City Council - Committee Of The Whole

okay we can go ahead and get started here uh with old and new business um are there any items for old and new business okay well I've got a couple items um so I wanted to let uh Council and public and staff know that um the mail the the final consideration of ordinance for the mail locking mailbox uh has been moved to the next meeting uh there were some questions that um Rose and seeing as the planning director the mayor and one of our deputy chief deputies is out they're out at a conference uh it just made more sense to move until until next meeting the ordinance as it's written would not go into into effect until the beginning of next year so it sort of doesn't really matter I mean between now and the next meeting uh when it's going to be read for third and final so just want to give folks a heads up on that and then the other item I wanted to bring up was to get a sense from Council whether or not there's appetite for a retreat uh either before the end of this year or at the beginning of next year and I'll open it up to any questions or comments that you all might have cstone I mean I just respond in the affirmative I think um I think it's important and we should set aside the time okay con Mar Williams yeah I I would also um also agree I know that we had had one when I first came on the council and it was very help helpful to me to see um us discuss the things that we did and how things work and so on so I would uh totally agree to do a retreat okay c m hman then um lqu

agreed I I think it'd be a great idea um I think there are a couple things that we bring up every year things like um structure of meetings public comment um assignments and I think those would all be great to start having conversation about at the end of the year rather than waiting till the first of the year when we um make some of those decisions thank you cons question yeah I think these things are need to be done periodically so it's been a while so I'd appreciate it um are you going to solicit ideas for topics I mean Holly mentioned a few perennial favorites um what was your thinking on that I was thinking that one of the big long range lifts we're going to have to do over the F coming year might be the comprehensive plan maybe we can talk about expectations on that process not get into the weeds of doing the actual comp plan that's still on the staff's hands but I don't know just a suggestion for something we could talk about that really is very forward looking okay uh yeah I would ask for ideas from Council Members um for topics that you want to discuss uh council member Anderson uh I also agree and I I think it would be nice if it's um we give an opportunity for the mayor to um um update this past year but also um looking forward some of the um initiatives and work coming through there so that we have a strong partnership um I think last time our uh we focused on communication with staff and with each other so it was about you know trying to make sure that everything

was pretty collaborative um and collegial in our our work so I think maybe if we chunk out a a period of time for the mayor to be able to cover things um that would help okay um especially with expectations of making sure that we are on the same page okay sounds good any objection C cotton um no I think it's an excellent idea and I wish we had done it when I started um but um I will also add that um I agree with everything that's been said um I think there'd be to doing this regularly and thinking about scheduling that out um I think if with her commitment to be as generative as we can as a body I think it's really helpful and we can do that agenda setting together um because yeah we all we all have the sh same shared commitments and all have limited hours in the day so I think um yeah I'm I'm excited about this and thanks for bringing this forward president Hamill sure okay well I will work with our staff to get this on the calendar at some point with ample notice and uh invite our staff to come and join us and we'll select a date and location to be decided okay um any other items for old new go ahead um Mr Mariner microphone please Mike Alan Mariner City attorney just uh looking for some direction on the ordinance regarding locking mailboxes I know it was not on third final for this council meeting will be I think what you said next meeting but is there going to be some kind of work session or something to resolve the questions or issues that came up I think it would just

be uh emails from Council to the planning director to ask about I think the the pertinent things that came up were um what happens to items like prescription um drugs that that are sent through the uh Postal Service how does that work in terms of the being able to you know that's not kind to fit through a mail slot so how how does that work the um postal carrier would like likely have to carry what's called an arrow key and it's a universal key um and how does that work in terms of security for you know one key could open up every mailbox on the block how does that work in terms of that and just making sure I mean things are different now with how people get their their medications and we don't want them to get hung up hung up at the post office or have them to drive to get the um the medication they they may not be able to do that there's probably a reason that they're get they're receiving these medications at their home uh there's also um the topic of uh package theft which this ordinance does not really meaningfully address uh is there a possibility how does that work basically I think those those are the main questions that that got asked so the and and and you're you feel like that that can be resolved from the email from the planning director to all council members I think that okay I think that that probably can and if there's further discussion that needs to happen then we we can move it along to the to the next meeting I I don't int intend to do that but I I do want

