Budget/Audit/Board of Review Committee.

Transcripts may contain automated transcription errors. Verify important details against the official recording.

Budget Presentation – August 2026 Budget Report

Councilmember McCarron – Building Permits Discussion

Councilmember Willard – Sales Tax Audits & Amnesty

Millage Roll Forward Presentation – Abby Vian

Councilmember Morrell – Budget Process & Charter Amendment

Councilmember McCarran – Budget & Millage Discussion

Public Comment – Morgan Clevenger

Public Comment – Bob Maynard

Public Comment – Nellie Katzen

Youth Force NOLA Summer Internship Program

Alyssa

Good afternoon. Today, we will be providing the overview of the city's financial performance through August 2026. I'll start with the revenues and then I'll turn it over to the budget director here to go through the expenditure detail and then I'll wrap up with a fund balance projection. On this chart here, as of October, excuse me, August 31st, the city's financial position reflects $558 million in operating revenues and $483 million in personnel and other operating expenditures, resulting in $75.5 million year to date net position. On the far right of this chart here, you can see operating revenues are approximately $48 million above the year to date budget and expenditures are below by $50.5 million when compared to the spending benchmark. That expenditure benchmark is a useful comparison, but I always want to remind you that spending does not occur evenly throughout the year, so these variances should not be interpreted as a year end projection. The other financing section, the activity primarily reflects the transfers between the city's cash management fund, which we have used throughout the year to manage timing differences between revenue collections and expenditures. Because cash inflows and outflows do not occur at the same time or at consistent levels, these transfers help manage the city's cash needs throughout the year and should not be used with operating revenue or interpreted as additional revenue available to support the budget. Overall, the revenue results remain favorable against the forecast, while spending is below the straight line benchmark. Now we'll move on to the revenue collections report. Starting on the left with property taxes, collections are approximately $174 million, slightly below the $175 collected at this point last year, and just above the year-to-date budget of $171 million. Moving on to sales tax, we're approximately $188 million, which is essentially unchanged from last year and above the year-to-date budget of $178 million. Specifically, hotel and motel are below 2025 marks, while parking tax collections have increased. This category remains important to monitor as we assess the revenue outlook for the balance of the year. Service charge collections are approximately $65 million, which is down 3.2 or 4.7 from 2025, representing 63.8 of the annual forecast. Public safety service charges are down compared with the prior year, while sanitation charges are slightly higher. And because this category is below the prior year level, we'll continue tracking collections and the underlying activity driving these receipts. Licenses and permits, collections approximately $58.4 million, representing 77.1 of the annual forecast. As we've heard, occupational license collections are approximately $11.9 million, or 109% of their annual forecast. Alcoholic beverage license collections are also above their annual forecast. In contrast, building permit collections are approximately 47% of their annual forecast and are below the prior year level. Overall, the category is positive, but individual revenue sources show the different patterns. And then, of course, in the other category, which is approximately $72 million compared to the $43 last year, and a budget of $50, the increase is primarily driven by the miscellaneous revenue, including transfers from NOBC and the Assessor's Office. Excluding the increase in the miscellaneous revenue, the operating revenue categories, the other operating revenue categories, collectively decline by approximately $6.6 million compared to 2025. We should not assume that the elevated miscellaneous receipts will continue at the same pace, of course, without reviewing their underlying nature and expected recurrence. So that brings our total operating revenue of approximately $558 million compared to the $539 million this time last year, and our budget of $510 million. All right. Moving on to the expenses. Through August, combined personnel and other operating expenditures totaled approximately $482.7 million, or 60.3% of the adopted budget. This is approximately $50.5 million below year-to-date benchmark. Personnel spending totaled $292.1 million, while other operating was $190.6. Both below their benchmarks. I just want to note, too, we are in Quarter 4, so in Quarter 4, the Budget Office does a different dive and analysis with departments, so they start looking at open purchase orders, making sure everything is in expenditures, so we may see some ramp-up to make sure bills are paid, right, so we're not getting in trouble with Alyssa here, right? So we do that deep dive, so every department is not contacted, but there are ones with like the most spending, we're contacting those. For overtime, August overtime spending totaled approximately $1.6 million, which was $780,000 below projections, and $1.9 million below August of last year. Year-to-date overtime spending totaled approximately $18 million against an annual budget of $38.9 million. The administration continues to enforce overtime controls, and departments continually are asked to review and reduce overtime spending. a couple for staffing. As of August 31st, the city had 40 roughly 4400 field positions out of 4700 81 budgeted positions, leaving about 30 342 vacancies for about a 7% vacancy rate. These did increase from the previous month, a lot doing to budget freezes and even though some of the biggest offices like aviation and even some of the public works that are using alternate funding sources, people are just being really cautious of the spending of these actual critical hires, even if it's not general fund at this time. So we're just having more review. So to wrap it up, as of August 31st 2026, the 2025 general fund consolidated starting balance was $67.3 million. We had a consolidated surplus of $179 million for a combined reported balance of $246.3 million as of August 31st 2026.

