www.Cincinnati-oh.Gov/citicable.
>> Councilmember Harris: all
right, we will begin. Welcome
to budget and finance, I'm your
committee chair reggie harris,
joined today by the committee
vice chair councilmember
cramerding, we have
councilmember anna albi,
councilmember jeffreys, vice
mayor kearney with us,
councilmember owens,
councilmember johnson,
councilmember walsh, PRESIDENT
Pro tem parks. From the
administration from our budget
office we have DR. Dudas, from
finance DR. Dudas and there is
sore faaborg. We have robert
neely joined by our new trainee
deputy clerk jill, I did not get
a last name. Ocean. And so we
will welcome jill, joining at a
very interesting meeting. Okay.
So we have a lot to accomplish
in this meeting. We have a
number of items before us. As
we do every year. And then once
we get through these items we
will come to the three parts of
our budget. And so we will take
up and we will pass the city
manager
citymanager's recommended budget and
then take up and pace the mayor
us amendments to the budget and
then we'll take up and consider
the motions proposed by reply
colleagues which are amendments
to both of those budgets. And
then though will leave us with
the final budget that we will
then, the law department will do
a quick 36 hour turn around and
present a final ordinance that
has all of those amendments.
We'll do that in special session
on wednesday morning and we will
pass that wednesday and. That
is the plan.
we have 7 speakers for public
comment. One person on zoom, I
don't know if they have logged
in yet. We'll start in person.
You have two minutes when you
speak and first speaker is kevin
finn.
>> thank you very much. My name
is kevin finn, PRESIDENT Of
strategic gist to prevent
homelessness, we coordinate
services for it's homelessness
in hamilton county. We have
been going against national
trends, nationally from 2017 to
2022 there was a 6% increase in
homelessness and locally we had
a 16% decrease in people on the
street, in a shelter, or fleeing
domestic violence. So, the
reason why we, this is not
rocket science, the reason we
have been able to reduce
homelessness is we take a
multilayer approach to
homelessness prevention. And we
provide prevention services that
are not available in all
communities. There is emergency
rental assistance available for
people who have eviction
notices, shelter diversion for
people who are already doubled
up and at risk of entering a
shelter, and then coming next
month thanks to you all we have
the impact award project using
predictive data analytics. My
point is in order to reduce
homelessness we have to have
multiple layers of homelessness
prevention services, meanwhile
the federal government does not
fund homelessness prevention
while they are the largest
funder of homeless services.
They do not do prevention. This
is why we need local funding to
support prevention act
advertise. Historically the
city has been one of the largest
funders of the shelter diversion
program until two years ago when
the city stopped funding it.
The draft budget proposed by the
city manager very much mirrored
national trends in that most of
the funding went to people who
were already homeless and again
what we really need is for local
dollars to go to prevention. So
I wanted to come here today and
speak in favor of funding being
moved to shelter diversion
because it is a key layer to our
homelessness prevention system.
Thank you.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you. Next speaker is rick
degree we
greiwe, I'm sorry that is
a vowel con innocent vowel
cluster that will be
challenging.
>> [Indiscernible] Thank you for
the opportunity to speak today.
On behalf of all of the
volunteers and now staff that is
working on america river roots
I'm here that you vote yes on
item 54 to allocate additional
$250,000 to america's river
roots. We're going to be using
your money and the money raised
from sponsors to staff up this
event is just 16 months away.
We just hired a executive
director three weeks ago, hire a
marketing director next month,
hire other people to help us
market and sale all the tickets
that we have to sell. So this
ace full blown operation. We
also need to put deposits down
for national entertainers, 50%
down in the next 6 months. We
also have to reserve riverboats
coming from 8 different cities.
So there is a lot to put money
toward this year and we will use
your money effectively. Again,
this is projected to have a
hundred million dollar plus
impact on the community. We're
going to fill the hotels in a
year when the convention center
is empty because it is closed.
A year when we want to build our
exciting tourism brand which is
getting better each year and we
have lots of plans to not only
bringing people here for the
event to extend their take with
tours to the freedom trail,
kentucky bur bone train and
others. We want too give
worldwide media ya' impressions,
it is the kick off event for
america's 250th and river
culture, the roots of music,
question seen and culture. So
we're excited to bring this
event to.
Cincinnati and america and we
look forward to thank you for
your support.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you. Our next speakers is peg,
welcome.
>> good afternoon, I just wanted
to come before you briefly to
say thank you and speak in
support of item number 54 on
your agenda. As I said last
week bethany house is so
grateful to the city manager, to
the mayor u and to all of you
for the support for our full
continuum of services to
homeless families. As you know,
more than 2800 families call the
homeless hotline each month
looking for help. Not all of
them need the full blown help,
kevin spoke to that earlier.