these questions answered that's right thank you cstone so I wasn't at the last meeting but I had intended to reach out to request that it be pulled but then received notice that yeah there were other questions that had res I mean I guess my preference is if there's going to be proposed changes and disc discussion to me that would feel better especially from public engagement and viewing and recording and other things for that to happen during a committee session so I don't know if it's possible for that to be come forward at the next meeting but how that works logistically if it has if it's on for third and final does it need to stay in that time slot on our agenda or could it be pulled back to committee or that that's what I was asking it could be both and and I just want to know what expectation of council is C um what I'd like to do is refer that to uh committee the whole for that afternoon session during that meeting and then we vote on it that that evening so we get the questions answered everything is daylighted it's all in public um and then the public can benefit from understanding how this how that process work so therefore I will go ahead and make a motion to um move the locking mailbox ordinance to Committee of the whole at the next um city council meeting second okay question go ahead counc pleas what would what what sorry what would happen if those um answers aren't forthcoming at that meeting do we move it forward to the next meeting or what c yeah we can move

it How would how would that be handled if you're if you're not satisfied if if council members are not satisfied with the answers um that come back from the planning department then we can we can move it to the next meeting until those okay until those questions get answered well I'm not so worried about uh us not um having those answers it's it might be a timeline issue that's all yeah so we can we can move it yeah okay any further discussion on the motion com Mar cotton okay uh all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries 70 um Miss Gat did you get the motion and the second uh was Stone y okay any other items for old new consar stone I guess it might be a question that might be forthcoming but when we were talking about scheduling knowing that the budget discussions are coming up if we have a proposed schedule yet for for meetings just to get those on people's calendar sooner rather than later I know that in the past we've met more often right for for Budget briefings Finance director do you have any comments on that yeah thank you Council um we do not have an official uh schedu SCH yet they've often been on the off Mondays in October and November so I guess it would depend on how much um how many sessions the council would like how much discussion would be involved in each of the departmental reviews and how quickly we can get through uh the changes to the budget so um I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you at this time it's

a good question I mean we're going to have to um somehow fit a retreat in in this and we're going to meeting more often this fall because of the budget um so it's that's an important uh question to ask about uh Logistics and timeline so thanks for bringing it up and and we'll get we'll get it all figured out other items for old new customer cotton I've been working with uh uh UFCW 3000 um on a potential resolution for us to consider it um to oppose the merger of Kroger and Albertson's um um be be sharing that with you all um should have done it before now but I'm going to do it right after this um and uh looking to um potentially have that considered um the first meeting in September um and our policy analyst Iris not is working on um beefing up some of those um recital and um I think would welcome input um along the way so um feel free to reach out if there are um any potential collaborations so thank you thank you Council cotton to clarify that that's a resolution not an ordinance right did I say ordinance no you didn't I'm just I just want to make it clear to to our staff that we're that you're proposing an a resolution that will just require one one reading okay okay good sorry one more um just that um after conversations um with uh the planning director and City attorney we we are um um moving the target date for our consideration of draft ordinances related to um prohibiting excessive unfair fees and residential rentals and manufactured home parks to the second meeting

in September so that's 9:30 um and look forward to collaborating and uh input on those but um just that Target date has shifted okay thank you council member cotton counc member lqu this this is just a little public announcement um it has to do with countywide process on comprehensive planning um various elected officials myself included have uh decided to start holding extra meetings other than those already planned for by the county this would be elected officials and uh staff uh having to do across the county from all cities and the County government um and there will be another of those meetings this Thursday at 1:00 up at the linen City Hall Annex the last one was held here at the city hall at the moment I think three city council members are interested in attending so we do not have a quorum issue um but I think oh we now have a quorum issue so we will be noticing it as a public meeting and my guess is that there might be quorums of some of the other cities or the county it's an important meeting the public uh is invited to watch up in Linda and it'll be also available by Zoom so I think public can watch that conversation that way too Jackie is that righta via teams actually but teams okay so you've got to have a Microsoft product to do it anyway I just thought the public should know about that um we we'll be moving towards all jurisdictions towards very large decisions over the next two years and I want to make sure the public knew that those discussions had already

