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Memo - City Council 2015 Budget and Tax Levy Discussions 4 TAKING A LOOK AT ARDEN HILLS LEVY TAX RATE HISTORY AND FUND BALANCE INFORMATION The State of Minnesota has granted local municipalities the authority to levy taxes to fund operations and debt payments. The City’s entire tax levy goes for General Fund expenditures. For the City of Arden Hills, the property tax levy accounts for approximately 79% of the General Fund revenues. The following table provides a historical view of the City’s property tax levies: % Year Tax Levy Change Tax Rate 2002 2,201,002$ -25.092% 2003 2,265,712$ 2.94%23.930% 2004 2,333,337$ 2.98%23.367% 2005 2,440,453$ 4.59%21.299% 2006 2,537,520$ 3.98%20.191% 2007 2,688,944$ 5.97%20.206% 2008 2,797,348$ 4.03%19.585% 2009 2,948,646$ 5.41%20.520% 2010 3,016,465$ 2.30%22.647% 2011 3,040,964$ 0.81%24.180% 2012 3,096,994$ 1.84%25.544% 2013 3,191,230$ 3.04%27.931% 2014 3,257,456$ 2.08%27.954% The following chart provides the information on the Actual General Fund balance from each of the audits for that respective year. The chart shows: 1. Net change in the fund balance from the beginning of the year (or actual revenues over expenditures and transfers) 2. The unassigned fund balance or the balance that is available to spend (some fund balance is non-spendable at year end as it was used to prepaid items for the next year) 3. The percent of unassigned balance which is really our reserves – our policy is to maintain 50% in reserves – after the 2013 audit that amount was transferred to the PIR Fund per City Council through a budget amendment according to the revised policy change made in 2013. So there was a budget adjustment and transfer of the $162,417 made in 2014 after the audit was completed and numbers were known. 4. The “Actual Dollars per above” shows the amounts over our 50% reserve target per our fund balance policy, in 2008 $500,000 was transferred to Equipment, Building and replacement and in 2014 $162,417 was transferred to the PIR Fund. Subsequent years will have the amount transferred when there is a positive balance as was done with 2013 in 2014 per the new policy. Please note that the policy changed from using the actual expenditures to ending fund balance to using the next year’s expenditures in 2011. (Also, 2007 shows the amount for City Hall repairs that was transferred out in 2008 and then used to fund the Equipment, Building and Repair Fund).