Okay, we'll go ahead and get this uh work session uh going.

This will be a series of work sessions for the uh budget for the 2025 uh season or 2026 season.

Um so uh go ahead, Jordan, take it away.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

Welcome everyone to the first work session of the 2026 budget season.

We are uh we have uh the same number of workshops as we've always had in the past, however, we're gonna set this overview one right at the beginning here on October 2nd.

We finished city manager review of the budget as quickly as last Wednesday.

So I apologize for some of the uh hectic slides out to you and then revised slides today.

Uh, but the idea and the purpose behind the slides that you have in your possession are for them to sit and marinate and generate questions for you throughout the budget process.

Not necessarily tonight, though.

If you do have questions tonight, feel free to just stop me in the middle of it, and uh we can work through anything that you need to tonight.

There are very few actual appropriations that we're gonna touch on tonight.

The the main real debate around level of appropriation is simply revenues and some reserve funds, not all of them.

So uh this is this is again mostly for information, though I hope that it generates some questions, and I hope you have them, and feel free to pepper me throughout the presentation.

With that, the agenda for tonight, we're gonna start with budget process, just take you through what the budget looks like throughout the year.

I'm gonna take you through the financial schedule, which is my favorite thing, the fund balance, and uh that's not anything new to you folks, but I'd like to.

I just like to touch on that in the overview every year.

That's the highest level of any organization is how much you have in fund balance or net position.

Then you have the lines, and the lines is something that we've been doing now for for many years, and the lines sometimes go up, sometimes go down, uh, but they always cross.

That's the punchline there.

And we'll get to we'll get to those here in a minute.

Budget parameters, that is something that's been new in the last three or four years where we do a budget parameters resolution.

I'm gonna take you through that.

The budget parameters resolution is a way for you.

You already know this, but a way for you to communicate to staff and city manager and management what you'd like the city budget to look like.

And so we're gonna go through some of the high points on the budget parameters resolution, the things that management heard and attempted to incorporate in this 2026 budget.

And then we are going to do some appropriations on revenues and reserve funds, and we're gonna do a special presentation tonight on the utility fund and the special revenue fund there.

That was asked for during department operations reports.

We've got some updated numbers for you.

I'll turn it over to Casey at that point.

And way at the end, not listed here, but if there is time, time permitting, there's some personnel discussion.

City manager has a few slides towards the end.

So with that, start with budget process with the C line.

This is the first workshop.

Then we have CSOs next Thursday, and what I like to call focus week.

Four workshops in a row starting on Monday.

That Monday, October 7th, 27th workshop, rather, is uh at the Civic Center.

The rest everything else is gonna be in council chambers.

There's some nice footnotes in the schedule that we passed out that uh that you'll be able to read as well.

And one thing I want to point out on the budget process is that it doesn't all all start on October 2nd.

The budget process goes on all year long, and we are just simply in quarter four.

So leave that, and we're gonna jump into the financial schedule.

It often puts me to sleep, sometimes going through all those rows and columns, and so I have an otter sleeping.

Uh but it's uh it's the control tower of the entire budget.

This is the best way to get an idea of what city what is happening with city operations.

So for for now, let's ignore all the numbers because they're hard to see.

This picture is zoomed out quite a bit.

The graphics down in the bottom are are what I want to draw your eyes to.

So down on the bottom, bottom left, you can see that general fund revenues exceed general fund expenses, and the difference between other fund expenses and other fund revenues is exactly the same as that gap between the general fund, and that's by design.

And the difference between other fund expenses and other fund revenues is exactly the same as that gap between the general fund.

And that's by design.

Any excess revenue is transferred to the other funds for service delivery.

And it breaks out the other funds on the bottom right.

And pretty obvious permanent fund is all revenue, very little expense, debt service by nature.

It's gonna be mostly expense and very little revenue.

Used to be a program, state school bond debt reimbursement, but that program has not been accepting new applicants recent history.

So zooming in, looking at the numbers only, I put it by division, and the biggest and most important thing to look for is you as council members is the net increase or reduction to fund balance right here.

This line is what you care about, and you want it to be zero, and it's zero when we start.

The reason for that is that you're not increasing fund balance and you're not decreasing fund balance.

By statute, we cannot appropriate to fund balance.