Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The La Crosse Board of Estimates met on Monday, October 12, 2026, at City Hall Council Chambers to review and finalize the recommended 2027 operating budget. The session was called to order at 4:04 p.m. per the minutes (4:05 p.m. per the transcript) and adjourned at 6:06 p.m. Mayor Shaundel Washington-Spivey and Interim Finance Director Dan Deigier were non-voting. Also present were council members Aron Newberry, Barb Janssen, Chris Kahlow, Erin Goggin, Jennifer Trost, Larry Sleznikow, Mackenzie Mindel, Rosanne Northwood, and Tamra Dickinson. Councilmember Newberry was excused at 5:30 p.m. Finance staff noted the Board is tasked with submitting a proposed budget to the Common Council by the third Tuesday in October.
Hello, everyone. We're going to call this meeting in order at four. Oh, five PM on October twelfth, twenty twenty six. All Board of Estimates members are present. All right. We'll move on to our first agenda item twenty-six dash zero five eighty eight, the twenty twenty-seven operating budget. At this time, I'm going to call our deputy director to do a presentation. Afternoon. All right. Okay. So where we're at in the process is we're with the Board of Estimates who is tasked with submitting a proposed budget to the common council on or by the third Tuesday in October per code of ordinances. Okay, so next I will uh detail out uh kind of a definition of the unassigned fund balance that is referenced in the fund balance policy. Um also goes by another name of reserve funds. Essentially, unassigned fund balance is the uh measure of the general funds net worth. Uh so essentially you take your cash on hand and funds to be received, minus our liabilities, and that is your total fund balance. Um, there's different types of fund balance. Uh, if you look on to the right of this slide at the bottom right, there is three different types of fund balance that we have. So this is just a condensed version of our balance sheet from our audited financials. Uh so we have non-spendable fund balance, which is essentially cash that we can't spend. Uh, the most common type is if we've advanced funds from the general fund to a different fund. We can't spend those because the general fund doesn't technically have them. Uh committed funds would be funds that uh this body has committed towards or assigned committed towards a different purpose of the unassigned fund balance. So the 250,000 is the airport committed fund balance towards the airport air service development that was committed two years ago, I believe. And then that brings us to the unassigned unassigned fund balance, which is basically the fund balance that we can appropriate to whatever purpose we want. Uh, just to kind of clear things up, fund balance is not a separate bank account. Uh, it is more an accounting term or item on the general fund balance sheet. The next slide details out our history of the unassigned fund balance. Um, we got two graphs. One on the left is in dollar amounts. So the orange line will show per policy what is the minimum requirement for our fund balance. And the blue line would be our actual uh based on year end. And the graph on the right has it in percentage form. And I started with uh 2018 because in 2017 is when they changed the fund balance policy from 25% to 20%. So as you can see, over the last six years, uh there's been a steady increase to the uh unassigned fund balance. Okay, uh, that is all I wanted to cover on the unassigned fund balance. Next, I'm gonna get into the debt levy adjustment. So the debt levy adjustment is part of the overall levy limit rules that the state imposes on municipalities.