Manager Found presented the Proposed Special Project, Water-Wastewater, and Tax-Supported Capital Budgets. The proposed Special Projects budget is $5,767,000. The largest contributor to that budget is the Solid Waste Environmental Assessment at $2M, which is necessary in order to enable landfill expansion. The proposed Water-Wastewater budget is $21,868,000, which includes an investment of $10,192,000 of expansionary projects to ready the City for growth. The total budget here is within the benchmark 3% user fee increase. The proposed tax-supported Capital Budget is $128,262,000. This is the largest proposed budget that has ever been presented. Included within this budget is $59,758,000 of expansionary projects, of which $21.5M is for the new Paramedic Headquarters. It was noted again that this budget item was originally costed at $14.7M in 2022, but due to inflationary pressures is now priced at $50M ($49M plus $1M for new cabling).
Manager Found also reiterated the inclusion of deferred projects from previous years, totaling $27.2M. He strongly recommended against further deferrals of those projects and commented that the City is working through a deferral list of approximately $90-100M. The City is actively and aggressively trying to eliminate that list over the next few years to catch up on those projects.