Alyssa

In closing, the August results show a positive year-to-date operating position with revenue ahead of forecast and expenditures below the year-to-date benchmark. However, revenue growth is largely driven by the miscellaneous receipts rather than the broad-based increases across revenue sources. As we move toward year-end, we will continue to monitor recurring revenues, we will maintain spending discipline, and evaluate fund balances in the context of their intended uses. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Councilmember McCarron

Alyssa, I want to just touch back on the building permits. I know where you said we're, what, 47%. Have we looked at why that is? Is it, do we not have a lot of people applying for permits? Is it a processing time and we're not getting them processed? What, do you have y'all any insight on that? I'm working with Susanna on that and we're coming together on a reconciliation process, but we believe it has to do with the timing of when she actually issues or believes that the issuance will happen and then the actual collections of those permits. So in her reports, she believes we're going to meet budget still, if not exceed it, and then I'm just waiting to collect the revenue. Okay, when you get that from her, will you let us know what you find? Yes, exactly. Thank you.

Councilmember Willard

Hey Alyssa, how's the sales tax audits going? Yeah, I'm glad you asked. We are, I guess, what, three weeks in, started on October 1st, and we're just at, just about a million dollars receipts. But we do, I did get a message from Romy today. She's hoping for some more visibility. We've had it on social media. Oh, you're talking about amnesty. Oh, sorry. Yes, that's what I wanted to talk about. That was my second, that was my second question. You can finish with the amnesty. Yeah, so we're hoping to do some more media outreach to bring in, we want to get close to three to five million dollars in receipts by the end of the year. And we're at a million now? Mm-hmm. All right. How much did we include in the budget to bring in for this? For the amnesty? Did we include anything additional? Okay. The question that I was asking about are the audits for sales taxes. And how many have we? Yeah, just how's it going this year? Yeah, so it's definitely increased. The piece that I'm working on is actually seeing more collections. So we're trying to figure out for the ones that, whether seats or liens had to be filed, or if we're just sending that straight to the Office of Debt Recovery, how quickly can we get those collections in? Can you guys get us an update on the sales tax audit? On the numbers, yes. Certainly. That'd be great. All right. Thanks, Alyssa. Thank you. Thank you, Alyssa. And to the media who are here, if you could report on the amnesty program. We need that money. Thanks, y'all. Next up. Y'all okay to start? Yeah, please do. Abby, and if you could just bring the microphone closer. Thanks.

Abby Vian

Abby Vian, Chief Performance Officer and Chief of Staff to the CAO, Andrew Tuzolo, Special Counsel. We're here today to talk about the millage roll forward. So before we begin, none of this information is new, but I think it's helpful to situate the context of the millage roll forward in our budget, where we've been, and where we're going. So for those of you who were here during the 2025 process of building the 2026 budget, you'll remember that we started that process with a 222 million dollar budget gap, and only 725 million dollars in forecasted recurring revenues. This year in 2026, we identified 160 million dollars in one-time revenues, which brought our budget to 885 million. That supported recurring expenditures, but it also supported the repayment of the 125 million dollar revenue anticipation note. And we also did a lot to cut spending on the expenditure side to align our spending with our available resources. In 2027, as we look ahead to next year and we build that budget now, we see a slightly higher revenue forecast of 748 million dollars, and a significantly smaller but still notable budget gap of only 77 million dollars. We worked with departments to identify cuts in the budget to close that gap, to be able to present a balanced budget where recurring revenues and recurring expenditures are aligned, which we did last month. But we've also devised additional recurring revenue solutions to be able to minimize those service cuts. That looks like increases to outdated permitting fees, the increase to the nightly SCR fee, and what we're discussing today, a roll forward of the millage. So for the millions at home watching, what is a millage? So voters approve millages. Anytime a taxing authority, which today we'll refer to the city of New Orleans, desires to increase the funding available for a certain public service, they propose to the voters of New Orleans a millage, and that gets approved by voters. And then on property owners tax bill, they will see a millage which is essentially a proportion of their assessed property value that generates revenue for that particular public service. A millage, or the value of a mill, is equal to one dollar for every one thousand dollars of taxable assessed property value, which essentially means if the city of New Orleans has 5.58 billion dollars of assessed property, assessed taxable, which is important, taxable property value in the city of New Orleans, and so if a mill is one dollar for every one thousand of those dollars, that means that the value of one mill is 5.58 million dollars. The reason I say taxable is because only taxable properties are included in this number. So this does not account for non-profits, universities, churches, who do not pay property taxes. It only applies to anybody who is a taxable property and is paying those property taxes. When a millage is approved by voters, it has a maximum number of mills that are levied for that particular millage. It's tied to the value of a home. So if the value of a property goes up when the assessor does his assessments, the number of mills would naturally rise as well. However, that automatically does not occur because if millages rise, property taxes rise, and so when assessed value increases, the millage numbers actually automatically decrease to maintain property taxes at a stable level unless the taxing authority chooses to roll millages forward. What that actually means is in practice, the tax base of the city of New Orleans can increase in value and the city is foregoing revenue increases to a corresponding amount unless it rolls the millages forward. And in the squares at the bottom of the slide, you can see how this plays out with rollback and roll forward actions over time, where in 2023, the total mills levied by the city of New Orleans were 134.53, and today in 2026, they're notably less than that at 121.2. Even if all of the millages discussed today are rolled forward, that would bring the total city mills levied to 128.64, which is still less than the number of mills in 2023. And can we pause here just for a second to talk a little bit about that total number, which I think is often misunderstood. There are a lot of different entities that can affect that total number. One is sitting right here, another is the Board of Liquidation, too. So as the council members well know, for the public, as we take on bonded indebtedness, the Board of Liquidation is required to set a mill that allows us to pay that annual payment to be able to borrow that money. And that is not set by the council, it's set by the Board of Liquidation. And as bonds, if we pay off bonds, those mills come off. And that's been happening over the last several years, which is one of the effects on why the total tax rate has been creeping downward. The other, of course, and this is going to happen next year, is as properties are reassessed, especially in that quadrennial, the total assessment cannot cause that tax increase, which of course relates to this roll forward. And so that number creeps downward as the total assessed property value gets bigger. So it's just one of the ways in which both the council has the authority, there are other taxing authorities, but also there's some automatic indicators in there that does affect the millage rate. And to note, the Board of Liquidation rate has been falling, which has been creating a slight decrease in the total taxable rate over the last several years. So I'm sorry, Abby, I just want to point that out. There's a lot of data on this slide and the next. I want particularly to call attention just to the name of the millage and the far right column, which is the estimated additional revenue generated by each millage, if it were to be rolled forward. So the first two, general alimony and unrestricted general fund, are simply millages for the purposes of general city operations.

