The Edmonds City Council Finance Committee met on September 16, 2026, to review the July 2026 Monthly Financial Report. The committee discussed revenue and expenditure trends, fund balances, and operational challenges.
So we just kick up and wait for all right. So we'll just uh call the finance committee meeting to order on September 15th, like 1 p.m. In attendance, we have Mayor, Director Gold, Councilmember Council President Dutch, myself, uh Councilmember Peng and uh Kisha Ms. Pose is with us. Uh we'll have Councilmember Ben Nepal locking soon. So let's uh is today T S are going to take us through the July financial report. Yes. I go away. Thank you. Thank you. Um so uh just some overall highlights first starting with our tax revenues, our sales taxes are up 538,000 um to what we would expect year to date for budget or 8% compared to budget. Overall, we've seen them up year over year at 7.7%. So good um good news there. Our other taxes uh, which is a larger bucket of utility taxes as well as um those special some of the specialty uh taxes that we have aside from property taxes, those are up um 454,000, almost 455,000 or 6% to year to date to budget. Um so also seeing some good growth there. That's primarily due to the utility taxes um within the water and solid waste taxes. We're up 382,000 or 6% year to date. Um we may be since some of that's pushing with water is probably some seasonal water usage since this is a July report. So we're seeing kind of that first two months of summer hitting and warmer temperatures. Um so we wouldn't expect necessarily for that to continue. We will continue to maintain, but um, I don't think it will continue to be at a higher rate for future, many more future months. Licenses and permits year to date are up 20% to budget, driven primarily by construction permits. Currently, we're over 84,000 above full year budget. Um, so we're exceeding almost like two thirds of what we would have expected for the entire year. We also have various engineering permits that are exceeding our full year budget. Our compact Comcast franchise fees are up significantly, and we have collected 84% of our full year budget for business licenses. Uh, Director Gould and I were lamenting on well, is that indicative of more businesses, or do we just think that businesses might start in the beginning of the year? And we're kind of leaning towards maybe more of the early year starting for for businesses than necessarily a huge uptick in business licenses themselves. Our charges for goods and services, when I looked at this, excluding the interfund service fees, which does get limped into goods and services in this report. We are at 92.5% of our full year budget for other goods and services, and that's over over a million more than we would have expected for this point in the year. Uh so significant increase there. It's primarily driven by building plan review and inspection revenues. We're up 1.5 million year to date, or we're at 1.5 million year to date for those, and we're 128% of our full year budget. Uh a good portion of these goods charges for goods and services uh that are development related could be related to the Edmonds Green project um coming through this year. So seeing the um rewards from that large project in our community. Our interfund service fees are slightly behind what we would have expected as a revenue. It's primarily due to engineering billing. Uh they've had fewer projects that they're able to bill to due to staffing. They have um increased their staffing um at this point, however, they are still in the process of training those individuals, and so those are not billable hours that would be going to projects yet. Um, fines and penalties, automated enforcement is slightly behind expected year to date. Uh, we would expect to be at about 58%, and we're at 53% of total budget, so not significant decline, but just a uh place piece to note. The remaining revenues and fines and penalties that are also lagging are all fines based off of citations. So um I think in a lot of ways it might be we're just either not catching the citations or we don't have reason for the citations. Um miscellaneous revenues, we are ahead year to date by 28% for what we would expect to be at. Donations, our long-term term lease revenue is up so far this year, as well as our space and facilities rental. I think we talked about that last month. And I would expect that it does show quite high, but I would expect that the majority of our revenues are during the summertime for things like our picnic shelters and those places. So we'll continue to see if that keeps trending or starts to flatten out. And we did have a few unanticipated sidewalk dining rental permits that came through to add to the um add to the miscellaneous revenues. Looking at our fund balances, primarily looking at page five in the report of the um just our fund balance for our current year.