2025-2026 Fiscal Year Budget Work Session - May 8, 2025
2025-2026 Fiscal Year Budget Work Session
The Bullhead City Council held a fiscal year 2025-2026 budget work session on May 8, 2025, from 8:30 AM to approximately 2:00 PM (with a break and continuation if needed). The session covered proposed revenues, expenditures, and programs for all governmental funds. City Manager Toby Cutter and Finance Director Robert Drexler presented a balanced budget using one-time reserve funds for capital projects. Key priorities included adding two police officers, funding a new animal shelter, investing in infrastructure, and continuing progress. The budget totals over $52 million in all fund reserves, with a general fund reserve of over $41.6 million. Proposed expenditures include $2 million contingency (later adjusted to $3.4 million), and capital projects totaling $3.6 million for city facilities and $2.6 million for parks and recreation.
Consent Calendar
- No consent calendar was presented; all items were discussed individually.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Scott (Bullhead City resident): Expressed frustration with public records requests and criticized Catholic Charities, alleging the organization is not helping the homeless effectively and that funds are wasted. He supported Councilmember Ring's stance against funding.
Discussion Items
- Judicial Budget (Judge Speer): Presented a flat budget with efficiencies, including expanded use of electronic monitoring (SCRAM) at $12/day vs. jail at $111/day. Court enhancements fund used for equipment. Two staff vacancies exist but are managed.
- Legal Budget (City Attorney Garn): Budget increased due to personnel costs. One-man legal department handles civil and prosecution workload; requested no new staff but noted increasing caseload (467 matters opened last year, trending higher). All staff on-site, no remote work.
- Development Services (Billy and team): 19 staff positions (two vacancies). Building permits up: 209 single-family permits in 2023, 364 in 2024. Code enforcement handled ~2,500 cases, 1,000 notices sent, 100 properties cleaned, 18 demolitions. Homeless contact officer averages 400 contacts/month. Shopping carts returned to stores at city cost; no compensation from stores.
- Police Department (Chief Treves): Requested 5.56% increase ($1.3M) including two new officers (total 82), Axon Draft One AI report-writing system ($97,000 in IT budget), SWAT equipment ($70,000), Edwards & Amato legal services ($30,000), training ($23,000), patrol rifles ($31,000), red dot optics ($16,000), and boating hearing protection ($2,000). Backup (mental health crisis unit) fully funded by opioid settlement funds, now with two full-time staff. Body cameras with AI transcription tested for 5 months; expected to save 1.5-3.5 officer positions in report-writing time.
- Public Works (Angie and team): Facilities maintenance increased 2.5% (new senior center, camera system, retinting). Parks maintenance decreased 5% but requested one new full-time employee, turf painting robot, and equipment. Streets maintenance increased 7.3% (one new maintenance worker, slurry machines). Fleet services up 16.7% (530 vehicles, no net addition). Recreation: 44 tournaments, 41 special events, new gymnastics program, largest summer camp ever (over 700 registrants). Park ranger program expanded to 16 part-time rangers covering 14 parks and 21 miles of trails.
- Legislative & Executive: Mayor/Council budget down 16% due to benefits participation. City Clerk budget down 31% (no election year). Finance department added one accounting specialist; billing/collections increased due to credit card fees. IT budget near zero increase except for new police body camera software. Marketing/Tourism split into separate TOT-funded department. MPO budget (federally funded) at $940,000 for first year.
- Human Services (Jeff Tipton): Budget $4.884M, up 3.3%. Animal shelter adds two full-time and two part-time staff for new facility opening winter 2025. Transit: part-time driver pay adjustment, possible bus purchase via grant. Senior Center: added part-time activity coordinator. Catholic Charities funding ($127,000) debated extensively: Councilmember Ring opposed, citing national organization's politics and lack of local results; other members argued removing funding would increase homelessness costs. Council decided to keep the line item in the budget and schedule a future workshop to hear from Catholic Charities.
- Utilities (Mark Clark): Added one water quality specialist for backflow and FOG programs. Wastewater budget increased due to depreciation transfer. Water budget up ~$500,000; lead and copper sampling year. Capital projects include 780-tank, 7th Street rehab, hydrant program, oxidation ditch upgrade, clarifier expansion to 6 MGD.
