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City of Roseville — 2014 Budget Letter of Transmittal December 9, 2013 To the Mayor and City Council, Enclosed is the 2014 City Budget as prepared by City Staff, in accordance with City Council direction. The 2014 Budget culminates a years' worth of planning, evaluation, and input from the City Council, advisory commissions, citizens and staff. Great effort has been taken to ensure that the City's core services are funded in a manner that preserves the greatest value to the community. In addition, steps have been taken to account for the changing trends and impacts that will affect both next year's and future year's budgets. For 2014, the City continued its budgeting approach that is designed to better equate service levels with spending decisions. This process was also designed to give greater transparency on where financial resources are allocated. In addition, it ensures that the programs and services that were more highly desired by the community receive sufficient funding. This process included over a dozen public meetings held for the purposes of soliciting input and to gauge citizen reaction to proposed service offerings - a specific objective outlined in the City's Imagine Roseville 2025 (IR2025) long -term visioning process. For 2014, the City projects a stabilization of city revenues including interest earnings and other non -tax revenues that support the City's Police, Fire, Public Works, and Parks & Recreation functions. Some of these revenue sources had been stagnant or somewhat irregular during the past few years. A significant property tax levy increase was enacted to fund added debt service costs associated with bonds that were issued to finance the parks renewal program. Small tax levy increases were also enacted to strengthen the City's equipment replacement programs, and to address rising operational costs. Even with this increase, Roseville residents will still pay less for city services than most peer cities. Despite an overall strengthening in the City's financial condition during the past few years, the City expects to face a number of financial challenges for 2014 and beyond. They include: •:* Continuing to strengthen the City's asset replacement funding mechanisms •'* Achieve long -term funding sustainability for core services and programs •'* Establishing on -going funding to implement the recommendations set forth in the Imagine Roseville 2025 process All of these impacts have been on -going for the past several years. These impacts are addressed in greater detail below.