is.

And if your name is not David, please state it for the record.

My name is not David.

It is the feminine.

My name is Devita Ingram.

Fantastic.

Welcome, Devita.

Hi.

Thank you so much.

I am calling because I am part of the Embrace Caucus.

And if it is appropriate, I think we wanted to share open comment about up zones.

for the comprehensive plan.

Is that appropriate?

And may I repeat?

We're going to pause and reset your time.

Can you state that question?

Items are supposed to relate to items on the agenda today or at least within the purview of the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments and Native Communities Committee.

Did you say you were trying to respect to the comp plan?

I'm happy to see you before.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for joining us today.

Either way about it, always good to hear your voice.

With that, that concludes public comment, seeing as we have no additional speakers present, and so we will move on to the first item of business today.

Clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

Item one, appointment 3468, appointment of Dwight D. Dively as Director of Finance of the Office of City Finance for a term December 31st, 2029, to December 31st, 2029. Briefing discussion and possible vote.

Fantastic.

Welcome back, Mr. Dively.

Welcome back, Mr. Ellerbrook.

Great to have you here at committee and clerk, it seems like we might need to mute a participant.

Here we are with appointment 03468, Dwight Dively to be the director of our finance director in lay people's terms like me.

We just call it a comptroller, but here we have a different name and you are unique in the sense that there are two separate directors within the within the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, where we have our finance section and then we have the rest of FAS.

It's a unique breed with FAS, but that is why, in my opinion, Department of Finance and Administrative Services is the backbone of our city.

We wouldn't be here without them.

With that, we've submitted questions to you.

You replied with answers.

Those are attached to the agenda today.

I'll open it up to the both of you if you wanna make some introductory remarks and then I'll open it up to my colleagues and then I'll follow up on some of these questions.

Sure.

For the record, Mark Gellerbrook, Deputy Director for City Operations.

I don't have a lot of additional introductory remarks.

I introduced Dwight Dively earlier, and I don't have anything, I think, to add to the record as far as his qualifications.

We are excited to have him be our nominated Director for the Office of City Finance.

And thank you for the record, Dwight Dively, the nominee to be the finance director.

I've had the opportunity to talk with each of the three council members who are here today.

We had a very quick introduction at the last meeting, and I really have nothing else to add other than happy to respond to any questions you may have.

and you are a unique candidate in the sense that you taught half the city how to do budgeting.

So we're really excited and lucky to have you.

Colleagues, I wanna open it up to you for questions and then I'll follow up with a few of mine if there's still time.

Council Member Kettle.

I'll say professor one last time.

Next time I'll have to say director.

But I just want to thank you for coming back.

Thank you for your responses.

Thank you for meeting with me.

You know, obviously clearly qualified for the position.

And part of me, the only question I have is that with the immense job ahead of you, why would you want to take it?

But outside of that, That's it.

Actually, you know, from a public service, like, you know, with that daunting task that we have in front of you and your colleague who's sitting behind you, our budget director, you know, what has brought you here?

What's the calling to take on this immense task?

So, I've spent essentially my entire professional career in public service, and it matters a lot to me.

The opportunity to serve our residents, to make their services better, to improve the finances of an organization is really what I care about professionally.

and so when I had the opportunity that the mayor offered me to come back to the city, back to the same job I started 32 years ago, it was pretty easy to say yes.

I was looking for some new challenges.

I was looking to come back to a community I have lived in now for a very long time and to see what I can do in a few years to, you know, improve the services that we provide to our residents.

And so that's the attraction of the job to me.

As I have been here now for about three and a half months, just learning some of the things that I think are opportunities to improve those services, improve how we deliver, has made me even more confident that and taking this job, assuming I'm confirmed, is a great opportunity and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Well, thank you for that.

And I will just say, as I looked at the clock about an hour ago, I was having a very brief conversation with the Executive Sahajalai and King County's loss is Seattle's gain.

And so there you go.

Thank you.

And Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Acting Director Dively for your willingness to serve the City of Seattle anew, again, in this role, in this capacity, and I really appreciate our conversation that we had earlier, and it's great to get to know you a little more, have a great reputation, I think, in our community and government, and so it was great for me to personally get a chance to meet you and learn a little bit more about you, your background, your journey, why you raised your hand for this job.

Not a psychologist, I don't know.

Don't care.

I'm just glad you did.

Because I learned a lot from that conversation about all those things.

And then we dove deep into a few peculiar aspects of policy and the budget and finance and structuring bonds and all kinds of stuff.

So thank you for empowering me.

I feel in that meeting, I feel confident in your ability to lead the city well in this regard.

And I think we're incredibly lucky to have you as well.

So welcome back.

And thanks to the mayor's office, Mr. Ellerbroke, excuse me, for putting him forward.

And yeah, excited to move him forward at your discretion, Chair.

Thank you.

And thank you.

I just will say I've been very privileged throughout my career.

I've had a lot of opportunities a lot of other people never have.

And this is another one of an opportunity that I can come back and do some work that I think is very important and hope to, you know, make the city better for it.

Just in my few months getting to work with you on the Seattle City Employee Retirement Services Board, as well as the Forecast Office, it has been really wonderful to get to work with you.

A fresh set of eyes on infrastructure that you helped create 30 years ago.

Was it 30 years ago?

32.

32. No one's counting.

No one's counting.

But it's really great to get to see you, to watch you see something that you had at hand in building.

It grew on its own and now you're back.

And you've had more experience.

You've seen different things.

And now you're back to where you started.

And it's...

It's just been really fun to watch you take a very focused look at what is going well and what needs to be changed.

And so that wasn't one of the questions that I asked you in the packet, but I'll ask you now.

What are we doing well and what do we need to improve upon?

Well, since you started with the retirement system, I would just note that the and all competence, the quality of analysis, particularly on investments that exist at the retirement system today is vastly better than when I left 16 years ago.

So probably everything that I've encountered, the thing that is most improved is the retirement system and, you know, much for the benefit of all the people who depend on it for their retirement checks.

So that I think is something that's just truly remarkably better.

I would say we alternate a little bit here.

Some things that need improvement.

So I noted I think in the answers to the questions that you sent that I hear constantly that this is a federated government.

And I must have missed that part of the city charter when I reviewed it because I don't see anything about a federation.

We are a government.

We need to be a government.

and that means there needs to be some consistency, there needs to be some quality assurance that is done centrally.

And there are a variety of things that I have seen where we are so decentralized and there hasn't been, in my opinion, adequate central oversight for a long time that we have some things that we really need to improve.

So that would be an example of something that I think is not as good as it should be and needs to be improved.

An example of something that I think is better is the forecast council that you mentioned.

I think the idea of the mayor and the council sharing a forecasting office, having that kind of quality and competence in its staff, having open discussion of the factors that go into the forecast, and in a time of great uncertainty right now is a huge improvement over when I left where when I had the finance department the last eight years, we also had the budget function within it and we did the revenue forecast.

And then of course the council needed to essentially do its own.

And usually we pretty much agreed, but that created a whole bunch more work and having one forecast I think is a big improvement.

And then last, to balance out the things that need to be improved, as I mentioned in my responses to your questions, I think our risk management function is badly underutilized.

The staff has been cut.

The things that I think are core to risk management for an organization of our size aren't there.

The generic terminology for that is enterprise risk management, where you look across the whole organization, you identify the risks you face, you try to identify ways to mitigate those risks.

You actually have resources, if you need to, to help a department mitigate risks.

and we don't do any of that.

Some departments do individually but centrally we don't and many departments don't have the resources to do it.

And the consequence is we just write checks.

When things go wrong we just pay.

And that's not ideal.

So that's another area that I really want to work on in the next few years to see if we can make improvements.

You started answering my next question already.

Thank you.

Which is, you know, getting to, you're prepared to answer here, what are your specific goals for the office?

