The meeting was the first of six scheduled budget work sessions for fiscal year 2025-2026. It ran from 3:00 p.m. to approximately 5:51 p.m. in the Town Hall Chambers. All seven council members were present (Council Member Tubbs arrived at 3:02 p.m., Council Member Flaherty at 3:19 p.m.). Acting Town Manager Sheila DeSchaaf opened by outlining the budget process and the agenda order (department presentations first, then finance). No public comment was taken, as work studies are for discussion only. The meeting also experienced a Zoom audio outage; the meeting was recorded and later made available online.
Department Service Level Presentations: Each department director or lead presented their organizational structure, budget, staffing, key responsibilities, capital improvement projects (CIP), and 2024 highlights. Notable points included:
Financial Overview (Dana Ohanesian): The town has two primary accounts: Chase Bank (checking) and Local Government Investment Pool (LGIP, savings) managed by State Treasurer, yielding ~4.6% interest. Three major funds: General Fund, HURF (street), Water/Enterprise. Non-major funds: Bed Tax, Airport, Library, Capital Projects, Capital Replacement, Contingency. FY2024-25 total budget: $106,058,016. Property tax levy: 0.2992 per $100 assessed value. Town operates under Home Rule (voted in 2022, next vote 2026). Total projected revenue for all funds: $69,218,303 (including $6.5M bond revenue no longer applicable). General fund revenue projected at $38.7M. Long-term liabilities: leases $2.2M, water loans (WIFA) $28.8M, PSPRS unfunded liability $19.8M, OPEB $18.7M, compensated absences ~$10M – total $80.2M. Council Member Bell asked if LGIP information could be added to Transparency Center website; Ohanesian said he'd work with IT. Council Member Bell also questioned the percentage applied to PSPRS from the 0.88% sales tax; DeSchaaf clarified that a portion always goes to current employees, and the policy pays an extra $500k-$600k/year to reduce unfunded liability. Ohanesian explained that police vacancies negatively impact unfunded liability because the higher contribution rate for unfunded portion is not paid on vacant positions.
They should be on now. Are they on now? They turned up. No. Maybe my they don't move. These don't move. They're locked. Locked and loaded. Is it better with my laptop down? Oh, okay. I guess if we if we if we lean in, you can hear better. You can also move up. No, I meant she could move up as well. I can read like a hundred. So now that we can hear, would you like to call a roll call, please, Michelle? Yes, let the record show that all council members are present except for council members of talks and council members party. Thank you. And presentation by department directors regarding organizational service levers. And uh Sheila's gonna start the presentation for us. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. Welcome to our um what we're calling work session number one for our upcoming budget season. There's uh total of six of them already pre-scheduled for you the first Tuesday of every um month. Today our goal is to talk just some uh basics on the organization, the um leadership in general, organization within each of the departments, the roles and responsibilities, what services those departments provide, um, how we measure performance, and then um backwards on the agenda, but towards the end, finance is gonna go last with their department presentation, so then Dana can jump right into um discussion on our financial uh components that you need to uh be familiar with in order to understand how the budget is structured. So we'll talk about um the tools that we have at our disposal as staff to um prepare the financials for you. We'll talk about um types of funds and the sources and uses. We'll talk about uh the difference between our investment account and our um daily cash account, what we use to pay the bills, and then give you a look ahead at the budget process. Just to give you a little the TVs, can the TVs be turned towards us? A little bit. We also have to same s on your side. Oh, okay. It's okay. It's a learning process. This is number one, Charlie. I like that. Okay. Thank you. Just to give you a little bit of a look ahead. Our next work session is scheduled for February fourth already. It'll be a continuation of today. Um, we intend to cover the corporate strategic plan and the capital improvement program uh generally that uh have been adopted and discuss upcoming changes to those that the council would like to see in that meeting. Any questions on that before we get started? So this is a high level overview of town of Hasin in general, and um starts sort of like a tree. So if you start on the left, that would be our treetopper, that is our citizens there on the left. Contracts and other cities and towns for various services. So it could be land use issues, it could be elections, it could be just different. So we we actually serve pretty much all of the cities and towns in some capacity, either through the direct representation, through contracts for specific uh single issues, or um, as through the riskful the employment matters. Um, so we have quite a lot of experience when it comes to municipal and local government generally. Um, we obviously also serve as legal advisors to municipal personnel boards, local boards to the Arizona public safety personnel retirement system. Um, and obviously, there are so many issues that come up for cities and towns as Sheila mentioned, with like just even legislation that comes down, obviously, implementing that after each session takes a great deal of work to see what's going to impact the town and how to incorporate and properly execute those laws.