The Committee-of-the-Whole held a budget work session at the Moline Public Library to review the proposed 2025–2027 operating budgets. The agenda packet supplied with the transcript is dated Saturday, October 26, 2024, while the meeting metadata for this summary identifies the meeting date as November 18, 2024. No public comment or agenda questions were offered. Staff presented a balanced budget and recommended levies, fund allocations, and policy decisions; council members debated contingency spending, property tax levels, fire staffing, and capital maintenance.
Morning everyone. Morning. I'm calling supporter of our work session today, our council meeting at 8 a.m. here on my third. I don't believe we have any electronic attendance, correct? Um allegiance, please. Would you have another space of math? Yes, that's all you can do. Thanks. All right, do we have public comment this evening or morning? All right, and no questions on the agenda. Um packet that was played back your speed correctly. So we'll move right into our budget work session, starting with number one. I would make remarks for me because I'm gonna go first. Well, good morning, and you're waiting and uh hopefully uh this is budget work session where we'll record wrap up the budget discussions that started back in June. No, we never stop budgeting to your um effort and uh this year is no exception. Um budget fourth before we decided to be like all uh big interventions work now's budget uh last we can create capital improvement budget. Um so that being said, there's a couple areas we're top priority that I think that we need to focus on a uh go through it and lay those out for you have a wrap of our discussions uh we have things that agencies that well over the one dollars our agencies here involved uh two um recognizing final discussions and have improvement plan for next year and then uh question about trees and parts and recreation that that's has to be resolved. Property tax level most importantly for the very uh certainly not uh number that you're comfortable with and lastly is the issue by RMS and uh what we're going to do that uh which I say 15 year history goes back to 2008, so I had the finance department with euro's friends and that's where she probably spreadsheet for the back and get kind of identifies from our audits what was our standard plate for the fall reverse of 2008 similar to what we found there one with your uh deficit of 12 positions in the street department and that we replaced those six of those 12 never moved forward to replace all uh fire departments basically have it, so we went back and double checked and see the numbers in front of you. So we get a kind of a perspective and see what's happening with all volume over the website growing exponentially. There's reasons for that achievement, but uh what is it? Would they have that discussion now at this stage of the game um with the other archival much short? Thank you. So I would just want to start the day off uh much like I have every year, just reminding us that our our call from to this work is how to service and it's a service to our community to individuals within the community to the organization of the city staff as well. And uh while we might come with different solutions or different perspectives on how to manage that responsibility, I think that um if we keep those who are serving in mind uh and part, we'll find a way to um get to an agreement on um how to steward the budget um new resources that we need to be carefully look at every year, and I think this as we as we move toward not having our thoughts with our back pocket, right? For dollars, we were learning how much more difficult um it is to make some base decision, and so for the public sake, I know none of us take this one lightly, but I just want us to um continue in there that is uh keeping um the positive when everybody's coming to this work positive um rather than so thank you for your diligence in looking through these materials and for the staff for preparing us for so many weeks, it makes it a lot easier to go into this massive document to understand where we're out and see how the solutions. So thank you. With that, uh turn it over to you. Thank you, and hopefully, just start out by just giving a very brief review of what we said on the PowerPoint here. The budget as presented is balanced. Anybody's got anyone else issues? So we treat the budget we have to go to writing balance. The budget presents healthy fund balances and cash results across all the market funds, we have very conservative spending that the drivers put together in our operating rightness and selling planning, and lastly, it follows the plan and this council's sustainable creation. So just to kind of get started, I'm gonna just give you a very high level review on all of our fundings, and it is under the tab number four. I'm actually going to start on page two. I tried to put most of it on the agenda on the pages, but I didn't I don't know what it's got something. Thank you so much. And so, as you know, we reviewed on Athenians before, and within the books, or if we're gonna talk about two, there are many, many pages in your document. I'm gonna take you to a one-page summary with this highlight so that we can be on the on this page. You will see that the city currently has 57 funds, and each one of those funds we've saved as before. We have a balance sheet, and they're all separate lenses. So it is a huge inbound just to take the budget around to follow the left, and we sold the shape all the support that you've given us on the back. If we take a look down the last green line, you will see that we have an in fund balance, and this is the current 2025 budget that's presented at 176 million, 156,942. Um, the general fund we open to the process for the first line and a net end balance of 12 million six. And we talked about that the other night, it's an eight hundred million uh fund balance of the percentage operating at 24.42 percent, which is right in covered with our fund balance policy. The next group of funds that go down the road, we have 42 special revenue funds, and the first main grouping that you'll see here, we've got our library, our CBG COVID, strong communities, home repairs, lots of brands, and each of those grants are a separate fund that have to be reported for um for the state as well as our public fund. We're gonna get into that a little later this morning. Um we have the balances if you look at the first column, the projected fund balance, we'll see some negative balances, and then in that white one between the two blue columns, you'll kind of see property numbers, and that's where we do our advanced so that there is a fund that we anticipate have a negative fund balance by the end of the year. We have to advance funds and the general fund or another fund to make sure that it is in the line our government, our next uh group of funds. Well, then we've got our debt, so this is kind of pleased in there very small early again track particular funds.