Our Ben City Council work session.

So I'll call that to order and we are going to start this evening with a budget preview.

I want to recognize the staff comes up here that we have members of our budget committee here in attendance.

These are residents that are part of our committee.

So we've got Kat Strangelo.

I don't know if I saw Emily here or Sav was maybe here.

Some people might be online.

Jerry Slaminski, Charles Peters, and then Bob Savage is going to join us online as well.

So thanks for everybody who was able to make it.

This is going to just be a preview tonight for what our budget process is going to cover and sort of an outlook on the work that we're going to be doing in the next few months as we adopt the budget.

Good evening, Mayor, Council.

Samantha Nelson, Chief Financial Officer.

Dan Quick, budget and financial planning manager.

So we're here this evening to give a brief overview in regards to the biannual budget for 2527.

These are kind of that big picture of what is affecting all funds.

So what we are working towards, the things we're working through currently, and what you would see is the budget committee comes together in May to review the budget as proposed.

So the first thing we're going to look at is the revenue and expenditure trends of the city as well as the key budget messages in regards to general fund updates as well as implementation of and then Eric will go into council goals at the end after that.

So where we are currently, so we kicked this process off in November for the staff.

The budget team actually started working on documents back in September, but we kicked it off with staff in November.

So during this time, we've started off with kind of those baseline budgets.

So we have franchise fees that are coming in above what we projected.

This is primarily tied to uh franchisees or a calculation of the gross revenue of the uh entity.

And so as the entity changes their rate structures or increases their rates, uh, that does equate to a greater percentage coming into this or greater number of dollars coming into the city, and we are seeing that happen in our franchise fees.

We're also seeing increases in the fire and ambulance fund.

Uh again, our ambulance services has taken a significant uh increase in the number of calls that it is responding to, which is resulting in additional uh work going on there, as well as the fire levy came into play this year as well.

Uh finally, uh the other group of funds that are coming in above budget is our SDCs, so that is our system development charges, uh and that is relating to water, sewer, and transportation.

Um those are again related to new projects that are coming into the city and paying those fees this year.

And then we have some that are coming in a little bit challenged.

So uh things that are coming in below budget would be our room tax.

This is a consumer-driven, as you all know.

It's at uh well, you some refer to it as a TRT or transient room tax.

Um, and this is consumer-driven, so it's based on rentals uh in the you know, vacation rentals or hotel rentals, that kind of thing.

Um this has been declining the last couple years, and so we're continuing to anticipate that.

We are staying in close touch Dan and his team is meeting with visit bend to ensure that that we're not underestimating and see how that trend is if that trend is going to continue of that kind of flat flattening of that revenue.

State shared revenue is actually coming in below projected as well.

So the actual numbers that the state is distributing is less than we had into they had originally anticipated.

So we're seeing that impact.

We're also seeing utilities, so that's our water and sewer storms predominantly.

Again, those are you know related to we over, you know, our estimates were higher of what we thought we would have in regards to growth in those areas, and that growth has slowed down.

Um we're just not at the same rate that we have been in the last several years in those funds.

And then planning.

We've been having that conversation uh repeatedly and continue to have that conversation around the planning fund, where we're just not seeing the activity and the revenue coming in in that fund.

Quick clarifying question.

Sure.

Yeah.

On the right side, the percent of annual budget uh for water, sewer, and transportation STCs.

Uh how come there's such a discrepancy there?

So I mean they're levied at the same time.

It's our projects contributing at different rates, or how come they're not closer together?

I would have to dive into the exact how those calculations are calculated.

I don't know off the top of my head specifically the different um methodologies behind each one, um, but I could certainly provide that information if you're interested in it.

Follow up later then.

Yeah, thank you.

Absolutely.

What one's just sort of pointing on that that could be is so a lot of our growth that's taking place in Southeast and East Ben is in the avion water territories, so not only water rates but water SDCs that are paid or paid to those utilities, not to the city events.

So it's not a one-for-one as projects come in, there's different providers that receive those funds.

Thank you for that.

Um and the water, water and sewer uh that is so far under budget.

So is that related to like over an overestimate of like housing production?

So an assumption that there was going to be more housing production or I mean that those are that's pretty dramatic, I think.