First thing you need to know is the DeKalb city council does not, as a rule, run real public hearings on budgets anymore. Usually they look pretty much the same as public comment portions of regular council meetings, except without the usual three-minute time limit. For example, you don’t get to test staff representations of fiscal realities by any amount of cross-examination.
I went anyway. My remarks included almost literal 20 questions about the proposed 2026 budget, none of which were answered.
Afterward, city manager Bill Nicklas talked about staff having worked on the budget for the past six months — plenty of time already to have given input, he suggested. But this is disingenuous. Only three public budget meetings take place in August, October, and mid-November, and none of them provide the give-and-take that a hearing should (and used to). There’s only time scheduled for regular public comment, which the city has no obligation to respond to.
While I suspect the administration doesn’t really want public input, I also think the budget timeline doesn’t serve any of us very well. Following the mid-November meeting, the tentative budget gets posted, with only 10 days between that posting and the public hearing and first vote. By the time of the hearing, staff are clearly finished, psychologically speaking, with their budget masterpiece. But a pro forma hearing isn’t enough; at that same point more members of the public are just getting interested, as next year’s taxation becomes a concern.
DeKalb could improve the situation by introducing interaction into the process before the hearing. Some of the budget timeline is statutory, but the city could include a Q&A with the audience during a budget meeting. As it happens, a fourth, just-in-case budget meeting in November is scheduled each year but always canceled. I suggest for next year the city use this fourth meeting to invite the public to dig into the budget using the popular town-hall format.
The Q&A would level up participation and transparency. Just as importantly, it should render the formal budget hearing less fraught by dealing with potential controversies a bit earlier in the process.
Final vote on the 2026 budget comes December 8.