On April 10, 2023, the Taylor City Council and department heads held the first of three scheduled budget study sessions at the Taylor Municipal Building to review the mayor's proposed FY 2023/2024 budget and the FY 2023 omnibus budget amendment. Finance staff presented a revenue and expenditure overview, followed by department-level reviews of Community Development, Information Technology, Parks and Recreation, Senior Center, Building and Grounds, Human Resources, and Fire. The agenda planned a 6:00-6:30 p.m. revenue overview, with department presentations following through about 9:00 p.m. No formal votes were taken.
All right. Waiting for Granicus to come up, but they're probably waiting for us for me to start talking before they switch over to the live fee. But this is being broadcast. And welcome to the twenty twenty-three budget. Actually, through a chair, it's actually twenty twenty-four now. Twenty twenty-three, twenty twenty-four. Um okay, so uh good evening, everybody, council members, uh, public at home and in the crowd. Um, this is the first of three uh scheduled uh budget study sessions for the city of Taylor. Um we have uh first up a 30-minute overview of the budget documents and just kind of recap of the documents that you see um in front of you and online is the first document that you guys received is a smaller summary version document of the budget. Um I won't be going over this that much at all because it is summarized, it has the um items in there for the uh legislat you know the legislation, the state um budgeting act, all that stuff's covered in here, summarized. The second document is what we'll be going over a little bit more, and then we're gonna have even more detail on the budgets for the departments, as you will see as we go through with the departments. So um, the second item right now is the budget detail overview. It's the thicker document. Mine's a little bit longer, uh, because it was printed out on legal. Uh, but this here gives you a little bit more of uh a detail and highlights of what's going on in the mayor's proposed 2024 budget as well as the 23 budget amendment. Uh, for those of you who are familiar with it during this budget process, we do ask the council uh to approve an omnibus budget amendment for the current year that we're in. And then what I'm gonna do is go over some highlights with those items right now, and then we'll get more details when we bring the departments up and discuss their budgets. So I'm gonna go to this document here, which is on the screen as well. Um, and first of all, we have the uh first page is really the letter from the mayor's office indicating um, you know, just kind of uh a uh cover letter on the budget. Going to the next page. You okay, Councilman Johnson? Yeah. Okay. Going to the next page, uh, page two. Um now we get into the top the the top section talks about our basis of budgeting. And real quick, what that means is um we the the basis of accounting that we use for budgeting is really the modified accrual basis, which all our special revenue funds and our general fund use. Our enterprise funds, uh, like the golf course, the water and sewer funds, their regular accounting is a full accrual, but we always budget them based on the modified accrual because it gives you a better idea of their cash in and out. So I just want to make a note that is the basis that we use for budgeting. And uh most communities use that basis for budgeting as well, too. Um over the um on page two, we're going to go over the fiscal year 23, the current year changes that are presented in this budget. Um we're gonna concentrate mostly on the general fund, but we'll make some comments on the other funds as well. To uh the general fund, the the presented budget proposed is actually going to be uh revenues over expenditures of 1.2 million. That is a change of that's a positive change of approximately 1.7 million from the current budget. Um the estimated total unassigned fund balance at the end of fiscal year 23 is estimated to be 13.5 million, uh, which is approximately 28 percent of your revenues. As you guys recall uh during our audit that um you know best practice standards is that you want between 15 and 30 percent fund balance. Um so we're we're doing well there. Uh obviously 1.7 million is uh you know is uh you know pretty decent uh discret you know discretion. So uh we'll go over those highlights right now. Um with the revenues in the general fund, the tax related revenue is increasing about 112,000, and that's simply related to updated uh taxable values from the assessing department. Uh the the amount that's in our current budget was from the original estimated tax values that was back in March of 2022. Since then, there's been um some border reviews, adjustments, things like that. So all we're doing is that we're estimating that tax increase now that we have uh final numbers for tax year 2022. Uh finance and forfeiture revenue is increasing by 625,000, and that's based on the um the last couple months with the traffic detail revenues, it has been significantly better than the previous six months. Um, as you recall, our previous budget amendment, we actually lowered that original budget from 6.2 million to 3.5 based on those lower numbers for the first six months. But January and February were significantly higher than what was being received over those six months. So we are amending that estimate to uh finish the year at approximately uh uh four point four point two million some change. Uh so we were comfortable moving that up by the six hundred and twenty-five thousand. Um the other significant items uh it's on a net value, it's not that significant, but I still want to make a note is uh rental income from Act 51 funds and work orders from um Act 51 funds. There's a net increase of 37,000. Um, what that is, and we'll have more explanation when we talk with the departments, but what that is is that the DBW department is a department in our general fund, and Act 51 for major local streets are different special revenue funds.