4.8 SR 10-21-2024 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Financial Management Policies Purpose The City of Elk River is responsible to its citizens to manage its resources wisely and adopting financial policies is an important step to ensure that resources are managed responsibly. The policies provide the framework for the overall fiscal management of the city and guide the decision-making process. Most of the policies represent long standinglong-standing principles, traditions and practices which have guided the city in the past and have helped maintain financial stability over the past years. These financial policies will be reviewed periodically to determine if changes are necessary. Throughout this policy, every reference to “city” explicitly defines the City of Elk River, Minnesota. Objectives ▪Providing sound principles to guide the decisions of the City Council and management. ▪PTo providinge both short-term and long-term financial stability to city government by ensuring adequate funding for to provide foring and protecting infrastructure needed by the community today and for years to comethe future. ▪Protecting and enhancing the city’s credit rating and prevent default on any municipal obligations. ▪To pProtecting the City Council’s policy-making ability by ensuring that important policy decisions are not constrained by financial problems or emergencies. Revenue and Expenditure The city will: ▪The city will pProvide long-term financial stability through sound short and long termshort- and long- term financial planning. ▪The city will eEstimate its annual revenues and expenditures in a conservative manner so as toto reduce exposure to unforeseen circumstances. ▪The city will pProject revenues and expenditures for the next five years and will update these projectionsprojections for each budget process. ▪Establish user charges and fees at a level related to the cost of providing the service (operating, direct, indirect, and capital) Wwhenever user charges and fees are determined to be appropriate and the direct benefits are identifiable,. the city will establish user charges and fees at a level related to the cost of providing the service (operating, direct, indirect, and capital). Fees will be reviewed annually. ▪To the extent feasible, one-time revenues will be applyied one-time revenues toward one-time expenditures or place themd into reserves. One-time revenues will not be used to finance ongoing programs. Utilities ▪The City Council sets fees and user charges for municipal sanitary sewer utility and garbage collection. The Utilities Commission sets fees and charges for the water and electric utilities. The city will encourage the Utilities Commission to adopt financial management policies similar to the policies stated in this section. ▪The city will strive to set municipal utility users fees for municipal utilities at a financially sustainable level that creates financially sustaining enterprises. Page 81 of 294