But many of them are already
homeless, living in their cars,
having to move on from friends
or family, even now we're
finding people living in storage
units. So we do appreciate this
help for shell at the. Until we
can scale and see the results of
our prevention work, which we
very much support and
participate in, we are still
going to need emergency shelter.
So, I want to also thank you for
funding our partners the shelter
diversion work with strategies
to end homelessness, the
landlord incentives and the
eviction prevention rental
assistance money for st. Vincent
de paul. We'll continue to work
with you and for you to serve
the families of the city, 81% of
the families that we serve do
come from their previous
residence in the city. And we
urge your passage of item 54,
thank you.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you. Our next speaker is john
williams. Welcome.
>> good afternoon, I'm here also
to ask to increase the support
for river roots. I think that
this event is going to be a
signature event that the city
needs to be behind. Yesterday I
had the opportunity to go out to
the heritage center out in
sharonville. There was an event
put on by crystal kendrick our
root to freedom. And I had a
chance to actually promote river
roots and explain to folks what
it is all about and what took me
was that there was a very
diverse rout crowd out there and
whether it was for more
information about what role the
river played in freedom or
whether it was bringing tall
stacks back, there was a broad
support for it. So I'm here to
tell you that although it is in
the a cnn survey but so far at
least a hundred people I talked
to are supportive of this. And
so we would ask that council get
behind this and I believe that
it is going to be a signature
event that will kick off the
birth of our nation and we're in
the best position at this time
to actually bring this in. So
we would ask for increased
support and we thank you for the
support at this point. Thank
you.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you. Our next speaker is
jonathan adee.
>> good afternoon everybody. I
want to thank council and the
mayor's office and city
manager's office for once again
supporting keep cincinnati
beautiful as we attempt to make
cincinnati the cleanest city in
the midwest. As I indicated
before, cincinnati can be clean
without being beautiful but it
can't be beautiful without being
clean. I want to thank you for
supporting the adopt a spot
motion that is before budget and
finance. And this represents
something that's pretty
different for keep cincinnati
beautiful, we have been
tinkering around the margins
with a million pounds or sore we
pick up through great american
clean up events and illegal
dumping events, but this
represents a place in a block by
block message we can clean up
another million pounds of trash
from the city on an annual
basis. As I indicated before,
this also represents a
partnership between the city and
keep cincinnati beautiful and
the private funder. And this is
going to represent a new
business model coming forward
and other leveraged partners do
this as well letter whereby
we're soliciting money we're
coming with private funders to
make this a more inclusive kind
of operation. The work that
we're doing also around illegal
dumping which looks like we'll
get a million pounds of diverted
dumping material from our
landfills and from our city
streets and also along the sides
of hillsides, is also go going
to be another public private
partnership we're looking to
move forward with. I want to
thank the city for your support
and excited to see at least on
12 or 13 adopters come in on the
ground floor for this project.
>> Mayor Pureval: thank you.
>>
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you, next speaker is sally
grimes.
>> good morning, thank you so
much for having us all here gain
today. I'm sally grimes,
executive director of activities
beyond the classroom I will be
short and sweet, I just wanted
to come and say thank you for
all of your support of
activities beyond the classroom
and I look forward to spent
spending the next year and
beyond figuring out how we can
figure out how to help children
have more opportunities after
school, keep them safe, off the
streets, and I look forward to
working with each of you on
that. Thank you.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you very much. Our next speaker
is allen woods.
>> [Indiscernible] It says do
not touch the red button, missed
that part a. Pole gees. First
and foremost I want to thank the
budget and finance committee for
allowing us this forum and shout
on the to the committee CHAIRMAN
And your entire staff. My alan
woods, co-founder of mortar of
we're building businesses and
transforming cities. For the
past ten years your ongoing
financial support and other
supports that have you given us
have allowed us to continue to
grow throughout this community
creating more opportunities for
small businesses to get the
tools and resources that they
need to grow their enterprises,
to be able to hire. At we
continued to grow locally your
support has enabled us to have
439 graduates locally in
cincinnati of our programs and
on this thursday we will add
another 30 to that number, so
you're all invited to that
graduation taking place at
memorial hall. In 2022 our
graduates provided 6.7 million
in total revenue to the city.
So we are super excited to
continue to give them the tools
and resources they need to be
able to do that. Our iron chest
fund this year will cross the
threshold of a million dollars
that we put directly back into
the hands of our entrepreneurs
to enable them to hire, to
increase their spaces that they
occupy, and to be able to makeup
dates and infrastructure and
physical locations. I want to
encourage you to consider the
item 51 increasing and that
mortar has so that at the same
time we can increase our
graduates and the impact that we
have on small businesses here in
this city. And this fall we
will be opening our head
quarters in walnut hills, so I'm
sub super excited about that
because that means that we're
are creating more space and
opportunities for dreamers and
doers with more and poo it will
have a increase impact in our
community. Thank you very much.
