9. SR 09-04-2007 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item # 9 MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor and City Council FROM: Lori Johnson, City Administrator DATE: September 4, 2007 SUBJECT: Budget Discussions At last Monday's budget woxksession, we reviewed the tax levy, General Fund and select special revenue fund budgets. The Council made several decisions during the discussion and asked for more information on several items. Attached are responses to several of your questions along with tax levy information. Additional information will be presented at the meeting. The changes requested by Council came to $152,700. Since the County Assessor's estimated net tax capacity (NTC) increase fax exceeded the original estimate, the proposed budget can be funded well within the estmated NTC assuming the same tax rate as last year. The higher than expected NTC means the Council has an oppoxmtuty to decrease the tax rate and still fund the proposed budget. The attached levy data shows how much tax revenue is available to the General Fund depending upon the percentage increase in NTC. We will go over this in more detail at the meeting. Further, there were questions about some of the proposed expenditures. The need fox a new front end loader was questioned including whether this was a planned purchase. Attached is the five year street equipment capital improvement plan from prior years that included this purchase for 2008. The 1985 front end loader that is proposed to be replaced has over double the recommended number of hours of use and is nearly 22 yeazs old as researched by the Public Works Director. Another item questioned was the training budget in the Recreation department. Attached is a memo from Pazks and Recreation Director Bill Maertz explaining his request. Environmental Administrator Rebecca Haug is scheduled to give an update on the Energy Expo and the Energy City Commission three yeaz plan at the September 10 meeting. However, she just completed hex summary and feels that the cost to put on the Energy Expo in 2008 could be reduced by $15,000. Again, we will discuss all of these and your other questions in detail at the meeting. Finally, please bring your budget packet from last week's worksession to the meeting on Monday. As you know, the proposed maximum levy needs to be approved at the September 10 meeting so direction from the Counal on the levy will be requested on September 4. This will allow time to prepare the resolution fox adoption on September 10.