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

Home Browse Search

Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting September 17,2013 Sunny Isles Beach,Florida First Budget Hearing our third facility operation worker team that will be covering and fully implemented with the completion of Gateway Park. City Manager Russo said that leads him to our Capital Projects of which the main point he wanted to make is as you well know, many of our Capital Projects are multi-year projects. The most significant one is Gateway Park that needs to be and hopefully will be substantially completed and funded during this next Fiscal Year. We think some of that will lead over into the following Fiscal Year 2014/2015. We hope to complete a number of projects that have been in the budget for multiple years now, especially Intracoastal Park, the Emergency Pedestrian Bridge,the Pedestrian Overpass for Gateway Park,the Utility Undergrounding,the Arlen House Streetscape Plan, and several others. City Manager Russo said that we did hit a milestone this past week,we did get an approval by the South Florida Water Management Board of our Wetlands Mitigation Plan for the Emergency Bridge. This is a big step towards completing the environmental permitting process and that is moving forward. As far as new projects in the Capital Projects, there are only a few. The significant project is the Drainage Project for 174th Street, and again not major projects in light of what we have already budgeted, improvements to this building [Government Center] in multiple ways as we have discussed in terms of space,repairs that are needed, and an upgrade of our emergency generator. Also he wanted to mention one other point and this probably is not significant in terms of the budget but it is in the terms of our operations and some of the recent issues we have had. He has budgeted,since the Workshops, for some contractual funding which he has already started to implement for a weekend and holiday parking attendant at Pier Park. This has made, as far as he can see and the feedback that he has gotten from the management of LaPerla, a significant improvement to alleviate some of the issues over there. He asked Finance Director Audra Curts-Whann to give the Commission a better overview of the changes that we have made to this budget from the Workshops to now. Finance Director Audra Curts-Whann said she will be primarily looking at page 27 which is the Budget Summary. This is where she wants to point out the main difference that you will see between your July workshops and this publication. She said after discussion with the City Manager and the Mayor, we re-worked the presentation to include Fund Balances, and that was your City Reserve. In the original presentation, only the portion of the Reserve that was planned to be used was shown instead of the entire Reserve. We felt it was proper especially given the size of those Reserves that the Commission is trying to adhere to and carry forward. We wanted to make sure that the total Reserve in estimate for the tentative budget but estimated where we think we are going to be on October 1, 2013 is shown as the Fund Balance on page 27. Those are estimates and are subject to when the Accounting Department closes the books but now you can see what we think your Fund Balance will be. The very first line in that Summary for the General Fund for the various Special Revenue Funds,our Capital Projects Funds which is the carry forward budgets primarily of all of the projects that are multi-year projects as the City Manager has mentioned. She wanted to point that out because that has not been presented that way in the past in any of your past publications and we did decide to make that change as those numbers were material and they affected the readers' judgment as to how the City and their budget looked. Anything after page 27, 28, 29, 30 etc. 3