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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, September 8, 2014 Page 10 Working from the "Mayor's" document (version 1-9/8/14), Councilmember Willmus suggested revising line item "A10" entitled "Make-up of use of reserves in current (and previous) years), reducing it in half from $351,000 to $175,500. Councilmember Etten sought a point of clarification, noting that the $351,00 was created using the General Fund and the Parks & Recreation Fund, and questioned Councilmember Willmus' intent. Councilmember Etten stated that he would like to make the Parks & Recreation Fund whole, and any reduction taken from the General Fund. Councilmember McGehee stated that she was not supportive of cutting this line item in half again until after the CIP discussion to see if it still made sense. Councilmember McGehee cautioned that this is the same historically action that got the City where it is now in not repaying capital funds; opining that it doesn't work in real life, and it didn't work here either. At the request of Councilmember Etten, Councilmember McGehee reviewed how she related the CIP to use of reserves, even though separate funds, reminding Councilmembers that they borrowed from reserves to make up the operating fund, which she found then and still found a decidedly bad policy, even though the City Council at that time agreed to pay it back this year, with their commitment part of the record. However, Councilmember McGehee noted that this was a commit- ment previously made by the City Council over and over and then not followed. If the City Council went through its reserves and took any extra dollars to apply, Councilmember McGehee advised that she would then support this discussion; however, she noted that the discussion had not yet taken place. At this time, Councilmember McGehee expressed her unwillingness to remove the additional reserve funding, questioning how the City Council could then honor its commit- ments. Councilmember Willmus clarified that the assumption was not that it wasn't go- ing to be paid back, but the commitment was to pay it back in two budget cycles versus one; and noted that staff had weighed in to the discussion and supported that payback period, which would address other increases. At the request of Mayor Roe, if Councilmember Willmus' proposal to reduce line A10 form $351,000 to $175,500, the levy increase would be reduced from $830,829 to $655,329, representing a levy increase of approximately 3.6% versus 4.6%. At the request of Councilmember Etten, Mr. Miller concurred that if reserves were used to fill in the budget gap, it wasn't actually paying them back, but using ongoing dollars to fill the funding gap.