started uh at the at the policy level as well as at the technical level thank you cqu any other items for old new so got a couple minutes I'll just go ahead and um just mention that um the incarceration prevention and reduction task force met uh last week and we are going through the process of selecting who will be on What's called the Jpop uh committee which is the jail planning operations plan committee um we had um voted for coun member Lilo Quist to be on the financial part of that uh committee and then I've uh volunteered to be on the other part of that committee along with the mayor so we do have some representation from the city council and the mayor's office uh in that process that um that group will be meeting um starting in September and there's a lot of planning to be done uh city council and previous mayor um and I believe this mayor fully behind um Behavioral Health funding for Behavioral Health and trying to make sure that we have an adequate plan for not just adequate but a um a suitable plan for um making sure that folks who enter the wam County Jail system have uh access to medic Medicaid for example and have some kind of discharge that that makes sense for uh release back to the community um perhaps up to an including some form of housing we're still working those those details out that group will be um be working on that uh for the foreseeable future and we'll keep everyone apprised any other items for old new okay it's 219 I think we need do we need a

minute or two to get back into swing of things all right can I see your sorry okay we can go ahead and get restarted here with Community the whole we have a couple items here before us this afternoon first one is an ordinance amending the 2023 2024 by annual budget this is amendment number 14 this ordinance will amend uh this upcoming budget to add $600,000 to the transportation fund for sidewalk improvements for w Western Washington University's House of the KE ing uh House of healing project to be built at the seahome Arboretum this project was identified in the 2025 through 2030 Transportation Improvement plan and was planned for inclusion in the 2025 budget however the project is ahead of schedule and the university has requested the funding this calendar year here to take us through is our uh Finance director Andy and Andrew and Aston thank you Council uh yes as it's stated in the the uh in the budget amendment the uh Western has gotten started on that on the house of healing project and I think it's a it's it's sooner than we had expected it from the city perspective but uh they expect to hopefully complete that project I believe this year and could use those funds for the project now sooner than later so we'd like to move that up from the expected 25 budget and put that into the 24 budget so we can um go ahead and move those funds over to the Western questions for the finance director uh council member liist move approval of the ordinance second motions been made by

council member liist seconded by council member Williams is there any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signified by saying I I I opposed extensions recusals motion carry 7 Z and our next item um also by Mr ason is the uh budget 101 presentation this presentation provides a brief overview of the budget process and policy these City's fund structures and revenue streams that support governmental services within the general fund yes thank you Council uh this is a attempt at budget 101 so this will not answer all of your budget questions but it is uh an attempt to try to set the stage for the upcoming budget cycle really going through some of the the budget policies and process uh talking about fund structure and then the major revenue streams that really go into the general fund so thought it could be a useful overview as we as we move forward in the budget process and please ask any questions as we as we go along um so some of the key points uh we are now on an annual budget so we have the city had gone through five by annual budgets and this will be our first year back on an annual budget there's over 50 funds uh that we budget and uh listed on the right and I will walk us through those different types of funds here next uh the general fund is the only city fund that does not have a legal or policy restriction for its use uh so it's the only fund that can is is wide open on the use there's 12 departments in the general fund and the general fund represents

about 20 to 30% of the overall City budget so really when we talk about budgeting it's it's really all about the general fund it's all the departments in the general fund it's it's the most complic ated fund to try to budget and so that's why we spend the most time just talking about the general fund Andy you said ask as we go along um the way I express this to members of the public and I want to check with you make sure I've been telling the right story is that in many ways for most funds and purposes we have a good handle on expenses and expenditures and we can keep them in line that in for the majority of the budget we're okay but as you say the general fund budget is only a small piece of the budget small 30% a third um but that's where the most I think budgeting challenges are in the in the coming years is that an accurate depiction yeah it's definitely the most budget challenges that it is the only unrestricted source of uh of Revenue and it has um basically all of our our budget reviews that are me all of the different departments are going to speaking to their budget and almost every single department is uh included within the general fund so uh it is it is very complicated uh there's so many pieces to it and that's why I'm going to kind of walk through those those different pieces uh but first I'll start off with uh some of the other funds so uh special Revenue funds um so these are funds that are restricted or committed for a specific purpose other than debt or

