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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, February 12, 2024 Page 10 Mayor Roe reviewed possible changes he thought could be made to the budget process. He explained the Council has the Utility Rate Study coming back and the update related specifically to the Sanitary Sewer. He noted that as part of the budget process in the last year, the City froze the Sanitary Sewer fees and did not increase those. Part of the basis for that was the fund balance in that fund is very healthy and it appeared if the City froze those rates there, would not be a severe impact to the capital financing over time and it would not negatively impact operations this year. The question that came to his mind, was if it made sense since the City is doing the study, to do some kind of analysis whether it would be possible to freeze the rates for a longer period of time and what would the impact of that be. Councilmember Etten thought the Council had a conversation about these funds and some of the City's other capital funds where sometimes the revenues were increased and yet the fund balances were far outpacing any future expenses. The Council ended up in the 2024 budget process pulling some of those down. He wondered if there needed to be a study or making sure these funds are not being increased for the fun of it. He also wondered if the costs are level, and the revenue is moving up, how can the City adjust that trajectory. He thought the City's goal should be to more closely align the revenue with the expected expenses. Mayor Roe indicated he brought up the Sanitary Sewer Fund because there is going to be a study done on it this year. He noted the City should always be looking at and considering all of the funds and making sure that those funds are not put on the trajectory of continually increasing the revenue unnecessarily over time. Mr. Trudgeon indicated this would be something staff could do during the study. He explained staff is trying to do utility studies on a more regular basis and over time, staff will get better ideas on costs and trends of infrastructure breakage and things like that. He thought staff would be able to stay on top of this pretty easily. Councilmember Schroeder wondered why the City would not do this as it is verifying their assumptions when doing this. The fund is very robust at this point, and she agreed with Councilmember Etten that all of the funds should be looked at. She thought this should be an ongoing check to be reported back to the Council. Councilmember Groff thought these funds could be looked back at three to five years which would give a good indicator and understanding of them. Mayor Roe explained the second item is the notion of getting the EDA more into the City's overall budget process. He did not know if anyone necessarily objects to doing this but he thought the idea was,unless there is objection from the Council, it was discussed last year to try to make sure the EDA is more regularly and systematically incorporated into the budget process.