- Capital Improvement Plan: $3.6M for city facilities (animal shelter, Optimum Center, vehicles), $2.6M for parks (Community Park restroom, Ken Fovard turf, wheelchair lift), $2.1M for police (7 vehicles, remodel), $1.5M for IT (storage, disaster recovery), $5.5M for streets and drainage, $1.2M for utilities (e.g., pumper truck, valve replacements).
Key Outcomes
- Catholic Charities Funding: Council voted to retain the $127,000 line item in the budget (75,000 for 24/7 operations, 40,000 operational, 12,000 food) and will schedule a workshop to discuss alternatives. No action to defund at this time.
- Contingency: Council agreed to increase the contingency budget from the initially proposed $2 million to $3.4 million (same as current year) to provide emergency funds. Any expenditure requires council approval.
- Boys & Girls Club: Council directed staff to set the line item at $100,000 (increase from $50,000) pending a future presentation by the club to justify the use of funds. The city retains control of the building; no consolidation with Phoenix club will occur without council approval.
- New Positions: Added 8 full-time positions: 2 police officers, 2 animal care technicians, 1 accounting specialist, 1 water quality specialist, 1 streets maintenance worker, 1 parks maintenance worker.
- Police Technology: Approved $97,000 for Axon Draft One AI report-writing system (in IT budget) and $30,000 for Edwards & Amato legal services.
- Transit Facility: No funding included in this budget; future federal grant application possible.
- Next Steps: Tentative budget adoption at June 3 council meeting, publication of budget schedules, public hearing and final adoption on June 17.
Meeting Transcript
Good morning. This is Friday, May 9th, 2025. It's 8:30 AM. Uh, we're here for the 2025-2026 fiscal year budget work session. Calling this meeting in order. Could I get a roll call, please? All council members are present. Thank you. All right, Toby. Good morning. It's great to be here. Thank you for joining us for our annual budget workshop. And our session should uh pretty much last most of the day today and into tomorrow morning if need be, but we're hoping we can get through our budget workshop today. So we'll start right here with a presentation by Mr. Drexler, our finance director, myself, and that'll work through each uh session. I know the new council members for Mr. O'Neal, Mr. Newland, Stallman. I mean, this is the first time you're officially here. It's not just my budget and staff's budget, but it's your budget. It's the community's budget, and this is why we do what we do. Some 600 plus pages strong of a budget workshop that has all the you know, all the fingerprints of all of us. And so it's not just the police chief and the city manager or the public works director, it's all of us and your priorities. And so when I was thinking about it this morning, you know, what's the headline? If you Google other cities right now, some of their headlines aren't that great. But for us, it's a continuation of progress. Uh over the last couple years we've been in a great fiscal position where we've been able to hire more police officers, buy more police vehicles, invest in our infrastructure, and you know, we're we're so delighted to be able to do that again today. So we're presenting a balanced budget. Uh we're using some one-time uh reserve funds for some of our capital one-time capital projects. And um, I think you'll see as we go through this project uh list and capital list later in the day that these are not new, these are things that you all want us to do. Uh especially with the new animal shelter, that's a main priority that we'll be talking about later today. So our budget in Bullhead City really is it's designed with prosperity, with progress and with projects. And even last year we could see with the new bridge, a new ATV, UTV, uh trailhead, um, new senior enrichment center, those are just the things that we started a few years ago and we completed. But the budgets we have are also intentional. And let's just talk about like two recent examples. A few weeks ago, someone stole the mail truck, then stole the river taxi and made their way to the condos across from Lowe's, and then they started shooting at our police officers. That's not what a budget's all about. But is it right? It kind of is, right? Because that officer and all the officers that supported him were trained, which is part of this budget, we're equipped, which is part of this budget, and we're paid, which is part of this budget. So let's say we didn't do any of those things. We didn't do the training, we didn't do the equipment. Well, if you saw the video that was released by the sheriff's department and police department, there was a guy in a mailbox. There was a guy at the gate. Could have shot those, you know, poor residents who who were there for that. Tuesday was a great example. We were all here Tuesday, having a long council meeting. It got black outside at four o'clock in the afternoon. And what happened? Our staff mobilized immediately to deal with a storm.
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