Bullhead City Council 2024-2025 Fiscal Year Budget Work Session - May 13, 2024
Bullhead City Council 2024-2025 Fiscal Year Budget Work Session - May 13, 2024
The Bullhead City Council held a full-day budget work session on Monday, May 13, 2024, from 9:00 AM to approximately 5:30 PM, to review the proposed 2024-2025 fiscal year budget. City Manager Toby Cotter and Finance Director Robert Drexler presented a balanced budget with no property tax, highlighting a $21.1 million police department operating budget, a 4% cost-of-living adjustment for employees, 11 new positions, and a general fund reserve exceeding $40 million. The budget is constrained by the state expenditure limitation of $64,120,690. Department heads presented their budgets, and the council discussed priorities, capital projects, and strategic investments.
Discussion Items
Budget Overview & Financial Health
- City Manager Cotter and Finance Director Drexler reviewed the city's strong financial position, including record-level restaurant and hotel/motel tax collections, the largest reserve fund in city history, and successful grant acquisitions. They emphasized that the budget is zero-based, with each line item justified. The proposed 4% COLA exceeds the Social Security COLA of 3.2%. New positions include two police officers, two backup program positions, code enforcement, valve/hydrant technicians, and other support roles.
- Expenditure limitation calculations and exclusions (e.g., federal grants, debt service) were explained. The budget includes $15 million in grants and a $3.1 million contingency.
Judicial Budget (Judge Speer)
- Focus on reducing incarceration fees through home detention, SCRAM monitoring, and court technology upgrades. A $90,000 court enhancement for virtual appearances is mandated by the Arizona Supreme Court. The court added $30,000 for quality-of-life court testing and monitoring.
Legal Budget (Garn)
- Requested additional part-time prosecutor funding to handle a 40% increase in victims and 30% increase in reports since 2020. Special counsel funding added for complex development agreements.
Development Services (Wendy/Johnny)
- Noted lean staffing despite rapid growth. Added one office specialist and one code enforcement officer for homeless response. Abatement budget increased by $20,000 to $170,000 for demolitions. Revenue from building permits does not fully cover costs, but economic benefits justify the investment.
Police Budget (Chief Treves)
- Overall budget down 2.6% ($586,501) due to reduced capital, but operating up 4.4% ($914,553). Requested two new officers (bringing sworn complement to 80), five patrol vehicles, and a new generator for dispatch. The department has received significant investments in recent years. Overtime remains a concern.
Public Works (Angie Johnson)
- Covered fleet management, facilities, park maintenance, streets, and park rangers. Notable items: $100,000 for Sunshine Marina dredging partnership, new slurry truck, street sweeper, and crash attenuator. Council discussed setting aside $500,000 annually for future Highway 95 maintenance via a resolution or special revenue fund.
- Park rangers will move from police back to recreation to focus on nighttime security and vandalism prevention.
Technology Services (Randy Shefford)
- Added one IT position. Budget increased for software/hardware agreements (13.6%) and core switch upgrades. Website redesign ($50,000) and TV4 app for streaming on smart devices are planned.
Executive & General Services
- New communication specialist for digital outreach. $50,000 for grant application assistance. Human resources implemented new personnel/payroll software. The general fund contingency is $3.1 million.
Human Services (Jeff Tipton)
- Senior campus expansion near completion; operating costs will appear in next year's budget. Added a full-time activity coordinator. Animal shelter intake up 42%, adoptions up 20%, euthanasia down 40%. Budget includes a van and increased spay/neuter funding.
- Transit: Aging fleet replacement ongoing; delays due to supply chain. On-demand service has higher cost per ride but higher reimbursement. No new bus shelters budgeted; MPO may study stops.
Utilities (Mark Clark)
- Extensive presentation on deferred maintenance from EPCOR acquisition. Critical projects include a new aeration basin ($9M), Lakeside Drive sewer line replacement ($9-11M), and hydrant replacement program (320 hydrants over 5 years). Water rates may need to increase to cover debt service. The water conservation program has reduced usage despite population growth.
