Subject
title
Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Public Hearing #1
end
Department
Finance
Recommendation
Staff recommends that the Mayor and Council conduct the public hearing and keep the record open until April 2025.
Discussion
The goal of this public hearing is to solicit community input early in the development of the FY 2026 Operating Budget and Capital Improvements Program (CIP). Ordinance No. 03-23 established a requirement that one budget public hearing be held prior to the City Manager’s submission of a recommended budget.
Ordinance 03-23
Now, therefore, be it ordained by the Mayor and Council of Rockville, Maryland as follows: That in October or November of each year and after fifteen days’ notice, a public hearing on the budget for the next fiscal year will be held by the Mayor and Council. The public hearing will occur prior to the City Manager’s submission of a recommended budget for the upcoming fiscal year beginning July 1 and ending June 30.
This public hearing is part of the City’s efforts to engage residents in the formulation of the budget. Staff have also requested input from the community through the Propose-A-Project process, by which individuals and neighborhood groups submitted project proposals for the FY 2026 budget process (Attachment B/Attachment C), as well as through an online survey (Attachment A), which has been open since September 3, 2024.
Community suggestions will be incorporated into staff’s review and preparation of the proposed budget. Additional public hearings will be scheduled after the FY 2026 proposed budget is presented in March 2025.
Mayor and Council History
This is the first public hearing related to the FY 2026 budget.
Public Notification and Engagement
This public hearing was advertised in the Washington Post on October 10 and October 17, 2024. It was posted to the City of Rockville’s website and social media accounts and the cable Channel 11 bulletin board. The original date of November 4 was included in the October edition of “Rockville Reports” and an editor’s note about the change to October 28 was included in the article on RockvilleReports.com.
This is the first of several public hearings related to the FY 2026 budget. In addition to these public hearings, the public can submit written comments directly to the Mayor and Council via the City Clerk/Director of Council Operations.
The FY 2026 budget public record is scheduled to close in April 2025.
Fiscal Impact
There is no fiscal impact associated with this agenda item; however, the FY 2026 Operating Budget and CIP will establish the annual City budget and the programs that the City will fund starting on July 1, 2025.
Next Steps
Two more public hearings are scheduled for the Spring after the presentation of the FY 2026 proposed budget.