Abby Vian

They fund anything deemed appropriate and appropriated by the City Council and the mayor. If they are rolled forward, Collectively, we believe they would bring in about $10 million in additional revenue or about $84 million in total next year. The following five millages are also going to come to our general fund, but they are for dedicated uses, as established when voters approved them on their ballots. So police and fire, they fund police and fire activities. Parks and Parkways goes to the Parkways Department, and the Recreation Department is NORD. That funds are NORD. The one point that I want to make here is that the general fund, other types of revenues in the general fund, so permits, tax from sales tax and other revenues, make up a difference between the total appropriation to those departments and the actual revenue that comes in from the millage. In other words, these departments are not entirely funded by the millage revenues alone. And even if we were to roll forward each millage associated with the dedicated use of each of those departments, we would still be short in terms of the full cost to operate each department looking at our proposed budget numbers for next year. And I'll pause here again, and I want to thank the chair for bringing this to everyone's attention, because what we've tried to do here is very clearly delineate the mills that actually affect the budget deficit that y'all are facing, as opposed to other millages that do affect other services, but cannot affect the deficit that we are trying to close. And I think it's important to note, as we've said in the past, what's represented above here is $21 million that affect the general fund, general services that y'all would affect. There are other millages out there, but those do not affect that deficit. So I just want to drive that point home, especially for the press, because there's been a little bit of misunderstanding out there. Because, of course, there are other mills that we can roll forward that have really important services, whether libraries, early childhood, et cetera. One other note as well, there's a star up there, an asterisk next to parks and parkways in the recreation department. Years ago, several years ago, the voters approved what basically is a combined millage for both those two items and also Audubon. And so there is a third element, third, I think, just third element to that, that all roll together. So I just want to note that, that while there is another piece of that millage that would go forward if you rolled parks and recreation, it does not affect the general fund. I just want to note that. so to Andrew's point, these are the other millages that would provide revenue to the city, but not to the city's general fund. So the prior slide showed about $21.5 million in new revenues to city operations, dedicated or otherwise. This slide is additional revenue for specific purposes outside of that. So the police and fire platoon millage is strictly for the funding of fire and police platoons. That looks like platoon operations and direct payment to police officers and firefighters. That would generate about $4.3 million in additional revenue. The library would receive additional revenue directly to the library. The early childhood education millage funds seats for early childhood. That would generate about $3.4 million in additional revenue. And we spoke with Agenda for Children, who estimates that this would potentially lead to up to 200 new seats if received next year. To Andrew's point about the parks millage, the four components, it's four when you include City Park, of the parks millage include the previous slide, Nord, and Parkways, but it also includes Audubon and City Park, who receive revenue directly from the parks millage split four ways. And while that funding would go directly to those agencies, we do have partnerships in place with them to identify places where there are current general fund obligations that could be appropriately shifted to them with new resources they would receive from the millage roll forward. One example of that is Crescent Park, which is being developed at the riverfront by Audubon. I think it's about $260,000 for the security that is currently paid for by the city. So we've been in discussions about sharing some of those costs with new revenues. Yeah, I'll point out here, I know Council Member King isn't here, but for Council Member Harris as well, for all the riverfront, as she just noted, we have been in deep discussions and if you were to roll forward that millage, we would dedicate some of that money for security and public safety on the riverfront. Which has been a long time and current concern, as I'm on several email chains today, about issues around there. So we are, if that were to roll forward, we would be dedicating some of that money to that. And I know this is a priority of the City Council and the budget chair, as well as the administration, to provide this information directly to the public about what their impact would look like if the millages were rolled forward. And so, if you will indulge me, I will actually pull up the calculator and walk through it so that the public can see how to use it. While Abby's pulling up, there's a really cool piece of this calculator, which we'll show you in a moment, that allows you to toggle each millage and determine how much money the city would garner from each millage roll forward. And she's going to show you in a moment. And that gives you the overall macro context. And then, on an individualized basis, you can determine what does it affect, how does it affect me as a property owner. And that gives that other sort of variable there. Because I know a lot of folks cannot perceive of what this means. A tax increase could be a lot or a little.

