Mayor Kim Ecklund briefly discussed the upcoming budget release happening this afternoon with city council during Monday’s work session. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Mayor Kim Ecklund will release the city budget Wednesday afternoon – and it’s been a challenging process even before the City Council begins its review.

At Monday’s City Council work session Ecklund said the budget has to be released Wednesday and that she and comptroller Ericka Thomas will be spending most of the day Tuesday continuing to work on it before the official release. The official release will be at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, giving them as much time as possible, and Ecklund encouraged all City Council members to come.

“I’m going to take this moment, again I know I said it last week but I do really want to thank the internal team that has really been challenged and pushed to the limit this budget deliberation,” Ecklund said. “I’ve said it before and I hate to sound like a broken record but this budget has not been easy. We’ve asked everyone to take a hard, hard look at some things. We’re faced with a lot of challenges that are not ours that were made.”

Ecklund added they have no control over state mandates or state retirement pensions, and that trying to make those balance with what the city looks to provide for the community has been tough this year.

Council president Tony Dolce briefly discussed the upcoming council schedule which will include budget presentations from all of the departments in the city. Next Monday there is no meeting because of a federal holiday, but Dolce said with the next meeting on the 20th he expected there to be budget presentations then and some prior to the voting session on the 27th. The first November work session is Nov. 3, so more presentations should occur that night and again on the 17th and the 24th voting session. Dolce said there is an extra meeting day before the budget needs to be approved as well, thanks to Dec. 1 being the first work session for that month.

“So if the budget is not done by the 24th we could go all the way to the first,” Dolce said. “It gives us one extra week because Dec. 1 is a Monday. And of course by our charter we have to have it passed by the first so it’s either going to be the 24th or if we need an extra week for some more ideas we have that extra week.”

This gives the city council five and possibly six meeting weeks to work on the budget, and there will be a schedule for what department will present what night. Normally, Dolce said those will happen prior to regular meetings, so probably about 6 p.m. or 6:15 p.m. on meeting nights.