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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, December 2, 2019 Page 10 over time, as well as raising other member's fees to pay for that. The other cities' budget requests are based on that and the funds will be coming in regardless of what decision the Council makes because the cities are planning for that. Mayor Roe asked how the city will receive the funds from other cities. Mr. Schirmacher explained the other cities are billed monthly and were provided with projections on the added costs. Mayor Roe offered an opportunity for the public comment, with no one coming forward. Roe moved, Laliberte seconded, to adjust the 2020 Annual Budget downward by $45,000 which would cut in half the deficit spending in Communications for 2020 as proposed. Council Discussion Mayor Roe explained the Council with staff have had discussions related to com- munications over the course of this year, if not previous years. He has not been as aware of where the city was with the fund balance through the discussions this year until much more recently, probably within the last month, which is why he brought it forward at this meeting. He still thought it was important to try to pre- serve as much of the fund balance as possible, even while in the process of a tran- sition, which does not mean anything happens on day one of 2020 but this gets the city on a pathway towards solving the issue of the deficit spending. Councilmember Laliberte concurred and did recognize the recommendations the City Manager has already put in the budget to lessen reliance on the Communica- tions Fund. She noted it wasn't until recently that she saw the actual fund balance and the City Manager's recommendations did not impact the fund balance of the Communications Funds in a way that she thought it might. Councilmember Groff thought it was late in the year to do this and would not be supporting the motion. He thought the City Manager had worked very hard on the budget and if the information was available earlier, maybe the Council needed time to digest that, but he did see that earlier in the year. He indicated he thought it would be a better process to give staff time to work through it without tonight's deadline. Councilmember Willmus thought it is a prudent move to take these steps. He stated the Council has seen this trend for awhile now and the Council is commit- ted to not only pulling the city back from deficit spending with the use of reserves but also in other areas the city is currently engaged in. The city should take op- portunities to step back while the city is able. He looked to this as a measure