I don't see a problem coming out.

Good evening and welcome to the Fourth Miss City Board of Directors Studies Special Study Session where we will be discussing a mid-year budget review and strategic planning session this evening.

Keep in mind these meetings are being televised live for our residents who cannot be with us in in person.

This time we will go directly to the first item on the agenda.

That's a review of the mid-year financial report.

And you're recognized.

How's that?

Okay.

Sorry.

Um for those four funds as well as some detail.

I thought uh just to start off uh this review process, I would uh kind of go over the four funds and just give you a couple of things that that I've noted uh to help kind of understand a little bit more behind the numbers there and then let you uh board members ask questions uh once I do that.

But you want questions as we're going through it or wait till you're done.

Uh really is up to you all.

I mean good either way, but you know, I can just go through the highlights and then we can do that.

But um just in just as an overall uh my you know kind of outlook on the results, you know, considering what what we've been doing here as far as you know trying to retool the budget, trying to make cuts, um, making you know large investments in the city, um, particularly out of the general fund, you know, dealing with rate increases, water and sewer, all those things that all these challenges and and opportunities that we're been dealing with.

Um, I think just overall the numbers look fairly positive to me in light of all those things that we are that we've been working on.

Um I think the the budget numbers show um reflect the cuts that the board committed to and passed, and I believe it shows that the department heads and the departments are being conservative and um going along with uh trying to be conservative and and spending.

I think that's what it shows for the most part through all four of the funds.

And so, you know, so in general I'm I kind of have a uh you know, the numbers turned out about what I expected, not worse.

Uh maybe even a little better than what the what I expected to see when we got the June 30 numbers together.

But um I'm gonna just comments and Josh, if you want to go to that budget for the general fund, I'll just start there.

So, you know, I typically always start from the bottom and work my way up when I look at these financial statements, but you know, bottom line is uh at this point in time.

So, you know, I typically always start from the bottom and work my way up when I look at these financial statements, but you know, bottom line is uh at this point in time, you know, we've got a 31 percent, 32 percent contingency percentage at June 30, 2024.

With the budget cuts in place, we've we've projected a 20 percent uh percentage through the end of 25, which is um probably better than some of the numbers that we were looking at earlier in the year.

Uh so the cuts are you know, that is the the board's goals to have at least a 20 percent uh fund balance uh there before any cuts are made.

So you know we're at 31 percent now.

Uh you can see the the budget, the available budget remaining is about sixty percent, fifty-six percent.

So mid-year, you would if if everything went perfectly, you know, straight, no ups and downs, no seasonal type of things.

I mean, you expect to have 50 percent of your budget remaining at this point in time.

So uh 56 percent shows that we haven't spent half the budget at this point.

So if you look at, you know, you know, it's hard to it's hard to look at mid-year and look at that annual budget, but you know, to kind of tell how we're doing, we always always look at the year before.

So we've got June 30 2024 numbers there the prior year, which represents the six months uh compared to the actual date.

Um, we're we're looking at uh a deficit of ten and a half million dollars of uh expenditures over revenues at this point in time for the six months in uh June 30, 25.

Uh we were at 6.1 million dollar uh deficit um expenditures over revenues prior year.

Uh one of the main things to point out, and this was kind of been you know the the budget that we have for 25 has a lot of non-reoccurring investments that the city made, and so in the actual numbers, I've identified about seven million dollars in these thirty-four million dollars of general fund expenditures that are non-reoccurring um you know capital outlay type investments uh that were made, you know.

So that 34 million is not necessarily the amount of money we would necessarily have to spend just to operate these six months.

There's you know, obviously the purchase of the building is in there.

Um so we mean we bought land in the first half of 24 for about 2.3 million dollars.

I think it was the crane Kia property that we bought.

So you know, you kind of I kind of factor that in.

So our capital outlays about 2.1 million dollars higher than that period last year.

Because we spent $4 million on the building.

Um we did some other things as well that that add up, but but we also you know, if you looked at the $28 million that we have in the expenditures in the general fund at 24, that includes 2.3 million dollars of that uh building purchase.

So just try to for a comparative purposes.

Uh we also have about two million dollars worth of roof repairs that we made um in this six months.

That's you know, something that we typically won't do.

You know, that was kind of an extraordinary expenditure, and then also six hundred thousand dollars towards the airport uh the the extension, the barrier system is also part of this thirty-four million in those expenditures.

So you can see those, you know, that that comes up to about um like I said, seven million dollars of kind of you know, not you know, our normal operating things, these are more non-reoccurring activities that we that we done.

Um, but if you're comparing it to 24, you know, we put 2.3 million dollars in the building, and I think also about 850,000 dollars in um the park, the projects.

I think Creek Moore Park was the or the bathhouse project, we spent about 850,000 that time frame.

So the net in there is about four million dollars difference non-reoccurring, you know, more non-reincurring expenditures in 25 and 24.

So just to give a little context there, just overall.

As far as revenues um, you know, we've been watching it looks like our revenues are a little higher than in total than the same period last year.

I think that's a little bit there's a some timing differences there, I believe, in the franchise fees that we've collected.

I've kind of looked in on that.

So you can see like taxes and assessments, uh, you know, we're showing 18.6 million for 25, 16 and a half million for 24.

Um, but I think there is some timing there if you're comparing those things.

Our sales tax, you know, is the the county sales tax is the largest piece of that, and through June 30, uh we're down one percent compared to um June 30, 2024.

And so and I don't know, you know, with the sales tax report for the collections that we got uh this month, which weren't inflected in this um shows a little a 1 percent increase over prior year collections.

Um so um you know I think from what I've seen as far as our sales tax revenues right now, things are are stable right now, and I hope hope that continues that way.