>> Councilmember Johnson:
MR. CHAIRMAN?
Excuse me, what time is
graduation, you through that out
there.
>> I will send that to your
e-mail. The graduation,
5:30 P.M. At memorial hall is
when the we'll do like an expo
in the lower level and the
pitches start upstairs. Thank
you.
>> Councilmember Johnson: thank
you, MR. CHAIRMAN.
>> Councilmember Harris:
absolutely. This thursday, this
thursday, yes. Okay. Last
speaker is amy thompson.
Welcome.
>> good to see you all. Thank
you for having us here today. I
just wanted to come out and say
thank you, amy thompson on
behalf of cincinnati youth
collaborative. At the core we
are a mentoring organization
focused on helping young people
graduate on that pathway to
success. One of the things I
love is our name, the
collaborative, and so I'm
looking at our friends back here
and we do a lot of this work in
partnership. So I wanted to say
thank you again. Have I seen
him of you involved in our
programs, whether it is our job
for america's graduates
programs, showing up at saturday
hoops, I'm just thankful to all
of you. So thank you for the
strong consideration and really
appreciate everyone.
Thank you.
>> Councilmember Harris: thank
you. All right, so we are going
to jump into the agenda. So,
just to remind everyone. Items
1-7 we're going to pass those as
they are, that is the city
manager's recommended budget and
the mayor's recommended budget.
We will make our amendments and
motions later, but we're going
to go through these items and
pass those items. They are also
split out as well for some
recusals that colleagues have to
do. So we'll take a pause and
allow that to happen. And then
we'll jump into the budget.
We're going to -- there is a
another item that needs to
recusal so we'll pause to do
that so folks can leave and then
at the end we'll take up our
council motion that is will a
mend what we pass and items 1-7.
Yep?
All right. DR. Dudas, take it
away.
>> DR. Dudas: to the chair, item
number 1 this is the ordinance
that would implement the city
manager's recommended budget for
fiscal year 2025 for the general
fund, it is the overwhelming
majority of the general fund
expenditures for fiscal year
2025. This ordinance also
includes the various transfers
that are needed to pay debt
service, it includes the
transfer out to the cincinnati
health district fund for the
general fund support of the
health department, it includes
the transfer out of funds to the
citizens' job fund for youth
employment programming. It
includes the transfer out of
funds for the emergency
remediation of rental housing
defects as part of the buildings
& inspections special code
enforcement program. It
includes amending the municipal
code for wage increases for non
represented employees and it
includes the fiscal year 2025
permit and fee schedule for the
department of buildings &
inspections.
>> Councilmember Harris: without
objection we'll move item number 1 for passage.
>> DR. Dudas: item number 3 is
the remaining portion of the
expenditures for the fiscal year
2025 general fund operating
budget as proposed by the city
manager. This would provide 350 --
>> Councilmember Harris: can we
hold for one moment.
[Indiscernible]
>> DR. Dudas: to the chair, this
is part 2 of the general fund
operating budget ordinance that
would implement the city
manager's recommended budget.
This is the remaining $350,000
which is for leveraged support
for the african-american chamber
of commerce.
>> Councilmember Harris: great w
out objection we'll move item
number 2 for passage.
>> DR. Dudas: item number 3 is
the fiscal year 2025 restricted
funds operating budget so this
would implement the city
manager's recommended restricted
funds budget for the principle
restricted funds. This also
includes the various transfers
out required for debt service
payments. The requirements of
transfers for various reserve
accounts, and it includes the
annual payment for the wex
garage, it now includes the
related payment for the
transient occupancy tax for the
convention center project. And
it also accepts the various
formula grants that are provided
for streetcar operations.
>> Councilmember Harris: all
right. Without objection we'll
move item number 3 for passage.
>> DR. Dudas: item number 4 is a
ordinance that would authorizes
the transfer and return to
source of $6.150 million. These
are fiscal year appropriations
that are being transferred to
the balance sheet reserve
account deferred appropriations.
These are for various projects
and programs that have not been
completed during fiscal year
2024. So this will make those
funds available beginning JULY
first of 2024. This would
include funds for the public
safety facilities master plan,
neighborhood historic
preservation program, violence
prevention initiatives, the
fleet electrification, warm up
cincy, recycling consult, energy
management software,
neighborhood catalytic capital
improvement, nbdip, tax
abatements study, 7 hills
neighborhood house, shillito
building operating expenses, the
building restoration present
development activities for king
records, and the home safe tax
relief program.
>> Councilmember Harris: all
right, without objection we'll
move item number 4 for passage.
>> DR. Dudas: to the chair, item
number 5 is the ordinance for
the capital budget, specifically
the general capital budget and