Good afternoon.

This is Tuesday, June 18th, 2024.

It's 3 30 PM.

We're here for a special meeting, followed by an executive session.

Could I get a roll call, please?

All council members are present except for a vice mayor head.

All right, we're gonna call this meeting to order.

Thank you, Mayor Demigo, Council members.

This afternoon we're just gonna spend a few short minutes talking about the budget, some of our expenditures, just so the council has a good understanding of year end processes.

So our finance director, Robert Drexcher will lead that conversation.

Thank you, City Manager Cotter.

Um we thought this was uh with the uh the item on the agenda tonight for the budget amendment, um, a good time to explain kind of what we're doing and how we handle the year-end process with the budget.

So tonight, right before the council meeting, we'll be uh doing the final adoption of next year's budget.

And the official form that goes to the state, uh the schedule A part of it, it actually breaks down the budget for the general fund by departments and then a total for each of the funds.

So as the state's concerned, that is our budget for each of those departments and for the fund and for the funds as a total.

Uh and since that's what the state goes by, that's what our auditors go by.

So if we go over uh in say just one of our funds, if we go over that budget, and that includes any budget amendments we do throughout the year, um, then we'll get dinged on our audit for going over budget.

So w what we do in the year end process is we go through all of our expenditures, our outstanding purchase orders, any last minute purchases, and we estimate for every single uh line item in that budget, the finance department goes through.

And then I take a look at it and see, well, are we close on any of these?

Are we gonna go over?

And do we need to do a budget amendment at the end of the year to make sure we stay under uh the budget for each of the departments and for the funds as a total.

So the the action you have before you tonight at the regular council meeting uh has I think it's about five or six items that we identified that might be putting us over the budget.

If we're close, I want to make sure we stay under.

And so the the main point uh that I want everybody to understand is we are not raising the budget.

We are just moving monies from one department or one account into other accounts.

So um if anybody had any kind of questions on that, otherwise I can go into the individual items.

Okay.

So we didn't receive them until this fiscal year.

Uh during the budget process, the police department still thought they were gonna get them last year, so they didn't re-budget for it.

And so this is we just need to increase that budget.

And so this is we just need to increase that budget for for that to cover those expenditures.

Um another one on their lists uh property taxes, and that is for as we continue to go through the process of since the takeover of Epcor and finding out that oh, there's properties that should be ours that have not been transferred over with the county.

We we go through the process of that, but any back taxes we have to pay.

So we budget some money every year for when the city comes across properties uh to pay back taxes, but since this was a little more than we had anticipated.

Um the next one's kind of is the big one on the list.

Uh uh, it's marked as water sewer under the parks budget.

Uh the parks budget uh unfortunately, unlike other ones, uh did not have a lot of savings to cover overages and another line.

So we want to make sure that this one uh we we stay under budget on.

And so I know it's a large amount, so I kind of wanted to to go through a couple of the things that happened that that caused it to go over um significantly.

Uh one is going through the process of when we took over Epcor and reviewing all the accounts and especially the city accounts, we realized not all of them were being charged appropriately by Epcor.

They were being undercharged.

So our past years when we do a budget process, we look at okay, what'd we spend in the past?

Well, now that we're charging them correctly under the correct type of charge instead of residential under commercial, they're more expensive.

And so this caused it to be more than we had anticipated.

Um and one of the other things uh is we're gonna have an extra month of charges in that account um just from how we switched doing our internal charging.

Um and so those are a couple of things that that caused that one to go over.

Um another one on the list was parks refuse.

Um that is uh Angie and her team are doing some more homeless cleanup um that wasn't expected.

And so again, we're move we're not r increasing the overall budget, we're just moving monies from whether it's contingency or other accounts to to cover those at the year end.

Uh the victim services one that has to do with a grant, and that grant year is October 1st through September 30th.

So last year's budget process, we were we didn't know what the ward was gonna be, so we budgeted the same as last year.

We got awarded more money, so now we can charge more money to that grant, but the budget on our side didn't have that, so we're moving it from the legal services where the budget went to, moving it back so we can maximize the the grant usage on that.

And then I believe the last one on the list is for vehicles, and those we had looked at of doing purchases now instead of budgeting for next year, because we've got significant savings in our budget this year.

And I did want to add, I skipped one part in the beginning that we're still planning and estimating of adding six to seven million dollars into the general fund this year.

So we're we're still very healthy.

I know a couple of those numbers are are a little on the bigger side, but again, I wanted to make sure that we stay under the budget and make sure we're we're in a good place and that some last minute thing doesn't put us over.

So that's all I had.

I stand for any questions you have.

I've already reviewed it.

Anyone else have any questions, comments?