Abby Vian

In most cases, as we'll show you, the roll forward that is on the table as one of the menu of revenue options has a pretty small impact on the average house, about $160 per year. It's not nothing. It is, for those who are facing affordability issues, it's not zero. But it is not a huge amount. The average tax bill is much higher than that, several thousand. So this is less than a several single-digit increase in taxes, if you want to put it in those contexts. But I still want to, Abby will provide a little bit more context as we play with the little tool. I think it's on the right there. So this page is nola.gov forward slash millages. Anybody can access this. This provides a lot of helpful information about what a millage is, how to understand your property tax bill, what a homestead exemption is. If you continue to scroll down, we have the notice of the November 5th meeting where this will be heard, and the enumeration of the different millages we've been discussing today. And all the way toward the bottom, you can actually click this button here that says calculate your property tax change. And as Andrew mentioned, you can toggle different scenarios, which I will show in a moment. But this auto generates to $315,700, which is the average home price in the city of New Orleans. Now, you can see here, for that average price in New Orleans, the annual increase to somebody's property tax bill would be $190. If you escrow your taxes on a monthly basis, that looks like a little bit less than $16 a month. If you want to go, and we encourage all residents and property owners to do this, and input your exact assessed value, you can see the varying impact on your bill. So if you have a $200,000 property on the West Bank, you would see an estimate of about a $104 increase on an annual basis, or about $8.66 each month. You can go in, you can play around with whether you have a homestead exemption, what type of property you have, again, whether you live on the East or West Bank. And while Abby's doing this, I want to point out, this is for all of the millages to roll forward. If we were only to discuss the general fund ones, I was giving that average earlier, just to clarify. And so for a $250,000 home, $141 annually, or $11.76 per month. And so what Andrew was discussing is this little toggle section right beneath the section I was playing with, where you can play around and say, you know, you really just want to have the general fund and the parks and the library funded. That actually decreases the overall impact to just $80.31 per year, or $6.69 for a $250,000 home. So not only can you customize it to the actual assessed value of your property, but you can see what different scenarios would look like if not every millage was rolled forward, compared to if the full slate of millages are rolled forward. If you don't know, which is understandable, what the exact assessed value of your property is, we have linked here the assessor's parish website, the Orleans Parish Assessor's website, and you can actually search by address your own property and you can find your exact assessed value and use that to input into this calculator to get the right numbers. A little bit further down, we provide information specifically about each millage, what it goes to, how much your specific contribution is split between the different millages, and the estimated revenues it would bring into the city if it were rolled forward. And for the math nerds, you can show the calculation details and see exactly what assumptions are factored into this. And I want to give Adam Gordon a shout out for building this. He's behind me, and if there are detailed questions, I will refer to him. Okay, so we have been discussing the millage roll forward as a revenue source, and this slide enumerates Mayor Moreno's priorities for restoring services with additional recurring revenues. I want to, before I turn it to Andrew, just really emphasize the recurring nature of these revenues. In 2026, we had such a large number of one-time revenues, that functioned as a recovery mode and to support us and get us through the rest of this year. And what we really need to look at going forward to sustainably support our expenditures is recurring revenues. And so we've been trying to do that collectively, the city council and the administration, and rolling the millages forward is the single largest option that we have at the moment for increasing our recurring revenues. And so in doing so, we would be able to restore certain cuts that are imposed in the proposed 2027 budget. Okay, so before I start with these obvious, you can see them on the board here, and I know that they've already been published. One thing I did want to note is that how did we get to these priorities? And I want to thank the council for all their collaboration. So, the first thing I want to do is just give a little bit of background on how we got here. So, where do we start? So, we had seven community budget meetings where we heard from, and I know a lot of the members showed up for those. Thank you for doing so. Hearing from the public on specific issues. I know the council members are holding at least maybe half a dozen budget town halls, maybe starting tonight even, and going through the next couple of weeks to hear feedback. We've been in close conversation with members for weeks now, hearing out. I know my team has been running around the second floor talking to folks and hearing about their interests and their concerns. I know that the mayor has spoken to council members directly as well, and we've heard from council members directly and also from the community. I know that some of you have seen this, but we've also had a survey out there for during our community budget hearings. We had a survey, and we sort of garnered some of those responses too.

