Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Budget Process topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Annapolis council narrows process for budget amendments, sets straw‑poll ranking ahead of June 1 vote
Summary
At a May 21 work session the Annapolis City Council agreed to use a nonbinding straw‑poll (scores −1 to 3) to prioritize spending amendments and asked members to submit rankings before the June 1 formal vote; staff will refine pay‑for figures and return detailed write‑ups for final amendments.
The Annapolis City Council on Thursday tightened the process for finalizing FY2027 budget amendments, directing staff to circulate a nonbinding straw poll that councilors will use to rank proposed spending items ahead of a June 1 vote.
The change, proposed and explained by Finance Committee Chair Alderman Huntley, asks each council member to score each spending amendment on a scale from −1 (oppose) to 3 (top priority). Huntley said the results will be used only to order items for deliberation, not to substitute for a vote: "Keep in mind, this is not voting. This is just a straw poll. This is just for us to get a sense of where everybody is," he said.
Why it matters: Councilors said the ranking system will help them see tradeoffs between new spending and the pay‑fors that would cover it. Deputy City Manager Buckland told the council that separating pay‑fors from spends can change how members evaluate tradeoffs, and recommended approaches for staging votes or returning between the two lists as needed.
Council members debated two basic approaches — voting on pay‑fors then spends, or producing an ordered list of spends and separately ordering pay‑fors — and favored a hybrid process that lets the body move between pay‑fors and spends during the final session so members can understand the practical tradeoffs. Several members asked staff to avoid introducing new day‑of amendments and to submit final amendment language in the window before the meeting so finance and law can vet them.
The finance team said it will publish the final, vote‑ready amendment documents before June 1 and will send the straw‑poll spreadsheet to each council member individually to collect their rankings. Budget staff cautioned that several pay‑for items remain "TBD" pending validation (for example, proposed vacancy savings) and that the operating gap is still being refined; at the time of the meeting the operating gap stood at an interim $851,000 based on the current set of proposed amendments and offsets.
The council will reconvene June 1 to consider the ordered amendments and take formal votes.
