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Council reviews FY2027 budget markups amid calls for clearer public presentation
Summary
At a special meeting, Percival Town Council reviewed FY2027 budget markups and fielded detailed Q&A on CIP priorities, staffing and accounting changes, with some members urging a more traditional public overview before department-by-department hearings.
The mayor convened a special session for a question-and-answer review of the proposed FY2027 budget, emphasizing the council’s posted list of outstanding questions and staff responses on the town website. Council members pressed staff for clarifications on capital improvements, staffing additions and how accounting changes would shift reported costs between the general fund and utility funds.
Town manager Tony Sebbio said the budget’s mission is to “get a structure balanced” and to fund critical infrastructure while retaining key staff. Finance staff explained a shift away from indirect chargebacks to direct payroll-based allocations, which will lower adjustments shown on the general-fund side while allocating those costs directly to departmental personnel lines in utility funds. “Going forward, it will now be done not as an estimate…every pay period when someone's pay is processed, we're actually billing it to the correct fund,” the finance director said.
Members raised procedural concerns about meeting format and public transparency: one councilor said the usual public overview had been skipped and asked why the council had not first presented a budget overview to citizens before working through department detail. Staff responded that budget books had been distributed and that department-level review could be conducted at the next regular meeting. Council agreed to review additional utility-rate scenarios and consider markups at the next meeting before the formal public hearing.
