Council hears early framework for long-term strategic financial plan and CIP scenarios
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
Finance staff presented a scenario-based strategic financial plan tied to the CIP, debt management, and levy strategy; staff proposed modeling scenarios in Excel, flagged $60 million of current debt, and suggested possible investments in tools or a street inventory to refine long-term projections.
City finance staff introduced an initial touch point on a strategic financial plan intended to bring together the city's capital improvement program, fund policies, and revenue assumptions into a scenario-based decision tool.
The presentation described three model scenarios that vary assumptions such as cash percentages for residential and transportation projects and levy growth rates. Staff said the model currently sits in Excel, can run a limited set of scenarios, and identified investments that would improve precision: a planning tool called Yuna (quoted $10,000 per year) and a $18,000 streets inventory, both offered as optional enhancements to improve data quality and staff capacity over time.
Finance staff said the city's total debt is "about $60,000,000" and emphasized that the plan is intended to provide a 10- to 25-year view to avoid repeating cycles of high debt. Council members had no major objections to the foundational assumptions but asked staff to prepare digestible materials to aid future incoming council members and to maintain flexibility when incorporating developer-funded projects into CIP scenarios.
Staff will continue building scenarios and incorporate council feedback; the council did not adopt policy changes at the workshop but confirmed the infrastructure-levy discussion would proceed to adoption in December unless the council directed otherwise.