01/21/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 1/21/2003 value. However, the $21,000,000 increased assessed value on commercial additions and alterations and the $9,000,000 increase in new commercial structures assessed value was on 28 and 7 additional permits from the prior yeaz respectively. This ended athree-year decline in both the number of permits and assessed valuation amount. Over the last 10 years, the city has averaged 1,450 permits for an average assessed valuation of $35,694,067. The only other year in the last 10 years to hit $50,000,000 in assessed valuatian was 1998. Therefore, she believes this spike in 2002 of building, Planning Commission fees etc., appears to be an aberration. As such, she will not estimate 2003 based an this year's results alone. As Finance Director, she does not have a great impact on the monies received by the city. She monitors and questions, but can't take credit for the monies collected-she only records it timely and properly. The General Fund expenditures for 2002 were $18,114,525, which was $693,000 below the appropriations. In 2002, expenditures were $154,000 below 2001 actual expenditures net of the $200,000 transferred to the budget stabilization in 2001, The following summarizes major departments' amounts of expenditures and how much they ended below plan, noting the most significant fluctuation that attributed to the reduction: The Police Dept. ended $117,500 below plan, and $83,000 of that related to wages. The Fire Dept. ended $136,800 below plan, and $120,000 of that related to wages and overtime. The Dispatch was $25,300, $23,000 of which was wages. The Building Dept. $14,800, $11,000 of that was wages. Engineering $24,000, $6,000 was wages and the rest were traffic signal and hydrant repair. The Service Dept. ended $84,000 below plan, and that was mostly materials and operating expenses. The Fleet Dept. ended $43,400 below, and that was $8,200 in wages and $18,000 in equipment replacement parts. The Law and Finance Departments were $24,500 below plan, and $15,500 was wages. The remaining departments were $18,500 below plan, and $5,000 of that was wages. From the prior year encumbrances, $18,700 less was spent than what had been encumbered from the year before. That goes back into the unencumbered balance at the end of 2002. The General Govt. was $185,500 below plan, of which the transfer to Springvale was smaller than prepared for by $82,500; longevity was $43,800 below plan; the retirement and vacation buy-back was $29,000 below plan; RITA collection fees was $14,000 below plan. Approximately $345,000 related to wages and benefits. Of that, $100,000 was the result of the unsettled fire contract and will be included and is included in the 2003 appropriations. The remaining $245,000 in savings from plan aze a combination of the effect of attrition and inaccurate wage budgets. The other approximate $345,00, therefore, must be a decline in non-payroll operating expenses. She believes this to be a combination of budgets having discretionary funds built in that were not needed. These results have reinforced her belief that there aze two major areas that need to be addressed: First, more detailed budgets must be submitted by the departments, analyzed by the administration and reviewed by Council and followed through. She has requested the Mayor request detailed payroll budgets for 2003 calculated by each department on a common spread sheet to attempt to get another management tool. She has designed the spread sheet to also compute longevity and pension expenses for a more accurate budget projection. The non-payroll budgets will also include detailed listings of expenses by line item. This will give a better starting point to work from when analyzing variances from plan. Secondly, the lack of an adequate accounting information system was very apparent this year. Other than the standard Revenues, Expenditures and Appropriations 4