capital and so uh when you when we look to budget when we have any new programs any new activities we really look to the most restricted use first and want to use the restricted funds prior to using the unrestricted funds so here is our our long list of what we have for special Revenue funds um and Samy and Tera were here earlier talking about the affordable housing sales tax the low income housing that is the uh the property tax levy and then also the Community Development block grant or the home Grant and also the home subf fund so all of these have specific uses and they play a a a significant role into how we use these funds and how they roll out but they're often more Project based and not necessarily as much of um FTE included in some of these other special Revenue funds um you'll notice that the Pension funds are in here so there was a change in governmental Accounting Standards Board better defined what a fiduciary fund is and because we have the pension boards because they're not in a uh qualified fiduciary or they're not in like a thirdparty administrator we have to recognize those as special Revenue funds within our reporting so we're actually working on trying to reclassify the numbering I've included them here because that's how we report them out when it comes to the financial statements um but yeah a lot of these are more Project based and aren't aren't the people involved in in the actual uh fund yes and so what's the revenue source for the Sports plex that

178 that one I'm not yeah so the Sportsplex Revenue came about through the Sports plex rental fees for the lease and then the funds would be collected in there and then the amount of uh Revenue associated with The Debt Service would then go over to The Debt Service fund on the next slide to pay the debt of the Sportsplex of the associated debt of the bond so um but yeah all of these special Revenue funds are coming from a specific purpose and have a specific restricted or committed use so yeah the next uh governmental funds are The Debt Service funds which are worth um mentioning so these funds are committed restricted or assigned for the payment and principle of Interest so these funds don't have Revenue sources to them basically all the funds are transferred into these Debt Service funds and then The Debt Service funds pay the principal and interest of the debt related to governmental activities so geob bonds or other governmental loans uh the capital project funds these are funds that are restricted or committed for uh for Capital acquisition or construction so we only have two of these funds we have the watcom facility construction that was just created I believe that was last year for the watcom new building we transferred 1.5 million of seed money from the general fund to get that project started we expect to bond that and be able to pay the um the general fund back for that but because it's a governmental project this is a good way to uh highlight these major projects

in a in a capital project fund uh permanent funds these are funds that are legally restricted their their principle is legally restricted so it acts more like an endowment fund so the interest can be used for other purposes uh within their allowable use but the principle uh has to be m maintained with the fund and all of those the 100s 200s 300s and 700s are all incorporated into what we call governmental funds and it's kind of broken out like that if you have a a governmental project you can go to Capital project fund the debt would be paid with The Debt Service fund but the revenue might come from a special Revenue fund which is confusing because these are the more simplistic types of activity so business type funds are the Enterprise funds all of that activity would actually have to be housed within that fund so if you have a water Capital project that has debt associated with it and um all the revenue that comes into it it has to stay within that fund so all those different pieces within an Enterprise fund uh have to stay within that fund because it's the full business type operations that it's encompassing so that's our water fund our sewer fund our storm and surface water Cemetery golf parking Medic One delopment services so all these funds are expected to be self-sustaining with the user fees that they generate to then pay for operations of those funds all these funds on the left the Enterprise funds are external all the funds on the right are internal funds so these

provide services to all of the other departments within the city uh and it's more on a cost reimbursements but it is a user fee type of Base that that generates the revenue associated with these internal service funds so it's all the fleet activity the radio the facilities the tech and Telecom uh and computer infrastructure you've seen some different uh projects within the facilities administration because that's kind of like the facilities a little bit of the facilities Hub over there at Pacific Street so we've had those two projects and the debt included within that 530 fund with the uh Pacific Street uh phase one and now phase two and so that those are all of the funds that go into uh the budget and the budget creation um but yes we spend almost all of our time talking about the general fund but uh of note is that when you look at all these funds uh resources from One Fund cannot benefit another fund unless it's the general fund uh city council sets the budget Authority for each fund at the fund level and each department at the general fund level so you're setting the budgets are set at the legal limit of what can be spent by each fund and then the Jour fund each department so that is the legal limit of every Fund in each department it's not by the line items that are presented that we go through maybe on the on the budget presentations it's really the the full fund or the full Department budget um that is the legal limit that's set through the budget process yes kind of

