Monroeville held the first of two required public hearings on the draft 2026 municipal budget, where department heads described key pressures and council asked for additional cost estimates and clarifications.

Mayor opened the meeting by noting the hearing is non‑voting and that the council will hold a second hearing next week before considering the budget at the December regular meeting. Department presentations that evening focused on information technology, senior services and public safety.

Tina Mueller, the IT department head, told council that the largest driver in her budget is contract service fees, and she advised staff to plan for an industry‑wide vendor price increase she summarized as a roughly 45% rise in Microsoft subscription costs. She said alternatives such as Google Workspace would impose large training and security costs: “We could think about it, but it would be a huge training expense,” Mueller said.

Senior center director Tara said her operating request was largely unchanged from the prior year but flagged three items for council’s attention: an hourly‑rate adjustment for a longtime fitness coordinator, overtime tied to expanded evening programming, and new election‑day staffing costs now that the senior center will serve as a polling location. Tara said the center already spent about $5,000 this fall for election‑day staffing while the line item had been budgeted at $3,200.

Chiefs representing Monroeville’s five fire companies asked for modest increases to keep pace with rising equipment and personnel costs. The group requested an additional $10,500 in the fire suppression line to purchase PPE — helmets, boots and turnout gear — and proposed a $65,000 increase to ambulance contributions, noting EMS call volume and staffing demands have been growing.

Finance staff outlined two structural changes that contributed to department‑level increases. Josie, representing the finance office, explained the council asked staff to show post‑employment retiree health costs (OPEB) inside each department budget rather than in a stand‑alone OPEB fund. Council members and the manager said that change is intended to improve transparency but will raise individual department totals. The manager described the existing OPEB account as materially underfunded and said departments will now reflect the true costs of retiree health obligations.

Council and staff repeatedly urged department heads to supply estimates that would clarify whether individual projects should be classified as capital or operating, and asked public works for more precise cost figures for planned maintenance and facility work.

Next steps: the council scheduled a second required public hearing next week at 6:30 p.m.; staff will provide more detailed cost estimates for the projects and classification questions raised during the hearing. No votes were taken at the session.