Portland councilors will hold one of the busiest public meetings of the year so far on Monday, which serves as the unofficial kick off for budget season.

Here’s what to expect:

MANAGER’S BUDGET

City Manager Danielle West will unveil her proposed 2026-27 fiscal year budget, kicking off more than a month of deliberations on next year’s spending plan.

The finance committee will begin reviewing the proposed budget at its April 16 meeting, and is scheduled to hold a public hearing May 7. The council will then hold a first reading May 18.

During a February preview, West said staff were preparing for another challenging year due to the increased cost of employee benefits, social services and more. Most councilors agreed at the time to a goal of keeping a tax increase in the range of 5% to limit the impact to taxpayers. For this year’s budget, the increase was 7.4%

CAPITAL SPENDING

Councilors will also vote Monday on next year’s capital spending plan, which calls for $24.4 million in new bonds to help pay for a list of infrastructure needs, building repairs and equipment purchases that totals $46 million.

City officials have debated items like an additional $500,000 request to complete a long-planned overhaul of Congress Square Park, and councilors could propose amendments to the plan Monday.

The capital plan also includes school department items like a $250,000 gym roof replacement at Lincoln Middle School and $1.7 million for a heating and cooling system work at Portland Arts & Technology High School.

ICE COOPERATION

The council will decide Monday whether to expand limitations on cooperating with federal immigration enforcement to all city employees, following similar ordinances that have been implemented in Lewiston and Rockland.

The item comes after weeks of negotiating ordinance amendments with the city’s legal team and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, which has brought the language to multiple cities in response to federal action that the organization argues is unconstitutional.

While the item appears on Monday’s agenda as a first reading, a memo states that councilors Pious Ali and Regina Phillips, who brought the matter forward, have requested the second reading be waived, which requires seven affirmative votes to pass it as an emergency.

Phillips told fellow councilors that the language was being considered partially in response to text messages obtained by the Press Herald last month. They showed that while local police departments said they do not contact or work collaboratively with immigration officials, they were in a group chat while federal agents were on the ground detaining more than 200 people.

LIVE NATION

After the planning board recommended strongly against mandating a larger buffer between large concert venues last month, the council will get its say this month, holding a first reading Monday.

While the council is not scheduled to vote on the buffer proposal until April 27, Monday’s agenda also includes a first reading on terminating a moratorium on large concert venues, which until now has blocked a proposed 3,300-seat Portland Music Hall venue backed by concert giant Live Nation.

The venue proposal has been met with significant resistance from the Portland arts community.

Mayor Mark Dion has previously said that the council’s vote on the expanded buffer should be “the final question on whether this project will be realized or not.”

JETPORT PARKING

The City Council will also conduct a first reading on a request to appropriate $10.1 million to expand a public parking lot and begin design work on “phase three” of the parking garage at the Portland International Jetport.

In October of last year, councilors rejected a $9.3 million request from the jetport to expand long-term parking spaces, which had raised concerns from the city planning board and nearby residents.

According to a council memo, $8.6 million of the funding would be used to expand the existing cell phone lot and gravel parking lot adjacent to Embassy Suites into a “new Jetport self-park public parking lot of 537 spaces,” which it says is a reduction from the previous proposal.