2013-0917 Special City Commission Meeting - 1st Budget Hrg

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Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting September 17,2013 Sunny Isles Beach,Florida First Budget Hearing 3B. Budget Ordinance (Public Hearing) An Ordinance of the City Commission of the City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida,Adopting an Operating and Capital Improvement Budget for the Fiscal Year Commencing October 1,2013 through September 30,2014,Pursuant to Section 200.65, Florida Statutes; Authorizing Expenditures of Funds Established by the Budget;Authorizing Encumbrances; Authorizing Issuance of Checks; Providing for Grants and Gifts; Providing for Local and Federal Law Enforcement Trust Funds;Providing for Post Audit; Providing for Severability and Providing for an Effective Date. Action: City Clerk Hines read the title, and City Manager Russo presented a balanced Fiscal Year 2013/2014 Operating Budget and the five-year Capital Improvement Program. He highlighted a few of the activities we had in putting together this budget since the July Workshops. First of all and foremost the Commission took a step in July and this budget reflects a reduction in the Millage rate for the City from 2.8000 to 2.7000. That reduction coincidently was just about 30% of the revenue from the increase in property values that generated a certain increase in tax revenue. We took 30% of that and gave it back to the taxpayers as generally directed at the July Workshops. That is one of the most significant things we did here, and we were able to accomplish a lot with the remaining revenue. City Manager Russo said that it has been quite an experience getting through this budget since June when we lost our Finance Director,Controller and Senior Accountant during the budget process. In addition to the reorganization of the management team that is outlined in the budget which he thought was going to be one of the more significant leadership changes that we have had going into this new fiscal year, and he has to say that the change in the finance team has been a tremendous success so far. He gives a lot of credit to the remaining staff of the Finance Department during the period before we hired Finance Director Audra Curts- Whann and Assistant Finance Director Tiffany Neely-Jean, and to Cheryl Williams of his office and the Department Heads and their key staff people who had really pulled together. Even going through the budget workshops was a very difficult process because we still had a significant number of unknowns,unknowns that we were fairly confident that the revenues or the income or the expenditures either would be less than projected, all the factors that would lead us to believe that we are in good shape. However, it took until now in cleaning up this budget to confirm a lot of the assumptions that we had to make in not having full access to all of our information back then. But we have come through it very well. City Manager Russo noted that there are no major changes to this budget from what we determined at the workshops, he just wanted to reiterate a few things and highlight a few things. We had some significant changes to our management team most of which was covered by the elimination of positions, we created a Deputy City Manager position, we eliminated an Assistant City Manager position, we created an Assistant City Manager for Capital Projects and Public Works, we eliminated a Public Works Director position, we eliminated a Human Resource Director position, we elevated the IT Director to Chief Information Officer,and so we have had a number of changes that have been offset. We also had in this proposed budget the full implementation of the increase in Ocean Rescue staffing, and the additional Police Officers primarily for community policing in our parks. We have the full staffing increases to the Building Department as approved by the City Commission. We also budgeted for,which was started in the last year,for at least two-thirds of what will be 2