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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,January 23,2017 :Page 28 cilmember Laliberte noted it allowed for more flexibility with the remaining budget schedule. Mayor Roe agreed with that concept; along with synthesis and summary reporting on that information; with public comment heard in work session format without specific budget action items on that agenda. Councilmember McGehee suggested incorporating budget comments as part of comprehensive plan update kick-off activities, perhaps with the Finance Commis- sion available to distribute budget comment cards with a dashboard of the 2017 budget to obtain early responses. Specific to forecasting operational needs, Councilmember Etten agreed that those areas with concrete information (e.g. union contracts, insurance, etc.) be articulat- ed in projections. From her perspective, Councilmember McGehee stated the most important com- ponent for her was service levels or impacts to ongoing maintenance, with multi- year budgetary impacts tied to projects or decisions in any given year. Coun- cilmember McGehee asked that additional information be provided on as much of a factual basis as possible as part of the package when making budget decisions and involving everything from projects or operations. Councilmember Etten spoke in support of staff s suggestions, allowing the public to be more aware of budget impacts throughout the year, including laying out that information in the City News newsletter if available. Mayor Roe stated that he was definitely supportive of a unified budget track, and its availability on the city's website and its status. As discussed related to land use processes, Mayor Roe suggested that good information and budget reports made available to the City Council be included on the budget web page for public access at any time as well. Mayor Roe noted his preference for graphical presen- tations whenever possible, changing bar graphs and categories accordingly and beyond one pie chart, including gross numbers and percentages of budget at any given time and how those things are related. Mayor Roe noted that there were different ways available to present the same message depending on the audience, but building on the dashboard information as suggested by Councilmember McGehee. Mayor Roe opined that the city was getting closer to what was needed, but that it still required some tweaking. While agreeing with unified budget tracking but recognizing that information re- mained ever-changing, Councilmember Willmus opined that regardless of wheth- er or no a not-to-exceed decision and date was accomplished, he found it disin- genuous to not acknowledge for the public that there may be changes to that number. Specific to the CIP, Councilmember Willmus opined that the City