shifting a little bit sideways but another part of the budget that we put at the end of the document is the capital budget when we approve the capital budget are we making more specific restrictions on the use so as you say we fund the fire department and there are millions of lines in the fire department and they spend within the final Authority and we don't ever really control the finer gradations within there um but for the capital budget when we approve a capital project by name and buy a gross number are we making more specific restriction so if we say you're going to build little squal comp pier and it's in the capital budget it can't be moved to say you know the Cornwall Beach Park uh that doesn't necessarily restrict the movement uh within the fund and you're not necessarily establishing it by the project but when it comes to the capital facilities plan it allows for the use of Reit or some other restricted source that Reit cannot be used unless the project is on the capital facilities plan so uh the the actual budget is going to be represented in the capital facilities plan and it's also going to be represented at the fund level for available funds so like today within the transportation fund I want we want to bring forward what was presented as going forward in the tip for 25 but there could have been funds available in 24 but we wanted to be transparent in how we present these projects and how the council approves these projects to make it everyone aware that this

project is going to move forward we're going to use budget out of 24 rather than budget it ahead for 25 so we potentially could have shifted some of those uses within this year uh if there was a allowable budget within the fund but in a full transparency we bring forward budget modifications it isn't necessarily a legal restriction that's interesting I mean I the practice always has been very transparent and when projects have changed or been delayed or Money's been moved we've always been told about it so I don't have any concerns about that but I somehow thought that when we approved a capital budget we sort of like now the project will be done um you know what I'm saying yeah I mean what that gives us so we're looking at a one-year budget here um and so the capital budget goes out five years often projects take more than one year and so that is bringing forward to council that this is the expected cost of this project and it it gives understanding uh to everyone that this isn't going to be a $1 million project for 25 it's going to be a $26 million project over the next 3 years and we are kind of committing to it at that time of this is kind of a future expense that we're going to that we're going to see next year as well so um it brings that transparency forward as to what is what's budgeted now for just this one year because all budget Authority laps when the budget at the end of the year uh but the capital project it's intended to bring forward these projects and

continue to plan out more than one year because Capital has to be planned out more than one year but it doesn't set it doesn't it's not an absolute limit or it's not an okay for the full project at that time but it's more expectation for the future okay thank you I think this is actually Beyond 101 because this is sort of an important question I've had in my mind you know if we have the power of the purse strings we the council when and how do we actually exert that control that we have comprehensive planning documents they don't actually bind anything we have uh the tip that's not actually a budget or project approval document either right when you finally bring us an award and we award a contract to someone to actually build a project that is binding but it seems to me you know at what point do we actually say this shall be done and this money shall be available and it's just it's interesting that you're saying that it it sort of lapses and has to be renewed every year for the capital projects um this is going way back but there's been concerns that you know projects were approved in the budget but then not built is is is someone pulling a fast one on the public or on the council and that doesn't happen so yeah I know many things can change in the planning process and the in the needs and the funding structure as well uh but we do have those other planning documents along with the tip that allows Public Works to move forward to get funding for all those other projects as

well so um yeah all the different plans really work together with with the budget creation any other questions um and so still on the left with the laws so uh expenditures have to be less than or equal to revenues plus reserves so we cannot budget more than what we expect to collect and then also what is sitting in the bank account so that is we cannot legally go above that uh from a policy perspective we say that ongoing expenditures should not exceed ongoing revenues so you know whatever we expect for ongoing revenues we should really keep are operating in check and keep that balanced and that's what we're attempting to do now with some with some budget concerns that I'll I'll talk about later uh existing revenues or reserves should be used for one-time revenues and should only be used for onetime expenses so one-time revenues or reserves really should just be for that onetime use you can't guarantee we're going to have operating revenue for some sort of uh new project in the future if it's one-time Revenue uh or if we're using reserves to fund it and the city avoids making financial decisions now that will have a negative impact into the future and so that that's some of the laws and policies that help govern um our budget creation so we have the budget life cycle and so we're right here at the budget review mayor and staff develop proposed budget right I don't know if I'm a cursor right here so we're in this development stage of the cycle after this is developed it's

going to be uh the mayor's proposed budget will be delivered to city council by the first Monday Monday in October that is actually going to be delivered on September 30th and there's a council meeting on September 30th for that budget uh first budget review uh the budget requires two public hearings on the budget and one public hearing on revenue forecast and property tax so there will be three public hearings as part of the budget process after um this step then we have the budget work sessions through October November and establish the budget the new budgets put into place goes into effect January one and then we start the cycle over again with reapo the reapo are those contracts that we maybe started in November December or there's something ongoing to the next year didn't get budgeted in the next year but we already have a contract committing us to that project that purpose um likely was budgeted the year before and now we need to move that budget forward into the next year and so that's some of the reapo process we also true up what our beginning cash reserves are because we don't know until we're able to close out the year uh the mayor then in April again sets the budget priorities and uh solit this input from the city council and then the mayor budget instruction sent to department and then the Departments develop their budget proposals and modifications so but with that we really start with a base budget so all the Departments already have all their FTE and all the

