City Council Work Session

Dave WelchstaffYou can select your desired language and read the live translated text on your own personal device. You can see an asterisk here. There will be in-ear spoken translations that will be released. They have it in beta form now. So when you look at it, you'll hear Spanish. It will speak German, a few other languages. But that's coming. What does staff need to do? This is a pretty simple process for staff. We basically turn it on at the beginning of the meeting and turn it off at the end. So very little interaction with the technology for us, for staff, during the meeting. Funding. So this is not a general fund. This would not be a general fund expenditure. This would come from the cable grant fund, which is outside of the general fund.

ShinneberryclerkWell, our last item is a discussion on the proposed FY2027 budget, general fund questions and discussion. I'm going to recognize Daniel Alexander, our city manager, for the discussion.

Stacy HallThank you. I am very much in favor of that. I think even if we didn't go that route now, it's a conversation. But I think if we don't do that and we don't introduce it next Tuesday, we've completely missed the opportunity to have potentially a new dedicated revenue source that we haven't had before. would be open to having a conversation about if some portion of this maybe could go to economic development. I know their budget was significantly slashed this year, about $300,000 or so due to the ARPA funding and some other strangities, I'll call it. But I think, you know, there's only so much that we can do with our general fund. And I think this is definitely something and not ignore.

JC MartinezstaffArlington and Alexandria if we were to go from a potential 9 to 12 percent that would generate about another three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars it is noted in the budget memo that council may designate those revenues for a specific purpose such as economic development or allow those funds to remain unrestricted for the general fund we can definitely have those discussions at a later time again right now the way that it's listed in the introduction it is at 9% so I'm asking and staff is sort of recommending potentially going up to 12% but sort of need guidance from from counsel on that

Thomas PetersonPeterson. So two questions. The similar question we had on B poll, which is what's the sensitivity, the demand sensitivity to the higher tax. Is that significant in terms of, you know, occupancy? Does it do anything to hurt the economic performance of the hotels? I don't know. But it just would be good to know where we are within that band of price sensitivity for them. The second thing is in terms of where if we do collect some set of funds, whether they go to or stay in an unrestricted and general fund or are set aside for economic development, I take it that that is an open option at this stage, and we could make a decision about what we'd want in the future. And to the extent that that is an option we talk about,

I'd like a little bit more background information about what the purpose and need of those funds would be in economic development, and then relative to keeping in the general fund as well. I'd just like some clarity about what

Daniel AlexanderstaffMayor, we, yes, Mr. Alexander. Before we get too far, we wanted to draw your attention very quickly to our calendar, understanding that we are halfway through budget process. And as much as it says up there for the seventh general fund questions and discussion, if needed, we'll be prepared to bring back to you some specific expenditure revenue discussion items that I think will be helpful for you as we proceed through the process. I just want to be clear that that's what we want to discuss with you next week, along with anything else that you would like to discuss around the budget. I think that will prepare us well as we look to the last half of this process.