And before I go there, I just wanna agree with you about the Seattle City Employee Retirement Systems board and the function there where 10 years ago we were in a bad place.

We were in a very bad place 10 years ago.

And the work that Jason and Leola have done over the course of this last decade has really improved the financial conditions of our retirement system.

And it's incredible to get to watch them do such good work.

Granted, we need another decade of their work to get back to a good level.

And as well, the forecast council, our forecast office here, I think it is good as an independent office.

And in our discussions, the two of us, we need some more parameters there.

We need a little bit more framework.

What I say is, we're in 2026, we are six years out of the pandemic.

A lot of things happened during the pandemic and we were all working remote.

And now that we're back in person, we are able to see what changed and what additional parameters need to be, what guidelines, what framework needs to be created.

and just something that I've appreciated about working with you is that we don't necessarily talk before we come into a meeting but we are looking at the same problems and having the same reactions you've been doing this a little bit longer than me and so I'm getting to learn how you approach things and what I'm heartened by is that we're approaching them in pretty similar ways.

So now I'll get back to allowing you to answer question number two, what are your specific goals for the Office of Finance over the next three years?

And I'll just state that I agree with you on the risk management side.

I can't, I don't know if it's, There have been many executive sessions where we have talked about payouts for things that we have not done well at the city.

And I've been very frustrated with the city's response to the things that we are faced with.

And so I'll turn it back over to you for question number two.

What are your specific goals for this office?

Well, I've touched on several of them.

So I'll focus on the last one that I mentioned, which is moving toward best practices throughout finance.

So in some areas, I think we are either there or very close to being there.

There are other ones, and I use an example here of payment acceptance, where it feels to me like we're somewhere back in the 1990s.

and just coincidentally yesterday I had a conversation with a couple of my senior leaders about we should be able to accept electronic payments for taxes.

And you may be familiar, the city is part of a group of cities that's called File Local and it allows businesses to file their B&O taxes in multiple jurisdictions at the same time.

and that works great if you're a small or medium-sized business.

But if you're one of our larger businesses, the system is limited and you essentially can't use it.

And so we tell those businesses, you need to write us a check.

And in this day and age to say that, you know, if you're going to write us, if you're going to pay taxes in the amount of multiple millions of dollars, the form we want is a check doesn't feel like best practice to me.

And so we identified yesterday that it actually should not be very difficult to change that.

So that's a simple example, but it's an easily understood example of where we've just kind of been stuck and we haven't looked at how we do things.

And so I really want us to continue to improve and become an example of a government that is very flexible in how it accepts payments and how it makes payments so that we act just like a contemporary business.

Are you telling me you do not have a check on you right now?

I do not.

Am I the only one in this room with a check on me right now?

The millennial wins the day.

All right, a geriatric millennial.

I do remember when the only thing we got was checks when I was working for central staff and everyone would get them on Thursday afternoon.

And if you were a member of the credit union, you could rush down to the credit union and you could cash your check on Thursday.

and so there was no business conducted in the city from about two o'clock to four o'clock on Friday afternoon because everyone was in line at the credit union.

So many things have changed and so many things have stayed the same.

Well, with that, my last question is not on the prepared questions and answers.

I really want to thank you for taking, your responses were very diligent, very thoughtful.

I can tell that you took a lot of time and that you took this you were very respectful in the way that you approached this.

I really, really appreciate that.

Something that Deborah Juarez has taught me time and time again is that it is important to lead to leave.

I'm one of the youngest people in this room right now, and I'm the only one with the check in my pocket, just for the record.

Oh, Bob's got one too.

All right, I'm not the only one.

But leading to leave, even in my short time on this earth, I'm not gonna be here forever.

I'm not gonna be on council forever.

You are a seasoned professional.

And so what is your take for this office and more generally on the philosophy of leading to leave?

So I have always been a believer in developing your team so that if you're not there for whatever reason, they don't miss you.

and that's still my philosophy.

Now, some executives, some mayors that I've worked for have really not been interested in saying that, hey, I want you to have your replacement already available when you decide to leave, because they want to do their own thing, and that's obviously their right.