Abby Vian

And through all of those pieces, hundreds of responses, people saying basically they wanted infrastructure, neighborhoods of quality of life, public safety. They want fiscal responsibility. They want to make sure the city workforce is taken care of. They want to make sure that we're growing the economy and growing jobs. All of that input helped the mayor come to a list of items that if the council were to roll forward, the millage would be the last piece of revenue. We've already worked on a bunch of others with you that we would fund these things. I want to go through them in an open, I'm sure council members might have comments, but I'll go through some of these, that these priorities, again, that the mayor wanted to restore if the millages were rolled forward. So as you all know, the low barrier shelter is on that list. She chose to restore that. Provide the council something that both the city council, this city council, and the previous city council worked very hard to achieve, and we've agreed that that is incredibly important both for eviction, to prevent eviction, and to create housing stability in this community. Sanitation services, I know there are two pieces here, so I'm going to get to the Mardi Gras thing, but sanitation services overall. We heard from sanitation the other day, I know you heard from them. Every department was asked to make a percentage cut. Sanitation doesn't have much but people. And so their choices were not many. And I know that Matt Tory was rightfully, I think, really, he had to do some really hard choices when he returned those cuts to the CAO's office, but he had to do so because that's what was there. And so what he provided was this cut that met the requirements, but ultimately really cut the head count there, which really affects service. I want to point out those services include not just the cleaning up illegal dumping, which is important to all members, but also cleaning up those public trash cans you all see, running our trash trucks, which we own, and doing cleanups after other events. That's really important. We know that. The mayor knows that. Basic services. That's a quality of life issue. So another piece, of course, I know Council Member Harris and others have said, you know, we have to have the Mardi Gras cleanup. Council Member Willard, I read your comments the other day, of course, we have to clean up after Mardi Gras. Everybody understands that. These are just services that we had to take a look at. The mayor would like to restore that. Parks and Parkways funding. I know Council Member McCarran had been very clear that seeing the grass cut less frequently was not an option. So we already have a delay there. Cuts to parks and parkways would increase that issue, and certainly neighbors all across the city hate to see overgrown lots, overgrown public spaces, rather. When you see all these public spaces overgrown, it makes all neighborhoods look bad. We don't want to delay those anymore, so we don't want to have those cuts. Neighborhood engagement. I know members have worked very closely with our Neighborhood Engagement Office. I want to point out here that not only is the mayor and the CAO are still sustaining that 10% salary cut in solidarity to all the work we're doing for efficiency, we've also taken significant cuts in the mayor's office from last year specifically. We have dozens of less people working in the mayor's office now, and this is another cut to the mayor's office. We don't want to make these cuts. We don't want to make any of these cuts, but this is again a place where the mayor would like to see this restored. I'm sure the council as well. Fire department funding. Fire department's doing an excellent job. We asked for this, again, percentage cut. The fire department gave us this option. This would mean reduced firefighters in firehouses, reduced fire protection services. I think everyone understands that's not something we want to see. Another really important point, I think this gets lost in the sauce, is that while we've had a tremendous reduction in violence in our community, historic reduction, multi-decade reduction in violence in our community, bless you, but this has not just been done through improved policing, which it has, but also a wraparound of really important services, violence interruption services, which we have restored when we were on the council, when then-council member Moreno and some of the members up here were on the council. We helped restore the funding for that. We've also worked very hard with the previous council and now with this council to expand civilianization and that's critical for a very important metric that everyone cares about, which is police response times. The way we have been able to reduce, and our friend Jeff Asher has done some great work on this, to show how much we have reduced the police response times from over 100 minutes to almost an hour for non-emergencies, that's people waiting for police for non-emergency things, let alone emergencies. We've reduced that as well. These civilians we've hired have radically altered the way we have utilized our limited officers, and by having basically the same number of officers but responding to more things with civilians, whether it's the crisis response piece or our civilians responding to non-emergent, those folks are doing excellent work to take the load off our blue shirt officers and making sure we can respond quickly. Reducing that, including with those who respond to accidents, to non-injury accidents, that's just not only quality of life, but it's a public safety issue, and so the mayor was very clear that we worked so hard to get here that going backwards here, we just don't want to see that. Again, none of these cuts we want to see, but specifically this one, we know there's been a real effect, there's an ROI on those civilian responders, and we know that cutting that will make effect.

Abby Vian

We've heard from the police on that, so we want to make sure we can do that. And the last thing that's on this list, but certainly not the, again, none of these cuts we would love to do, we want to do it all, but the maternal health funding, we're one of the few communities in Louisiana that provides extended and expanded access to care for recent mothers. I've heard wonderful testimony on that point when the health department was here. I heard Councilmember Caron, your points on that, and your lovely statement on that. We've made, again, this is another example of a place where we've made excellent progress in our community, provided a service that isn't provided in other places, and there's been real impacts, and we don't want to see that go away. So again, that's the list that the mayor has put together, hearing from all the stakeholders. I'm happy to discuss others. We know there are other things on the list we would also like not to, but as everybody knows, the numbers are the numbers. We have $77 million in deficit. Even with a roll forward in all the revenues, we can't get the 77. So there are things that we are going to have to forego, but these are things we think that with restoration on a millage roll forward, we would do this, and we would save a lot of these basic services and continue that quality of life that we've been able to build over the last few years. So with that, I'll take questions. Thank you.

