Finance Committee - 3/21/2018 Page 10
we started, we’ve probably had about 5 times that we’ve had to do that. Most items come in under what we
budget, which is good. So that helps out a little. It changes all the time, the CERF schedule, it’s a living
document. This year they may say they need three types of trucks next year, but when next year comes
around they realize they may only need two and another can be put off, but something else gets put forward.
So it changes every year. It’s not exact. We use an estimator for inflation; we have an inflation factor in there
of 5% so that helps a little too. Each year everything gets increased by that inflation factor. The dollar value
does not mean spend that amount exactly, we try to spend less. That’s an overview of how it works.
The next page is a description of the money that’s in the fund. Right now we have just under $3 million dollars,
$2, 998,000.00. There are some items that were deferred which I'll explain a little bit more on the next page of
$1,280,000.00 and that’s listed on the next page. Those are items that were approved in Fiscal Year 18 but
after the budget was approved the Mayor wanted deferred some items given the court case we had going on
for a while. So now that is basically settled, the departments will be starting to look at the deferred list and get
some of those items purchased through the Finance Committee. Almost all of this stuff comes in front of
Finance because of the dollar value. So that would give an ending balance of Fiscal 2018 of $1,717,000.00.
We proposed in the operating budget for Fiscal 2019 a $1 million dollar appropriation. We plan to spend in
cash $2,053,000.00 in Fiscal Year 2019 and other $500,000.00 for the assessment evaluation. That leaves an
ending balance at the end of 2019 $164,661.00.
The next page, again, is just a list of the items that were deferred at the beginning of the Fiscal Year of 2018
and now, like | said, some of these are going through. | know the BearCat purchase order will be coming
forward to this committee. That is $1,280,000.00 and this deferred list wasn’t just something that we estimated
at, we met with all the departments and with the Mayor and this is the list that they actually came up with that
they could defer.
The next page is actually in your proposed budget that you have that you received last week. As you can see
it shows you all the items that are planned to be purchased in 2019. The first column that says “Current
Replacement Cost’ would be the total amount needed, funded by cash is $2,053.000.00 so that’s on the
previous page that | just showed you, two pages prior. The items that would be bonded, funding by bond we
use the bond for just very large items like a fire truck or certain vehicles in Public Works. If we had a lot more
funds in that account we wouldn’t be bonding, we would be paying cash for everything. But it is extremely hard
to do that given the amount of vehicles that we have and limitations we have with the budget. We have been
doing this basically since 2010 and it’s worked out pretty good. | know the departments prefer this from the old
method. That’s the overview.
Mayor Donchess
And under the ordinances which govern CERF a re-evaluation is an eligible expense for CERF funds. We don’t
really have $500,000.00 sitting around in any other account that is eligible to fund a re-evaluation since the
numbers work, we propose that the number come from here. Does anybody have questions about CERF or
any of the information that has been presented?
Alderman Laws
Are you concerned about only having $164,000.00 at the end?
David Fredette
| would prefer it be higher. It’s actually been low, this is not the first time, it’s been around that number a few
years in the past. What we don’t know yet is how is the year end going to be for Fiscal Year 2018, we may
decide to escrow some money into the account. We've done that in the past. Sometimes there is unexpected
revenue that comes in, we may be able to put in that account. Those are just things we don’t know yet. But
$164,000.00 is on the low end yes.
