City Council holds budget work session Saturday morning

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

City leaders gathered Saturday morning for a budget work session following City Manager De'Carlon Seewood's Budget Address.

The city manager's office presented a detailed version of the budget and gave council members the opportunity to ask questions.

De'Carlon Seewood spoke with ABC 17 News about the importance of today's work session.

"This is the first time that we've actually talked to our council about what's in the proposed budget and so the idea is just to kind of present the budget, present some of our changed, present some of our new decision items." Seewood said.

New decisions like the housing and neighborhood programs department the city has introduced in this year's budget.

Seewood says the city will pull out all the housing functions they have and put them into one department.

"We're going to have a new department who's sole focus will be on housing - and that's to assist with affordable housing, assist with affordable housing, assist with regular housing, assist with code enforcement," Seewood said. "Just to make sure we have one place that is dealing with all those programs."

While the council members had the opportunity to comment on the budget today, Seewood wants to remind residents that they will have the opportunity to comment on the budget as well.

"They neat part is that we have three public hearing coming up at our next three council meetings and that will give our residents this lot kind of weigh in," Seewood said.

Those public hearings will be August 7, August 21, and September 5 and residents can submit a comment on the proposed budget at www.beheard.como.gov.