Councilmember Morrell

First, I just want to begin by saying we will pass the budget, obviously. If you have no... early December and should the charter amendment passed it will change the complete nature of how the budget is managed insofar as it will no longer be the council passes a budget in the administration administers it it will be the council passes a budget and that is the budget and going forward administrations will not have the flexibility to move money around without council approval so we all kind of are are in the same ship sinking or sailing together so I just want to put that out as a point of clarification I did know Andrew the mayor and I've had conversations with Mike Swaya with Audubon Institute though they kind of get dragged along with parks and parkways and with Nord the conversations we've had thus far he has tacitly agreed that if Ottomans millage rolls forward that they will absorb the cost of maintaining Crescent Park correct that's right and the money that the city and French Mark Commission will save for not having to subsidize Crescent Park we money that is actually available to us to spend elsewhere we could augment that that's right okay because I just want to be clear because at the end of the day though it's not in the category of things that impact the general fund and we probably need to reduce that conversation with mr. Swyatt or writing but it should actually indirectly impact the general fund and that will have that money available when it comes to the jail and this is something I think might be a point of contention I appreciate the mayor having her priorities and no councilman he is not here but he and I both are in agreement with this these are your priorities we may have different priorities we'll meet somewhere in the middle when it comes to the 1.2 million dollars for the 27 individuals to staff the new phase 3 I don't think that's optional because having toward the facility with judge Afrik either we can choose to pay it or be made to pay it and I know that this administration is not like the Cantrell administration where we will spend we are not going to spend millions of dollars on bad litigation to ultimately have to pay anyway so if we know that 1.2 is not a may it's a shall I think we're gonna have to treat that as such in this budget season totally agree so I'll just note from our perspective that's new that was new information as of this week as I was to y'all and so obviously that was not something we took into effect you know impacting the budget we'll obviously keep continue working with them I know the sheriff is under some significant pressure to make the jail in a better place she does have some taxing authority I hope over time that she also looks at because there is some over time there's some opportunity to offload ultimately I will say generally for all the external agencies we are and I think the CEO says this often there's a significant huge amount maybe hundred million dollar impact to our our general fund budget that goes directly out the door to pay for other stuff constant as you know constitutional agencies that we did not create but that live in this world and then take from us and take from our taxpayers and so what I think over time I know the CEO is very focused on this is to find ways for them to stand on their own two feet so that more of our tax dollars can go to the services that people actually elect y'all and the mayor to implement and administer not services that they just pass on to another elected official to administer in their own way without much impact from us well and to that end I think that I'm sure you saw the exchange we had with the criminal court judges regarding their tremendous deficit from the state of Louisiana with how we restructured the court the court was kind of dragged along into a significant restructuring with the restructuring of the clerk's office and to that end I find that the clerk's office is in a very similar position to the sheriff's office when it was consolidated insofar as as we saw with Sheriff Hudson on our way out as we were trying to find money to augment her office we then found in the midst of Mike Waggis packs great work with audits that she was sitting on almost twelve million dollars in revenue in a bank account that could have been offsetting some of the money the city had provided for years to that end it is my intention to reach out to the CAO at the jointly asked Mike Waggis pack to look at the clerk's office I can tell you just in some very rudimentary basic investigation the combined clerk's office has 300 employees and it does not manage our staff juvenile court or traffic court nor does it pay for the minute clerks for the judges Baton Rouge their clerk's office that manages all of that has a hundred and seventy employees so the point being that I hear the concerns from the criminal court judges I look at the clerk our current clerk is sitting on upwards of close to anywhere from 20 to 25 million dollars in surplus the city will meet its obligations but like with the sheriff we need a clean bill of health of health on making sure that the courts are doing everything possible to make ends meet with the money they have in the city's role is to supplement that not to give them money we don't have while they're running surplus yes sir I appreciated councilman Harris today asked the French market corporation some of the cash positions and I think just so everyone understands this is not intended to be focused on any one elected official or one agency but rather broadly agencies sit on cash and then ask us to write them checks and I think we are long past a position that we could do that and so I think it is fair to ask every agency to reassess their cash position to see what how they can be more efficient and also spend more of their own money before they come asking City Council and the mayor's office for money right I mean because essentially when you look at we heard from the

Councilmember Morrell

criminal court judges a multitude of programming that they do that leads tangentially to that reduction in crime these are priorities they are things that we as a council want to support and we cannot bury the lead that part of the issue with the DA's office is that the governor reduced the number of warrants that the district attorney had right they create a deficit in his office the district attorney working with the council working with the AG create a homicide unit and a sex crimes unit that now don't have the money to staff them we are gonna have different departments that affect in a positive way our reduction in crime we need to have as many resources available to spread around of those agencies that have nowhere else to go we need to make sure that every single partner we don't have the luxury of sitting on massive surpluses that Moody's and Fitch and them don't require us to have that's right because I'm to that end the clerk's office isn't rated by rating agencies the French market Commission is not rated by rating agencies we are and part of the reason why we have that tremendous can't touch revenue revenue fund is because we're required to do so if you're not required to do so if you're collecting fees and let's be clear court fees are fees they're meant to be reused for operations not consolidated like Scrooge McDuck in a fund you could swim in it's supposed to be money that is spent and reinvested into the agency to make it operate and I am very uncomfortable dedicating any money to that agency as a whole until we make sure that those situations are exhausted I would once again encourage the clerk to meet with the JES to meet with the judges and figure something out cooperatively and come to us with transparent books to show what you need after you've spent what you had because the mayor's priorities though many of them line up with ours they don't all do and there's not enough money to go around that's right

Councilmember McCarran

Thank You madam chair this is helpful obviously today because I have my first town hall this afternoon this evening so what what the reason why I'm having town halls is to explain in a in an easy way for people to understand exactly what the cuts mean if we do not roll anything forward and I just want to clarify here from this list that we have the total here is twenty seven point four million dollars so essentially general fund impact from that millage if you want to go to page three I just want to make it very clear and make sure I'm understanding correctly so this would give us around twenty one ish million dollars correct that's right okay so essentially we are just barely covering these basic services if those are the only millages that we roll forward that's right and and thank you for bringing it up I should have made that total more obvious but this is more than even the restoration under a millage would look like look at the end of the day as council president morale noted this isn't this is a conversation we're having with y'all and we want to make sure that you understood where we were coming from and look most of these are things that y'all have brought up in the past and I hope I mentioned everyone who did but ultimately we know that again we cannot fund even the things on this list eat with this roll forward let alone other things on this list so it is a tenuous position but we did want to make sure that if there are new revenues there are some things that we just think we cannot go without next year and we don't want people to go without our citizens to go without yeah thank you just wanted that clarity sure all right I do have a couple comment cards the first is from Morgan Clevenger and the second is from Bob Maynard and just a reminder you get two minutes to speak

