03-24-2026 Council [14:43-19:47]

You should have in your packet, the latest memo from Department of Local Government Finance, Budget Director on lit submissions is July 2, 2025. Do you all have that document? I just wanted to go over the principal points of this. What I understand that the council is considering is a change in the distribution of lit. Now, your contract with Baker Tilly has that been executed yet or OK? Has in that is included one of the scope services is an analysis of lit and also the reestablishment of the capital development fund. The lit is the function of the county council. The cumulative capital development fund and the rates are established by the Board of Commissioners. So what I wanted to point out in terms of the lit in this particular document, if you get it in front of you, the timelines are shown on for your particular changes that you're considering are pure on page two, about half the way down, an ordinance that I'm going to leave out all the words that don't apply, an ordinance that changes a distribution or allocation of taxes takes effect as follows. We're in the category number one. An ordinance adopted after December 31 of the immediately preceding year, and before November 2, the current tax year effect takes effect January 1 of the year, immediately following the year in which the ordinance is adopted, so we're talking about 2027. And so that's the one that we're lined up to meet the target on. And go back to the first page, the requirements for this are under the lit submissions. The code requires the county to submit a notice of public hearing and adopting ordinance or resolution and a vote on the ordinance and resolution. Now the notices are of two categories, a published notice of the hearing and the notice to the units that are affected by the proposed changes. So those are two separate things. So a hearing will be held either during a meeting or at a separate time at the discretion of the council and notice will be published in the newspaper and then provided to the units that receive allocation of lit. If you want to begin a conversation with the other units, you can do a courtesy letter saying we're considering this at this time and we're going to follow the steps to get to the public hearing. Of course, you can't make a decision until you've had the public hearing but you adopt the proposed ordinance as a proposed ordinance and then have the public hearing on it and then decide year and then that vote determines what you've done to the ordinance. So the auditor's office and I have combed every place that we can find to find or existing lit ordinance and we haven't been able to find it. So I have sent an email to the support staff at DLGF for them to send a copy of our existing lit ordinance because it needs to be referred to in the amending ordinance and the details we need to know. So that's hopefully on its way. So I anticipate that we will have that information. I would hope yet this week or next week and then I can draft. I think we need to actually draft the proposed ordinance for the council's consideration to authorize the notice to be given to and then the notice to be given with the company proposed ordinance to the other units that are affected by the change in the distribution of the lit. So and then the hearing will be a notice of the actual hearing is once published one time, 10 days before the public hearing and then so there's only one