all the costs associated with just standard operations so we're already starting at a baseline where there's not necessarily a lot of wiggle room on what else can be done and this year we're starting more at a deficit unfortunately for trying to figure out how do we how do we budget based on just we we're having a hard time even managing our Baseline so this is uh some of the work that's being done right now is we're working through all with the Departments and evaluating our Revenue projections on what uh what can be done uh to develop this budget currently so with that like I say everything that we talk about the budget is generally is normally about the general fund and so some of that Baseline budget this is what's remaining in the 2024 budget is 131 million on left it's broken down by the uses of the funds most of what goes on in the journal fund is salaries and benefits and then basically the services associated with them um and then on the departmental portion then it's it's sliced out all of those departmental pies are their legal limits um on uh their budget Authority and so that's the mayor's office that's city council hearing examiner Museum library Finance HR legal Municipal Court parks and wreck planning Community Development fire and police and then non- departmental um you'll ask what non-departmental is so we have a slide for that because it's kind of a catchall on items that impact the city-wide function but don't NE have a Nexus with another department and

so that's election fees voter registration membership fees to AWC uh Northwest clean air Cog code publishing lobbying then we have some other items that we can't really find a better place for they don't really fit into some of the restrict the special Revenue funds that service fund the proprietary funds they don't have a home and an apartment um and so indent defense prior yearb o tax refunds uh general fund facilities projects the arpa projects tiny homes base camp and transfers to other funds so that's what's going on into the uh in the non-departmental and a big portion of that is really in that arpa fund and some of those grants for this year so when you look at the size of these uh pies and trying to figure out you know how to slice them all up we get into really it's all based on what do we expect from revenue projections and so we spend a lot of time forecasting reforecasting trying to figure out what we can expect from revenue uh in the general fund to help fund all of those departments and all the services that we provide within the general fund that don't necessarily have an Nexus to a special Revenue fund or proprietary fund or any of the other sources of revenue we have and so as you see we talk about these a lot we talk about the big four as a sales tax property tax B tax utility tax they represent about 80% of what we bring in from the general fund property tax has been sliding um compared like proportionately when we look at the distribution of these and

sales tax and bno tax um are very closely aligned and had done really well over these last uh several years but we're seeing a definite shift in that now but I'll I'll kind of walk us through the different more larger Revenue sources yes Dan sorry um can you go back one slide to I think it's slide nine uh that first item on the right hand column Indigent offense yeah or defense rather do we do we use or take advantage of the public safety educational assessment uh fund that is um assessed on any fine or infraction that goes through Municipal Court it's 105% um and it's primarily the sub the primary sub account for that is uh for Indigent for people who can't pay for the attorney's fees or can't pay their Their fines um I was made aware of that through Tammy Bennett who works over in the in munity court um it would just be interesting to see if we if we use that fund to pay for that for that those items uh I can follow up with Tammy Bennett to make sure that um to discuss the source of those funds and and the allocation um I'm not going to be able to speak to all the all the bits and pieces oftentimes we um research one thing and then get on to another thing and then forget the last thing and but um we will I can I can look into that as well thank you com very interesting if you could go back to the next slide um you had mentioned the property tax was at 177% and you said something about it was less is it less property tax being collected or has the percentage shifted that

it's not 177% it might be 16 but the amount of money would be the same I guess I was just confused by or I wasn't clear what you meant by that yeah yeah we've been seeing growth rates in all the other revenue streams greater than the 1% so property tax is held to the 1% growth plus new construction but that has not um these other revenue streams have been growing at a much greater Pace than 1% um and so that's why property tax has been falling a little bit behind on used to be almost perfect 20% 20% 20% 20% kind of across the board uh but the uh the 1% is is not as um as great as the other growth rates thank you so um I'm going to start with uh sales tax so sales tax is one of our our largest at 22% it's our largest funer of the general fund did you have another question or I was just wondering if you could speak to the other sources and if there are big one of the bigger chunks of that yeah I'm actually going to walk through the sales tax property tax B tax utility tax and then speak to some of the other sources that some of the larger other sources that are included in here um I'll start with the sales tax so sales tax were at 9% locally some people might think that all 9% of that goes to the city or not sure of the distribution so I added the Distribution on this uh on this list so that everyone could see uh more of How It's allocated across that 9% so 6 and a half% of that the state uh 6% is WTA uh mental health at 0.1 juvenile detention at 0.1 uh these are shared the