Capital Improvement Plan
- Projects include middle school athletic fields, skate park rehabilitation, flood control drainage, right turn lanes on Highway 95 (state-funded), new animal shelter, and wastewater treatment plant upgrades. Many projects are grant-funded or contingent on borrowing due to the expenditure cap.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken; the workshop was for discussion and direction. The council will adopt a tentative budget at the June 4, 2024 meeting, followed by public hearings and final adoption on June 18, 2024.
- Council directed staff to explore setting aside $500,000 annually for Highway 95 maintenance through a special revenue fund or resolution, though future councils could repurpose the funds.
- Council agreed to increase the helping paws spay/neuter program for dogs by an additional $5,000 (total $10,000), with a challenge to nonprofit partners to match.
- Staff will continue to evaluate paid parking at Rotary Park, especially on holiday weekends, as crowds shift from Community Park.
- The council expressed support for the TV4 app and website redesign to improve public access to meetings and information.
Meeting Transcript
Good morning, everyone. This is Monday, May 13th, 2024. It's 9 a.m. We're here for our 2024 through 2025 fiscal year budget work session. Can I get a roll call, please? Well, council members are present. Uh, Councilmember Heck is joining us via telephone. Can you hear me, Council Member Heck? Yes, I can hear you. Thank you. All right, we're gonna turn this over to Toby and get to started. Good morning. Mary Dimiko Council members, good morning. Community, good morning. This is streaming live. So we will uh anticipate a full day of budget hearings, and uh hopefully we um answer all your questions and collaborate on our next fiscal year budget to your liking. Uh we are presenting a balanced budget as we've done every year since I've been your city manager, and I think you'll see in our report that Robert and I are about to give that uh uh we're in a position uh probably unique to many communities across the country. Um, we're we're balanced, uh we're uh having a very productive uh couple of years, and the financial world uh investments are good. Um our staff is is extremely excellent, and so uh today. Well, we probably are gonna have a lot of questions from you all. Um, what we're not doing is we're not facing deficits, we're not facing problematic situations like other cities across the nation, including our own county, who in their you know, last couple years have really faced some of those difficulties. And so we're gonna explain some of that to you this morning in our presentation, go over the budget surpluses, show you um where our investment income is at, and just talk to you about uh what you'll find to be a very uh solid uh engaged budget that meets the needs of our community. And of course, as I've been your city manager, what's always been uh you know, the priorities, priorities of public safety, a huge investment in our police department, streets, parks, and the other amenities that make our community great. So we will walk you through this PowerPoint presentation, so if our team can pull that up on page two, uh, it just gives you the overview of the discussion points that we'll be going over. And then if we go to page four, I'd like to highlight some of those significant accomplishments. Our restaurant sales collections have grown to the highest level in the city's history. It's not by chance. We work hard at it. We've recruited a lot of these businesses, and we're actively recruiting more. Um, outside of the summer. And our hotel motel tax collections are at the highest levels they've ever been, and that's not by chance, it's by hard work. We've worked hard to not only bring in new hotels, which we have at least two, three that you've seen in your conceptual reviews, but we have some additional opportunities we're working on right now. My prediction is that we will see three or four new hotels in the next couple of years. It takes a minute to build new hotels. We're also working with a new hotel to remodel one of our one of our older hotels. So we'll be talking to you about that in the future as well. It's our largest reserve fund ever in the city's history. Um again, doesn't happen by chance. It's conservative council, conservative staff budgeting it appropriately, building up a fund reserve, a rainy day fund, a savings account, like many of you have at home. Also, this year we approved taking over the full jurisdiction of Highway 95. It's the future of the city. In order to make this roadway better in our community better, we have to have control over it. The right turn lanes, which are in this budget, are a big part of that. The new bridge is a big part of that. Can't make our future better if we have ADOT running our lives every day on Highway 95. And I thank the city council for having the will to see that and approve that. We remodeled the municipal court, which was long overdue, the dispatch center and their parking lot. We received millions in grants. Our pickleball players came to you a few years ago and said, hey, our demand is high, we need more. So those new pickleball courts and tennis courts were built.
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