This work session was held to continue review of the City of Wilmington's FY27 recommended budget, addressing follow-up questions from prior sessions and receiving presentations on parks maintenance, capital improvement projects, police workload, and proposed fee schedule changes. City Manager Becky Hawke and staff provided detailed responses and analysis to support council's upcoming budget decisions.
I'll bring the meeting back to order. Somebody settled. It's Friday afternoon. Okay. Take a roll call. Mayor Pro Tem, are you here? Reluctantly, yes. Council Member Joy, are you here? Councilmember Andrews, are you here? Councilmember Lau, you here? Here. Councilmember Santa Guida, are you here? Here. Councilmember Clinton Quintana, are you here? I am in the flesh, sir. The chair is here. We're all here to counter for it. I'll turn it back over to you, Ms. Hulk. Like sitting in a time share presentation. All right. Next question is why was there a 75% jump for reserved fund balance? Laura has the details on this, but um really in general, this is to anticipate um increased fuel costs that we are experiencing across the city more than anything was uh the jump in that. And so if those costs are needed, then those dollars will be allocated out to the departments as those needs arise. Um but this is really kind of a central holding location for dollars that are needed to run our fleet. Um in that fund, um, unfortunately, we occasionally have accidents and need to repair vehicles. Um, and so the dollars sitting in this account help cover the cost of that because we are self-insured, so um we have to take on those costs ourselves. Why the drop in interest earnings for the convention center? Um we do operate as a multi-year fund for the convention center. Um so we are just um looking at um less interest revenue in this upcoming fiscal year um interest earnings that are received but not appropriated, that stay those stay in the fund. Um so we're just basically projecting an interest earnings amount. If we exceed that, that would just go into the convention center fund balance for future use uh for something related to the convention center. But you're you're projecting a 44% decrease in interest earnings period. Sure. Martha has raised her hand. The convention center fund is a multi-year fund, and so what we're doing is we're projecting the interest rate earnings that we need in order to balance the budget. The additional interest earnings that we may receive will still remain within that fund and we'll have the ability to budget in the future if needed. So since this is a multi-year fund, it kind of operates a little bit different than the general fund with an annual basis, but those funds the revenue if we receive more will always be available. And it but it stays within the convention center bucket. Correct. Okay. I I just because it stays within that bucket. I don't is this like we're having a highly conservative estimate for interest earnings, or this is explain to me this the multi-year nature of this. Uh so this is just what's needed. So with a multi-year um, like if we had savings one year, like last year, we could use some of that money because it would the available budget would still be there because it's not on an annual basis, and so it's more of a cumulative effect. So this would be like cumulatively overall, this is what we need in the the fund this year. So you so it's not that you think that the interest on this account is gonna earn 44% less than last year, it's that you're spending some of it down. Uh it well, not necessarily down, but that is correct. It's not that we think that the earnings will be 44% less. It's cumulatively this is what we needed to balance the budget.