[BoulderCouncilHotline] My comments for the budget study session Sep 11

[Weaver, Sam]

Fellow Council Members and HOTLINE followers,

I apologize for the late input - I only found time to write this on the plane today.  Thanks to staff for the thorough memo.

Regarding the budget memo and our budgeting practices in general I have the following questions:


  1.  Where can we find the annual history and forward projections used in this budget broken out for the retail sales tax, business use tax, and construction use tax sectors specifically?  I have only reviewed the memo so far, not the budget documents, but would like to be able to understand the nature of one-time vs on-going revenues for the business use tax and construction use tax.  The memo narrative refers to such historical data and projections - are they found explicitly by type of revenue in the budget documents?  I would like for us to be able to review how one-time vs on-going is determined.
  2.  If I understood correctly in the memo, the 2018 and 2019 retail sales taxes are projected to rise 1% annually.  Is this correct?  If so, are revenue dollars collected above a 1% projection in 2018 considered one-time revenue?
  3.  From reviewing the May 2018 revenue report, it looks like the change in business use taxable sales is typically positive between a few % and 20%, with one year showing a 20% drop over the previous year.  Granted, this is data only through May of each year.  At what level of the 2017 business use tax revenues were the 2018 revenues estimated to be one-time revenues?  At what level of projected 2018 business use tax revenues were the 2019 projected revenues considered to be one-time revenues?

About our budget process in general, I have the following comments:


  1.  When I first arrived on Council, I recall that our fund reserve target was 15%, and we were below that figure.  We are now targeting 20% for our fund balance reserve.  On what basis was that change made? I have asked previously, and have not been fully satisfied by the answer.  I think Council need to review the rationale behind the fund balance reserve target explicitly, and set a target to be used for future budgets.  Of course, future Councils can adjust as they deem fit.
  2.  My personal opinion is that we have some pressing operational needs in our library system, and to me those are more important than hitting a 20% reserve level in our fund balances.
  3.  While we have not yet committed to bring EMS services in-house with our fire department, I feel that it would be prudent to begin examining how that action could affect the 2019 and future budgets.  I assume that the start-up expenses for such activities would be one-time expenses funded from one-time revenue, and that the operational costs would be ongoing expenses funded with on-going revenue.  Please let me know if that assumption is incorrect.

All the best,

Sam Weaver
Member of Boulder City Council
weavers at bouldercolorado.gov<mailto:weavers at bouldercolorado.gov>
Phone: 303-416-6130

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