08-08-2023 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

,SRVYJ„G,ct, , (,-R.,,h", er Memorandum TO: Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council FROM: Grayson Path, City Manager SUBJECT: Proposed Fiscal Year 2023/2024 Budget Executive Summary DATE: July 25, 2023 REVISED: August 5, 2023 Introduction It is with pleasure that I present to you the City Manager's Proposed Fiscal Year 2023/2024 ("FY23/24") Budget. Many hours by many individuals have gone in to its preparation. Through careful review, editing, and discussion, we have developed a great final product to present to you. This memorandum has been structured to address Article V in the City of Paris Charter. The duty and responsibility of a public servant is to carry out the Code of the City to the best of his/her ability, therefore in order to provide greater transparency to those reviewing this memorandum for completeness to the code, I will divide up this memorandum to address each specific applicable section of that article. This has the unintended consequence of breaking up a desired "flow", sometimes making this memorandum bulky, but nevertheless it fulfills my obligation in providing you thorough information regarding the budget. I will be making a. presentation, summarizing this memorandum, to the City Council on August 8, 2023. At that time, we will also touch on upcoming deadlines pursuant to the City Charter and Senate Bill 2. I will also ask how you, as a Council, would like to proceed in order to review, discuss, consider, etc. the Proposed FY23/24 Budget including any workshops, research, additional information, etc. you would like to hold. Please be considering this in preparation for the August 81 discussion. The reader of this report may find the material presented here to be complex. This is unavoidable as the City Charter is clear as to what must be included in this report. Municipal budgets are indeed complex, for a reason. Throughout my career and working with various City Councils, I have heard two different schools of thought when it comes to the content of a budget. Some prefer to see budgets broken out as much as possible with many itemized line items minutely separating out expenses, while others prefer fewer line items representing generalized categories of expenses. The version you have before you in this memorandum falls closer to the first school of thought — many funds with many line items, thus breaking out the entire budget in to more definable individual purposes. This of course produces a lengthy budget to go through and review, but, it is a more transparent approach for our public and it assists departments with better tracking their budgetary status as the year progresses. A very condensed and summarized budget where line items are lumped together, while extremely easy for staff to process and councils to flip through, is also much less transparent as the purpose of each line item is obscure, turning them more in to larger "miscellaneous" line items, and it can also cause departments to lose track of their budgetary status unless they keep their own notes on the side as to what has or will still yet occur by way of known and unforeseen expenses. It is my recommendation that we continue with our current format. Page I of 23