Why are insurance premiums are so high because people ask you running to the doctor for every little inconvenience.

Mike's the one who made me go in.

Okay, we're good.

Okay.

Let's go ahead and call the budget committee meeting of Thursday, November 6th, 2025 to order.

We have roll call.

Um member Brendan Pratt.

Uh Dale Stuber, Timothy Lima.

Here, Matthew Bieran.

Here.

Susie Zilmer.

And we have, I know we have absent Bruce Thielen, and at this time we have absence to roll.

We also have President Mark Willer, Finance Committee Member, Mike Golott City Administrator, Tina Nelson, Finance Director, Scott Quick, Director of Public Works, Kelly Bachin, Police Chief, Mark Renderman, Fire Chief, Taylor Greenwell, Planning Director, Chad Durka, Perks and Rec Director, and Cindy Bower, City Clerk.

We have a quorum.

All right.

Overview of the 2026 proposed budgets, general fund budget number two draft and four budget.

Right.

Thanks everybody for being here tonight.

What

we're going to go over tonight is we're just going to recap of where we're at in the budget process, and I'll let you know what I'm missing at this point.

We'll talk about the notable changes on the 2026 general fund budget, which we've gone over, but we'll just go over that again.

We'll have a discussion on the local mail rates now that I know that what that will be with the proposed budgets and review what the public notice looks like.

So we can just so you that went in the paper yesterday.

So we'll go over that.

Then we have the tax increment district number four budget and projections and the affordable housing fund budget, um, which we'll have changes later after they develop the programs, but um at this point a budget that's in the works.

The

remaining schedule after tonight is just one the one meeting, the one meeting before the public hearing.

Um, and then there's a public hearing at the city council meeting, and then the city council would adopt the budget.

So this is our last meeting.

Actually, if you have anything that you want me to make changes before that time, speak up now.

Um I think we're in pretty good shape now.

Um, but this this would be the last one before the budget hearing and the budget adoption on November 20th.

So

what we're missing to give you a complete what a tax bill would look like is um a tax increment worksheet from the state.

I have uh

uh

form that I use uh throughout, but until that actually comes out with from the state, it's not finalized, so I can't give you uh complete tax increment amount, so it's projections for tax increment district number four at this time because you have to put in all the other jurisdictions' taxes to get actually what that tax increment is.

Sorry, that's probably confusing.

Um also missing some of the the county levy, I haven't received that.

Um and uh the lake district levy have not received that, and we did just receive another school district today when we have El Tuna School District and Eau Claire School District.

Um but also what comes out the day of that meeting is the school levy credit, and that's a huge one because what happens is the school gives you what they're going to levy, but then the state issues a levy credit, and that is a subtraction from the the bill.

So until you know that, you don't really know what the tax bill is gonna be, and that that differs from year to year.

You're always hoping it's going to be more because it'll be a less more of a strap subtraction.

Also, what comes out on the 20th, the day of is that lottery credit that everybody gets in a residential property and a first dollar credit.

And those are different um for each school district, they have a different amount.

So, but on the 20th, I'll have a sample tax bill for you showing you exactly what what your tax bill will look like before you adopt the budget.

So just gonna go over this briefly.

We've been over um there has been really only a couple changes since our last meeting.

Um I did put in for council members that will be re-elected next year uh a thousand dollar a year raise, and then there was another adjustment from the last um council meeting.

Um, but now the balance the budget is balanced, and we're still at the rate that we had talked about.

Um I have the final statement of assessment, so I can give you what the assessed mill rate would be and the equalized mill rate would be.

We'll go into that in a little bit.

But some notable changes that we had in 2026 budget.

We had tax increment district number three closure.

Um, with that, um, we were allowed to have 607,000 155 more in revenue for our general operating budget.

But it also resulted because we had um administrative costs that got charged to the TID, now we have to have that in our our general fund budgets.

Um and we also um the last slide, we did not go into reserve, we're not going into reserves.

So we have a balanced budget without going into reserves this year.

Um levy limit worksheet only showed 1.87% increase in um new construction.

So that's that's only a $52,000 increase from one year just for the new construction.