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Finance director outlines April report, cash and investment posture; seeks clearer forecasting practice
Summary
Finance Director Richard presented the April 2025 financial report, discussed changes to forecasting practice, and walked council through cash, investments and TBD revenue expectations.
Finance Director Richard told the Committee of the Whole on May 20 that he has revised the city’s forecasting approach and provided a monthly reconciliation designed to make cash and fund-balance calculations more transparent.
Richard said forecasting must look forward rather than rely solely on long historical averages; he has shortened the look-back from five years to two for some projections, said ongoing departmental conversations are a key forecasting input and said he will produce a capital-project status report in coming months. “What I want to do is take the guessing out and to show you how we come up with the fund balances,” he told councilmembers, and he said the bank-reconciliation and investment pages will be included to show cash on hand.
Richard reviewed April figures: the city’s combined cash and investments totaled roughly $76 million (about $63 million in investments plus roughly $13 million in net cash), with timing differences driven by payroll and accruals; investments include certificates and pooled funds. He said the local TBD revenues (from the transportation benefit district license fee) generally produce roughly $700,000 per half-year collection period, with the full-year expectation rising in 2025 to roughly $1.4 million. He described the city’s pavement-management target as about $3.2 million annually (the city’s current program year budget was roughly $1.8 million for the ongoing overlay program).
Richard said he will remove irrelevant percent-change lines from recurring reports and will bring a capital-projects dashboard that ties budgets, expenditures and grant funding together. He invited councilmembers to submit questions outside the meeting for follow-up and offered to schedule small-group briefings on specifics such as investment ladders and debt management.
Councilmembers asked for clarifications about the investment portfolio, bank reconciliations and capital reporting; Richard said he is working with the city’s investment advisor to ladder investments and to identify bond purchases that could lock in higher yields as market rates change.