But I also think that it's important that you give people the opportunity to develop, to grow, to prepare for their next job, if they want it.

I've worked with many deputy directors and other senior people who really do not want a promotion.

They're very comfortable with the job they have and that they don't aspire to be the finance director or the city light superintendent.

or whatever it happens to be, and that's great.

But for those who do aspire to those things, I think you, as a leader, have an obligation to help them meet those goals.

So one of the things as I'm working with my senior leaders is finding out who is interested, potentially, in moving up in a few years when I retire.

It could be sooner, depending on what the mayor decides, but always recognizing that you serve at the will of the mayor.

So I will definitely do that.

I've done that in the past with many of the organizations I've led and with, I think, considerable success.

There have been some really great people who have been able to step up either into a role I leave or into a different role because they've had the opportunity to develop and grow, and I'm very committed to that.

Wonderful, that's great.

I mean, that is the type of leadership that we're looking for in the city.

I really appreciate that.

Colleagues, any final questions before I turn it over to Director Dively and Mark for final comments?

Seeing none and oh, Council President Hollingsworth has been here since public comment.

I am sorry for not saying that earlier.

So she's been here the whole time.

And any last, we'll turn it over to you for final remarks.

There's nothing else I can add.

In the interest of time, I have nothing else I can add either.

Well, we're really excited to have you.

It's been a pleasure to work with you so far and I look forward to the rest of our working time together.

With that, I move to confirm appointment 3468. Dwight Dively is director of finance.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 3468. Last comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on confirmation of appointment 3468?

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Councilmember Sacca.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Aye.

Four in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you.

The committee recommendation that council confirm the appointment of Dwight Dively as director of finance will be forwarded to the full council.

Really appreciate you taking the time on this Friday afternoon.

We'll see you next time.

Happy to do so.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

With that will the clerk please read the second and third item into the record.

You can read the short title so you don't have to read the whole darn thing.

Item two, CB121208, an ordinance amending Ordinance 127156, which adopted the 2025 budget, including the 2025 to 2030 capital improvement program.

And item three, CB121209, an ordinance amending Ordinance 127362, which adopted the 2026 budget, including the 2026 to 2031 capital improvement program for briefing and discussion.

WONDERFUL.

WE ARE JOINED BY DIRECTOR ALI PANUCCHI OF THE CITY BUDGET OFFICE AND EDEN CIZZAK OF OUR COUNCIL CENTRAL STAFF TO WALK US THROUGH EXCEPTIONS AND CARRY FORWARD.

THE 2025 EXCEPTIONS AND THE 2026 CARRY FORWARD.

COLLEAGUES, THIS WILL BE THE FIRST OF TWO BRIEFINGS BEFORE WE TAKE A VOTE.

SO THERE'S NOT A VOTE TODAY.

THIS IS SIMPLY FOR BRIEFING and we've got one PowerPoint that does both bills.

It's quite straightforward.

I'll turn it over to Director Panucci and to Eden for introductory comments and then let's roll through the PowerPoint.

Over to you.

Good afternoon, Chair Strauss, council members, Ali Panucci, city budget director.

Good afternoon, Eden Sisage, council central staff.

So I am here to brief you on two budget bills, two sort of standard routine budget bills, Council Bill 121208, the budget exceptions bill, and Council Bill 121209, the annual carry forward bill.

This is a slide we include in every slide.

I just do want to say that I am backed up by a team of 30 analysts and leads and many finance managers and staff throughout the city that help prepare this legislation and I couldn't do this work without them.

The first bill, the Budget Exceptions Ordinance, is what has become a standard piece of budget legislation for many years, at least as long as I've been working at the city on and off, and it provides retroactive budget authority for when spending from the previous year did not align with the adopted budget.

This year there is a total request for budget exceptions of $8.1 million.

This table summarizes the asks by department.

The first column is the department.

The second column shows the revised budget, so how much budget authority was in the budget control level.