Morgan Clevenger

Good afternoon before we start the clock can we get a clarification from something councilmember Morrell said about the amendment that's on the ballot Morgan went to which amendment it's the one that's on the ballot to be voted on oh the Charter amendment yeah yeah can you clarify that again please are you running my clock yeah yeah we'll reset it Morgan okay thank you it's real simply put so historically when the council and the mayor pass a budget under the current Charter once the council passes a budget there is expansive language saying the CAO then has the ability to reconcile the budget which has been interpreted over years to move money around without coming back to the council for approval without identifying where the money comes from or really any transparency part of how we ran that massive deficit we're still digging our hole out of is that tremendous amounts of money were fronted for things like roadwork that were never disclosed to the council of the public what the amendment does going forward should it pass is once the budget is asked, in order for money to be moved around, the administration will have to come to the council with an ordinance that says, I'm moving money from part A to part B. Identify where the money's coming from, where it's going, and the council will have to pass an ordinance to do it. It seems cumbersome, but it's what the state legislature does every time. The Joint Committee on the Budget, which I know Matt Willard and I both sat on, it meets monthly just to okay these things, but what it does is, one, it makes it more transparent, but two, you can't deficit spend, because if you're going to spend money, you have to detail publicly where it's coming from. That's all.

Bob Maynard

This year, there's only $2 million set aside for unpaid judgments. There's $80 million unpaid judgments. That'll take 40 years to pay it off at $2 million each. My client deserves to be paid what the city promised to pay him plus the interest because the judgment in 2008 has deteriorated by over 50% because of CPI, because of inflation. And now the city is telling me that they don't want to pay, not only do they not want to pay the interest, but they only want to pay the little bit of $2 million that is left over after paying the first 100 people in front of him. Those judgments are invalid that are ahead of him because they have not been revived, yet the city attorney is using that as an excuse not to pay whatever is left over of even the $2 million. So even if they spend $500,000 on judgments ahead of him, they won't pay him the $1.5 million and then the $2 million and then whatever it takes to pay him off because they say we're not going to pay you until we have all of the money in our coffers to pay. Thank you.

Nellie Katzen

Good afternoon, Nellie Katzen with the Committee for a Better New Orleans and the Big Easy Budget Coalition. Folks are struggling. I know you all are hearing that from your constituents. It's something we're hearing as well. And I think that a change to property taxes would be a lot more understandable by everyday folks if people had more clarity on where the money is going day to day. The administration has made some major strides in increasing the transparency of spending, and that has made a difference in a big way. And I think generally at issue here is trust, public trust that paying more in our property taxes will improve the services and the reality that they're living within their communities. It's hard to trust that without being able to see transparently what it's funding, where that money is going, and the fact that it is indeed being used to improve people's quality of life and the problems they're seeing within their communities. And so I know we've been working hard with the administration and with the council on improving the transparency of spending, and I encourage continued improvements on transparency to help restore the trust that is really going to be a barrier for increases like this one to the military. Thank you.

