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North College Hill budget committee reviews draft 2026 budget, moves to executive session on salary ordinance
Summary
At a Nov. committee meeting, staff presented a monthly reconciliation and the draft 2026 budget, highlighting police overtime savings from a shift change and outstanding project accounting; the committee then voted to enter executive session to discuss the salary ordinance and related bargaining agreements.
The North College Hill Budget & Finance Committee reviewed the city’s monthly reconciliation and a draft 2026 budget, discussed line-item changes for police staffing, events and professional services, and moved into executive session to consider a salary ordinance and bargaining agreements.
Finance presenter Speaker 2 opened the meeting’s financial segment with the monthly bank reconciliation, saying, “Our adjusted book balance is sitting at $9,000,618.92 and outstanding checks of about $139,000,” and reported the city’s overall cash position as strong while noting some levy funds (waste collection and fire levy) showed negative balances tied to prior-year accounting entries that staff will correct with auditor direction.
Committee members focused on several potential impacts in the 2026 draft. Speaker 3 described a staffing and scheduling change for public safety that takes effect Jan. 1, 2026: instituting a 12‑hour rotating shift pattern and implementing a state overtime threshold that the staff described as an 86‑hour rule for police and fire. Speaker 3 said the change is expected to reduce overtime costs, estimating roughly $60,000 in base-pay savings and about $90,000 when overtime multipliers are included. “We implemented that going forward in 2026, January 1, 2026,” Speaker 3 said.
The committee also questioned several line items: the OPERS entry for police (Speaker 4 asked why it rose; Speaker 2 attributed the increase to cadet and new-officer costs), a 50,000 professional-services allocation in administration (discussed as prior economic-development consulting that may be used in 2026), and placement of a one‑time delinquent-tax collection charge that had been placed in the council’s budget rather than a finance line. Members debated whether small predictable expenses—legal advertising, yard signs, event supplies—should remain in council accounts or be moved to finance or operating buckets.
On grant accounting, Speaker 8 asked about the We Thrive funds from Hamilton County Public Health; Speaker 2 and Speaker 3 explained that We Thrive revenues and expenses appeared in older budget years (for example, 2023) and that no We Thrive money was confirmed for 2026 unless a new grant application is submitted and budgeted.
Before entering executive session, committee members discussed file-version dates and which spreadsheet in the packet represented the most current numbers; Speaker 2 advised the Friday-distributed file was the most accurate and said that once the budget is placed on the council floor it is locked for certification and will be difficult to change. The committee then moved, seconded and entered an executive session at 8:31 p.m. ‘‘Executive session at 08:31,’’ the chair announced; the transcript records no roll-call vote tally beyond a vocal assent. The committee returned from executive session at about 8:58 p.m. and adjourned.
The meeting raised several follow-up tasks: staff said they will correct an apparent medical-insurance line-item typo flagged during the meeting, clarify vendor use under the legislative professional‑services line, and confirm treatment or relocation of the delinquent-tax and legal‑advertising line items in the final package that goes to the council floor.
