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<br />STAFF REPORT <br />DATE: January 16, 2024 <br /> <br /> <br />TO: Mayor and Council <br />FROM: Clarissa Hadler, Finance Director <br />AGENDA ITEM: 4th Quarter Financial Reports <br /> <br />BACKGROUND: <br /> <br />Staff has prepared the 4th Quarter Financial Report for review by the City Council. <br /> <br />ISSUE BEFORE THE COUNCIL: <br /> <br />Does the City Council have any questions about the 4th Quarter Financial Report? <br /> <br />DISCUSSION: <br /> <br />The Quarterly Financial Report for 4th quarter 2023 is attached with explanations alongside some line items <br />to explain variances from the budget. <br /> <br />Please note that the final year-end journal entries may not be completed yet, so this is a preliminary draft <br />of the Q4 report. Many of our final entries will be completed as part of the audit prep process in the next <br />few months. <br /> <br />Revenues: <br /> <br />General Fund revenues are down this year compared to last year mainly due to decreased building permits. <br /> <br />Water, Sewer and quarterly Storm water bills are mailed the first week after the end of each quarter, so <br />those amounts will always lag in these reports. <br /> <br />Expenditures: <br />Expenditures reflect a combination of ongoing expenses and items that are one-time payments per year. <br />Many of the personnel costs are coming in under budget due to staff vacancies (Admin, Communications, <br />Finance, Planning, and Building) which has been more than enough to offset the increase in contracted <br />services to help with the workload. <br /> <br />There are a number of timing changes from last year in professional services (assessing, legal, contracted <br />services, insurance) that explain the increases from the prior year. However, these mostly all still fall within <br />the budget parameters. <br /> <br />Water fund expenses overall are higher than last year due to the increase in bond payments for the water <br />tower. Insurance amounts are seeing an increase as staff allocated a percentage of the public works building <br />costs across the utilities. As noted in the 2016 operational audit of the department, overhead costs were not <br />being properly allocated to utilities. We continue to work on improving that to provide a fair cost