Kate Swinburne / Sarah Bell

Kate Swinburne and Sarah Bell, Youth Force NOLA. Thank you for having us. Each year since the city resumed their support of Youth Force NOLA internships, we have committed to reporting to the city via city council meetings in person in addition to our written reports. I'm thrilled today to be joined by my colleagues Sarah Bell and Story by Kate, who will share the work that our awesome young people, our incredible partners, and our awesome staff accomplished this summer. This year, the presentation does fall during budget season, so we've included one slide just to talk about the impact of budget cuts on the Youth Force Internship Program, but our focus today really is just celebrating the impact of the summer. We did also share with council members and committee members a written impact report, so you have that, I believe, on your desk, and just look forward to sharing these successes and answering any and all questions. And so with that, I'll pass it to Sarah. Thank you. So many of you know Youth Force NOLA, but we believe in the potential of our young people in public high schools, and that potential inspires us. And our work is really rooted in this vision that all young people in New Orleans will fulfill their potential in work and life, and the city and all of you as city council members are part of moving us forward in that vision. And we want to start our appreciation for the city's most recent investment in Youth Force NOLA's Internship Program by showing you the headshots and the names of more than 200 of our amazing summer interns. Here are some highlights from our 2026 summer program. With funding from the city, 224 young people worked more than 35,000 hours and earned nearly half a million dollars. And the money that you invested in Youth Force NOLA went back out into the hands of our city's young people, paying them for their summer work experience. After training with Youth Force NOLA's coaches, interns went to work across 76 employers in every city council district, and half of these businesses are led by people of color, with 61 percent women or non-binary owned. We've gotten great feedback on our internships, as you can see, from students, from supervisors who work alongside our interns, and from families. Our interns come from every open enrollment public high school in the city, and when we say open enrollment, we mean those that don't have admissions criteria. We received 557 applications from rising seniors from every open enrollment high school in New Orleans, all in about 15% of the class of 2027 applied for our internship. We had to cap our acceptances at about 288, which was just about half of our applicants, largely due to budgetary constraints. And before our interns head off to their work placements, Youth Force NOLA provides training to help them be ready for the world of work, and half of the training that we provide is focused on soft skills. With interns, we focus specifically on the hireability skills that you'll see on page 2 of the packet that we've given you, and these are things like under professional attitude, graciously accepting criticism. Under time management, they learn to manage their time and not procrastinate. Under teamwork ethic, they actively look for additional tasks when their own work is done. And under core problem solving, they unpack problems into manageable parts, critical pieces of becoming a future professional. And these are skills that we all need for success in the workplace, but they're not always clearly named or taught to our young people. So our training makes sure that they go into work truly ready for day one. And we hear from interns like James on this slide how big of a difference it makes to be ready for the workplace. Since Youth Force NOLA was founded in 2015, we have offered a summer internship for high school students. The internship was our first career-connected learning initiative, and we started with just 18 interns. We knew it would be among the most intensive program to build out, but we were really committed and are still committed to getting it right. Over time, we've scaled our program and are now able to put more than 250 students into paid internships, working with dozens of employers around the city. Employees from Ochsner to Entergy, Landis Construction to the newly headquartered Capado, and several city departments all welcomed in high school interns this summer. We have set a target for summer of 27 to return to a larger cohort number based largely on the demand of our young people. As Dory mentioned, we have way more applicants than we've been able to support, and school partners. They want access for their students for high-quality summer internships that are aligned with the Louisiana Department of Education's accountability standard. And while we are very people-centered as an organization, we are data-driven as well. And the data that we've gathered over the years about the efficacy of our internship program demonstrates that Youth Force NOLA's internship changes economic outcomes and puts young people on a path to true economic prosperity. The figures that are on the slide and in your updated packet have changed a little bit since the report that Kate shared with you just a few weeks ago. We just recently received our 2026 alumni survey data, and we are still seeing that our alumni are staying connected to school, work, or both, that they're making more money than their peers, equivalent to $10,000 a year more than other peers in their age group. They have greater economic mobility over time, and we are excited that 83% are reported to staying in the greater New Orleans area, up from 75% in recent years. And Youth Force has partnered with the city since our inception to fund these intern stipends, and we also rely on significant investment from private funders. The city contract of $500,000 in 2026 represented about a third of our total internship budget.

Kate Swinburne / Sarah Bell

And over time, we've been able to leverage the city investment to secure federal, state, and philanthropic support. So here's the part where I just remind us of impacts of budget cuts, just we'll get to one slide. But so the $500,000 city investment in 2026 did allow us to work with 224 interns. That was a 41% reduction from the prior year. So with the cut from 25 to 26, we did have to make a reduction in the number of interns served, and so that was 50 to 60 fewer students served between calendar 25 and 26 because of that budget reduction. For 2027, if we are not able to secure an investment from the city, we're actually at a $685,000 gap, and we are aiming to start recruitment on January 1st. So a gap of $685,000 would mean that we would have to significantly reduce enrollment and the offerings we could make out to school partners and young people. So that is that slide, and we'll move on to other fun news. So as you can see on this map, school districts, governments, and nonprofits from around Louisiana and the country have built or scaled their internship program with our help. They come to us looking at our model and asking for support to improve theirs. We're privileged to serve and prioritize well over 200 of your constituents, our city's young people, every year here in New Orleans. And we know that there's an expanded role that YouthForce can play in supporting the larger ecosystem of summer workforce development here in the city. We've been meeting regularly with Kevin Ferguson, Jeff Schwartz, and Dr. Jenna Vegno to map out what a supporting partnership for the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program could look like. We've built out several models, we're testing them, but we believe that all of the models could grow the overall reach of summer youth employment in the city while really deepening the quality of the Mayor's program. We're confident that with the reinstated funding for YouthForce NOLA directly and full funding of the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program, we'll be able to elevate the spectrum of employment opportunities that our young people and their families truly count on every summer. With that, we are excited to be here, we are so thankful again for the city's support and we're happy to answer all questions. Thank you.

Budget/Audit/Board of Review Committee.

Summary

Context

Speakers noted

Key decisions and votes

Actions and follow-ups

Discussion themes

Unresolved issues

Overall takeaway

Context and purpose

Key points and figures

Speakers and references

Decisions, votes, actions

Unresolved issues and public interest

Bottom line

Overview

Priorities and rationale

Priority items to restore if roll-forward occurs

Process and rationale

Budget mechanics and related issues

Crescent Park maintenance issue

Speakers and roles

Actions and decisions

Unresolved issues and questions

Key numbers cited

Bottom line

Overview

Notable speakers and points

Actions proposed or requested

Unresolved issues and open questions

Key numbers cited

Bottom line

Opening context

Youth Force NOLA presentation

2026 Summer Internship Program data

Budget and funding context

Next steps and requests

Unresolved issues

Key takeaways

Transcript

Budget Presentation – August 2026 Budget Report

Councilmember McCarron – Building Permits Discussion

Councilmember Willard – Sales Tax Audits & Amnesty

Millage Roll Forward Presentation – Abby Vian

Councilmember Morrell – Budget Process & Charter Amendment

Councilmember McCarran – Budget & Millage Discussion

Public Comment – Morgan Clevenger

Public Comment – Bob Maynard

Public Comment – Nellie Katzen

Youth Force NOLA Summer Internship Program