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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — MAY 16, 2011 10 Mayor Grant suggested that the developer proceed to market Building 4 to determine what type of interest is out there. Councilmember Holmes stated if the developer believes that the customers wouldn't have a problem with the additional traffic, they should proceed with marketing Building 4. 3.0 2012 Budget Parameters City Administrator Klaers stated that at the April 25th meeting, the Council indicated that they didn't want to wait until June to discuss the CIP and the budget. Ms. Iverson has prepared material for today's work session for the Council's review. Councilmember Holden explained that she asked to have this on tonight's agenda so that if the Council's intention is to have a negative or zero increase, it would be nice for Finance to have that information up front. Finance Director Iverson explained that her memo outlines the same information she requests from the Council each year in June, except that the only thing additional in this memo is whether or not the Council wants input in the CIP budget before she prepares the first run - through in June. She will not have any figures from the Department of Revenue until late July or August so she has to prepare the 2012 operating budget based on estimates. What she is looking for this evening is guidance from the Council before staff begins the 2012 budget preparation. The last two years, the Council has met on the budget the third Monday in August. She explained that Council used to have a budget work session at the end of August when she had the figures from the County. She explained that it would not be advantageous to have a meeting before that point in time as we would not know taxable values, fiscal disparity contributions, or be able to estimate the impact to residential property owners. Mayor Grant commented that last year the .81% levy increase equated to a residential levy increase of 6.8 %. This year he wants to be sure that the impact on the tax rate is no more than the implicit price deflator. Mr. Klaers stated that there are some guaranteed increases in Public Safety that must be considered. Ms. Iverson stated the City has doubled the number of email accounts since 2006 and have added laptops for the Council which has impacted our support costs. We pay $25,000 annually now and this has not been increased in three years. We should be paying $36,000 based on our usage. Councilmember Tamble stated he concurs with the last bullet point in Ms. Iverson's memo regarding performance measures and service indicators for each department and the need for a community survey. He also stated that he would prefer to meet and discuss the budget when Ms. Iverson has the details from the County so the Council can make a more informed decision. Councilmember Holden commented that she does not want any increase to the levy above 1 %.