The next column shows the exception, so that is the amount that was overspent in that budget control level compared to the adopted budget, and then the final column provides a brief explanation of that.

In many cases, what happens here is there is spending that is sort of outside of the control.

So, for example, our medical claims came in higher than projected at the end of the year, and it exceeded what budget authority there is there by about $5.9 million.

so that's a bigger piece and it comes out of the healthcare fund.

Then you have like a $2,000 technical accounting error in the Seattle Department of Transportation.

So these are mostly technical making for accounting, correcting accounting errors that came in after the books closed for the year.

Another example is like City Light revenues came in, exceeded projections.

They pay taxes on those revenues to the city.

that was higher than expected, so that is another exception.

So these are relatively routine.

There is a detailed memo from your Council Central staff as well attached.

I don't know, Eden, if you want to add anything?

No, just that, yeah, there's a little bit of additional detail in the memo if you want to go through each line item.

It describes exactly what it is for each one.

Anything that you want to...

This is your time, Eden, if you want to jump in on this one.

Anything that we need to take away from this bill, CB121208?

I think Director Panucci has covered it.

Eliminating exceptions or minimizing them is the goal every year, and so if we can get to that point, There's many ways we could explore to get there, you know, some of them being expanding director authority of transfers, for example, you know, additional budget management practices, things like that.

Something we can look into is best practices to minimize these.

but we have a fiscally challenging process.

It's a little more challenging than a lot of other cities.

It's more complex.

And so this is pretty typical to see for a big city like this.

Thank you.

And I'll just add, I'll continue to work with council central staff and the budget chair to identify opportunities to make changes that would help avoid exceptions.

And I know Chair Strauss, you and I have already had some conversations about things we might want to work on together over the next so I appreciate that sort of ongoing collaboration.

Fantastic, and Director Pannucci, if you could remind me, in our work in our previous lives where we were trying to get these numbers down, even five or six years ago, is it correct that the exceptions were in the tens of millions of dollars and we're now below $10 million?

We have been on the trajectory in the correct direction, is that correct?

That is correct.

In the past, I actually included a table of history of budget exception ordinances by the department.

And from 2018 to 2021, it's been tens of millions, 13 million, and up to 30 million in each year.

Last year was by far the lowest in 2024 at 1.8 million.

And this year, mostly because of those healthcare costs, it has gone up to 8 million.

you know almost six million of that is the health care costs and those are just unavoidable and there's fund balance of 131 million dollars to cover that so.

The chart that you have on page two of three of your memo is very helpful.

Correct.

Oh yes thank you.

Fantastic great work and colleagues any questions on 121208?

With that we're going to move on to the next slide which is the next bill.

Director Panucci back to you.

Great.

So moving on to the next bill, this is the 2025 Carry Forward Ordinance.

So this is a request to carry forward appropriations from the previous year into the 2026 budget.

There's a total of $138 million of carry forward requests.

Generally speaking, capital Appropriations automatically carry forward until fully expended or abandoned.

Operational appropriations lapse at the end of each fiscal year.

Oftentimes, there is work that was funded in one budget year.

The work wasn't completed but is still anticipated, desired, commitments have been made, and so this is a request to carry that money forward into the next budget year so that work can be completed.

This slide summarizes the majority of the carry forward requests, but there are many items.

I'm not gonna go through each line item in the ordinance.

There's about $16 million of general fund carry forward requests.

A few of the big ones, about $5 million of that is for the Office of Planning and Community Development's Equitable Development Initiative awards.

There's also a $37 million request for the same program from Out of the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

That is a program that funds projects that take some time to fully get out the door, but those commitments have been made to community-based projects.

Another one in the general fund carry forward space is $4 million from the Human Services Department for the Youth Care South Annex Redevelopment Project.

and then some funds that were part of the participatory budgeting program in the parks department for restrooms.

There's about $80 million of requests from the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax.

That includes awards or funding for the Office of Housing's Multifamily Capital Award.