public safety and criminal justice and then um these are more of our local uh taxes Transportation benefit fund is in our transportation fund that is in one of those special Revenue funds and the housing related that's our affordable housing sales tax that is in one of those special Revenue funds as well so when we T when I bring forward sales tax information to the council I'm really talking about this 1% if you add this first half and second half and so really when I when I bring forward those charts and we're always talking about what sales tax is doing we're looking at that distribution of that 1% and that 1% um this speaks to it a little bit more in all the previous budgets we've had 60% of that 1% go into the general fund 73% of that 1% go into the street fund and then 3% into into the radio fund and so um that has been an ongoing distribution so there's been more dedicated resources towards the street fund and also towards the general fund was about 35 million in 2023 that had the anomaly of the 1.4 million of the one-time uh retro audit that was performed so that's a little bit overstated and now um I we touch on it now but we are seeing a reduction year-over-year in our sales tax at that 1% and we're currently projected to be about 2 million under budget in our in our sales tax so and and likely under what we had collected last year even removing uh the anomaly so um and I'll touch on that again later uh Transportation fund also included in that sales tax

distribution not included in the general fund but that is restricted for those uh Street purposes um and other multimodal um type of Transportation uh affordable housing sales tax just because it was on that uh list um it speaks to just the amount that that we uh collect and use for that affordable sales tax side in the county share uh criminal justice does go into the general fund and then a small percentage of the first tenth of the public safety goes into the general fund and then there's a portion that goes to the county um associated with medic 1 and now we have the 210 and we have that new distribution of 75% of the 210 goes to wam County and then 25% stays in the new special Revenue fund of 120 so that's some of the overview of the sales tax breakdown for when you have retail sales tax um business and occupation tax is our other really large source of Revenue it goes very closely hand inand with what we collect for sales tax so these are really uh the these are assessed on businesses it's really on the gross receipts so everything collected and I'm not going to go through all the details on what we collect on bno or or what it applies to but it applies to almost every business within uh city limits or any business that does business within City Limits and the revenue they they collect on on the type of business so that was about $22 Million last year and those really go hand inand when we're talking about Revenue estimates and revenue projections it really ties nicely

with what we expect from a sales tax so we've seen a reduction in sales tax I would expect there to be a reduction in the bno side as well property tax so when you pay your property taxes the majority of the property taxes go to the school district and uh the state uh but we have our distribution of about 177% of the sales tax goes to the city and that is uh some of it goes to the fire pensions uh 10% goes to the general fund uh percentage goes to Greenways and and we also have our affordable housing and that's broken down here so when we look at what we've been collecting on sales tax and B&O tax B tax was at about 22 million sales tax was up there above that as well and now the general fund property tax is sitting at about $17.5 million so we look at increases we are limited the council is is um authorized to increase property tax by 1% uh annually so that's 175,000 if we just keep everything constant on that so that's a a small growth percentage um on what goes in the general fund and then the rest of these Greenways is a special Revenue fund home levies special Revenue fund and fire pension is a special Revenue fund affordable housing is its own special Levy and so it doesn't go against our limit of the $3.60 is what the cities are are limited to per thousand and so with the increase in uh in AV across the board here in the city of Bellingham um assess valuation the rate is is down to $1.38 and so uh with a it could be it's all the way up to $360 as the cap but we are far

