The Olympia City Council Finance Committee held a special meeting on January 27, 2026 (noted as Monday, January 26 in the transcript but instructed to use January 27). The meeting was called to order at 4:30 PM and adjourned at 5:41 PM, lasting 71 minutes. Chair Clark Gilman presided, joined by Committee members Kelly Green (who arrived later) and Robert Vanderpool. The committee reviewed a budget snapshot on fund accounting, approved the 2026 workplan, and provided direction on renewing an investment advisory contract.
6.A – Budget Snapshot: The Color of Money Senior Finance Manager Joan Lutz presented an overview of how the city categorizes revenues into funds (General Fund, Special Revenue, Enterprise, Capital Project, Internal Service, and Fiduciary). She explained the restrictions and challenges of each fund type, emphasizing that General Fund is the most flexible but often strained, and that capital projects require concurrent operating funds. Committee members discussed:
6.B – Approval of 2026 Finance Committee Workplan Finance Director Mike Githens presented the draft workplan for 2026. Committee members requested:
Investment Advisory Contract Renewal Director Githens reported that the city’s contract with Government Portfolio Advisors (GPA) expires in April 2026. The city holds approximately $170 million in investments (plus $214 million including bond proceeds) and relies on GPA for investment advice since there is no dedicated staff investment officer. GPA charges a monthly fee of about $5,000. Committee members discussed:
All right. Good afternoon and welcome to the Monday, January 26th, 2026 meeting of the Olympia City Council Finance Committee. We have committee member Kelly Green excused, hoping to join us a little later in the meeting. Councilmember Vanderpool and myself, Clark Gilman here. And we could start with an approval of the agenda. So move. Second. All in favor. Aye. All right. Have you had a chance to review the November 19th, 2025 meeting minutes from the meeting you weren't at? Checks out. Well good. Um move. Well, good, yeah. We'll I'll tell you, we'll go ahead and we can revisit it when Kelly's here next meeting, and and just make sure that it makes sense to be it lined up with my experience of the meeting. All right. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. That brings us to item six. Oh, wait. There's no public comment. There's nobody in the room for public comment. Is there anybody online? I want. No one online to get public on it. So that brings us to a budget snapshot. We do short hits on different finance, city finance topics as a snapshot at the beginning of most of the finance committee meetings, so that we kind of all get the same language and sort of a primer on the on the different areas. So the color of money, funding sources, uses and restrictions. Thank you. For the record, Joan Lutz, Senior Finance Manager. And I am going to just turn this call off. Okay. And so the reason the color of money matters is because municipal revenue is often limited in its uses. We use the term buckets, which are basically just different funds that we use to track those revenue resources and ensure that they're spent in accordance to anything that's required by law or a policy that the council sets. Okay, so the main fund and the most flexible of the funds is the general fund. And this is the city's primary operating fund. The sources of revenue are property tax, business and occupation taxes, sales tax. So like if we make copies for public records or those types of things, that those funds would all come into here. It is the most flexible of the money. For example, uh parks is in the general fund, but it has some restrictions on what fund or some stipulations on what funds and resources must be made available to it. The challenge with the general fund is that it is since being that it is the one that can be used for basically anything and everything that's good governmental use, is that it gets uh stretched, and there is no dedicated funding source, and so it's always a uh basically a diminishing supply. The next major grouping of our funds is the special revenue funds. Um this is money that we've obtained uh and has uh legally restricted specific purposes, and so there's some compliance strings attached. Some examples of that are the home fund, cultural access tax funds, and then the transportation benefit district. We have the two funds. And the challenge for that is that the money can't be just willy-nilly moved and used, it has to be used for uh specific reasons, tracked and reported as such.