So those are for affordable housing projects where award awards have been made, but those funds haven't been fully under contract or expended yet, but are committed to specific projects, as well as some funding for the Rainier Valley Early Learning Campus.

And then there's $42 million sprinkled across many other funds.

The majority of that is, again, in the Office of Planning and Community Development for the Equitable Development Initiative Program.

and then $17.5 million for the Judgment and Claims Fund that you were just talking about with Director Dively.

This is for expected settlements that didn't settle last year, but we expect that those funds will still be needed.

So asking to carry those forward.

I am happy to answer any questions or if, Eden, you want to add in some more details.

Yes, Eden, we would love to have your analysis on this bill, please.

I also produced a memo for the carry forward that was sent to you all on Tuesday, and it covers pretty much all of these items and some other items that might be of particular interest to the Council and explains pretty much most of the bulk of the items, over 90% of the $136 million ask.

And just a reminder, this is in addition to, as Director Panucci said, as stated earlier, to the automatic carry forward.

So we adopted in 2026 a $9 billion budget, automatically added $2.2 billion for capital projects, grant funded projects, grant funded programs, and other operating expenditures that have a non-lapsing capacity in terms of if the funding, for example, is encumbered and, you know, the EDI program, sorry, not participatory budgeting program is a good example of this.

And then, so on top of that, we add this authority of $136 million for spending on, for the same purposes as identified for each item.

and so in addition to that, it talks about, the memo talks about additional comprehensive bills that are coming similar to this.

So we have the supplemental coming up, mid-year and year-end and then two grant ordinances coming up as well in addition to obviously the budget process, so.

Wonderful.

And I know I've had a chance to speak to both of you about this bill, so I'll check it with colleagues.

I see Councilmember Kettle.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, Director Pannucci, thank you for being here, and of course, Mr. Susich from Central Staff.

My question is, well, first, I appreciate the memo, and I like seeing, you know, some of these details.

And, you know, for an area that we've been working in public safety is addressing the scene between public safety, public health, housing, and human services.

And one area specific is community safety.

And so by having these listed in these various pieces, it's really helpful so that we can engage, because I don't sit on that human services committee.

And so I just want to say thank you, because I'll have my team work with Council Member Ring's team and then an HSD on those as we, you know, work these various pieces and then to also like the unified care team ensuring that everything is set there.

I also really appreciate, so this is like a, you know, to-do list for my team, on the, you know, breaking out, you know, I have nine entities that report to public safety, seven are listed here, OIG and OPA I believe are within SPD.

But running through these numbers, just having a sense of, and the other seven, whether it's CARE, CPC, Fire, Law Department, City Attorney's Office, and then separately Seattle Municipal Court and OEM and then obviously SPD.

So I would like to understand these better just to get a sense, and so I'll have my team check in with you on these as well.

Certainly.

Happy to provide additional information.

Have a lot of stuff that I've left out.

A lot of it's probably straightforward, but you never know in terms of...

And it also provides some context, some insight on little things that I think that are...

Little things add up, as they say.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

What your question helped illustrate is that budgeting is not a September through November process.

It is an all year process where after we pass our budget, then the director and department start to implement.

This is, we clean up from last year, early in the year and the budget office is already starting to develop the scenarios for next year's budget and so we're not even to June yet and so this is just an annual constant process and the information that we have in these two bills right now helps inform the health of these departments and the health of our appropriations as we move into next year.

With that, I'll check Council Member Saka or President Hollingsworth if you got anything.

I'm seeing no's across the board.

I'll just say that we have more time on the schedule to dig in more deeply, so I'm gonna preserve our collective time today and reserve any questions for the next time we come to committee.

Thank you.

Any closing statements from either of you?

Fantastic.

Well, thank you for coming into a meeting on Friday.

We did make it a 40-minute meeting, which I appreciate.

And so seeing as there's no further business before the committee, this concludes the Friday, May 15th meeting of the Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee.

As you know, next week the regularly scheduled meeting is canceled because we have had this special meeting today.

Thank you, colleagues, and see you next week.