from uh the cap on on what's allowable for a property tax levy rate uh utility taxes this is the fourth uh of what we call the the big four of what goes into the general fund you can see um these top the top three are internal so our water Watershed sewer storm um those are all collected within our own utilities and these rates are set by Council and these are the approximate amounts that we collected for 2023 the uh Solid Waste utility uh tax goes into the environmental remediation fund and then the rest of the bottom four are the percentages allowable for each one of these uh types of utilities and to increase those those would have to go out to voter approval to adjust any of those um but this is another major source of Revenue within the general fund now getting into some of the Lesser other category um we have Broker natural gas so this is on wholesale natural gas um uh must have the same rate as the natural gas utility uh it's pretty variable and that's about 650,000 a year admissions tax is 5% on ticket sales and so that was about 450 500 different uh years uh we also have shared state liquor and cannabis Revenue so that's about 1.3 on the on the liquor sales and uh 270k on the Cannabis so cannabis has been very limited as since we've ever collected it and so it those those are kind of maintained kind of in those ranges uh other revenues of note are ground emergency medical transport uh that is uh provides a funding to close the gap between Medicaid reimbursement the

actual cost of emergency transport this is associated with BLS and ALS but we are talking about the BLS portion here and it has had a significant increase within the general fund of providing additional Revenue about 3 million in 2022 and um they're performing an audit of 23 and we're still waiting for kind of a retr payment associated with our G GMT fund so um but that is one of those uh very good programs but there has been um there kind of in an analysis phase I think on on whether how sustainable that is what the rate should be and um that's collected on a on a monthly basis just based on transport and that difference uh we're hoping it stays still at that about that 3 million uh other revenues of note is the BLS uh transport so that is just basic life support that we receive a funding of about 1.4 in 2023 and then we have an interlocal agreement with District 8 and that was about 2.1 million in 2023 as well we have franchise fees um about 75 or 70% of that goes into the general fund um and also some uh Peg fees um that's a smaller amount but um other items of note would be uh the parks department for activities and rental fees so that is about 1.3 million plus on the on the park side and then um interest Revenue we received a little less than a million dollars last year in interest revenue and then also then Grant funds help support that as well there's other miscellaneous ones that would be drilling down to uh even smaller amounts to try to talk about all the different

things that potentially go into the general fund uh but these are some of those other revenues of note that we work towards to try to come up with projections across the board evaluating just what the forecast will be at each one of these line items considering each line item separately as we can evaluate what we expect there to be a change into the forecast as we're in this cycle as we're trying to develop the budget right now we're we're right here we're still updating our revenue forecast and and I did uh mention that um that we are seeing a reduction we just got the sales tax numbers which is that 1% for what we're going to receive at the in a few days for August and it was $71,000 less than what we' received for August the previous year and so we're seeing a reduction year over-ear on an actual basis and that is um two almost 250,000 less than what we had anticipated from a budget basis so we're projecting about a $2 million deficit from what we have projected from a budget perspective that we would collect within the sales tax and we still need to update forecasts associated with bno assciated with uh sales taxes we evaluate all these revenue streams and what they do we take each month and look to update what we're seeing from a revenue perspective so but very concerning as we as I talked about when we start with a base budget where we're already considering that we were in a deficit position and trying to evaluate how we can adjust services and evaluate how how we can

properly budget and balance the budget this year uh takes us back to our financial management guidelines we we were on the right side um probably not the upper right but we've been on the right side with uh slightly Rising revenues um sometimes we saw big bumps uh in revenues but we're we're much more on the left side where we're slightly declining revenues and so from our budget policies and from our financial management guidelines bringing this forward we've talked about that could mean you know lower service levels reduce capital investment and um and we're hoping it's shortterm but we do need to uh be ready to make adjustments within the budget it is good that we're moving to an annual budget I feel like we can be nor more Nimble and react more quickly and only set 25 and then evaluate for 26 and we continue to make changes and try to make sure that we have a good balanced budget and our um uh just considering all the impacts as we move forward and continue to make adjustments and so that uh somewhat sets the stage uh for the budget um and I'm available for any questions other questions for Mr espon okay seeing none thank you for the presentation very important thank you okay that'll take us to our next item and that is first of all I'd like to not that's four committees that um anded had it schedule today so if we could give give bonuses to the chairs we would do that but we don't get those here um our next item that's a joke by the way um executive session uh we have

four items first is litigation again bar versus uh Bellingham with good for 5 minutes litigation second one's litigation uh lton versus Bellingham with good uh also that one's for 10 minutes and then Labor Relations discuss collective bargaining strategy with Sullivan approximately uh 10 minutes and then potential litigation with Mariner for 20 minutes so that's 45 minutes I'll be back at 3:45 to either put time back on the clock or to um to recess us until this evening thank you