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Finance director reports healthier fund balance, investment strategy debated
Summary
City finance staff presented first-quarter fiscal metrics showing a roughly $1.2 million year-over-year increase in fund balance, higher year-to-date revenues driven by property taxes, police crime declines, and an investment report that raised questions about CDs, money markets and a new investment consultant.
At the Feb. 18 meeting the City of San Benito’s finance director, Stephanie Aronani, presented first-quarter fiscal-year 2024–25 metrics (October–December 2024) and an investment update that prompted commissioners to ask about short-term liquidity and rates.
Aronani said the city’s combined assets and fund balance were higher than the previous year by about $1.2 million and attributed much of the increase to property-tax receipts that arrive in the October–December period. She reported year-to-date revenues for the quarter of roughly $7.49 million compared with $6.97 million in the prior year’s comparable period; quarterly expenses were reported at about $3.72 million.
The presentation included department-level key performance indicators: library visits and digital-resource use, cultural-arts programming and planning/engineering work on six subdivisions (Liberty States Phase 3; Cross Corner Subdivision; Country Woods Subdivision; San Sebastian; Veterans Crossings; and Cielo Vista). Code-enforcement activity was described as a backlog catch-up, with notices issued during the quarter that staff said reflected prior-year work.
Police Chief Mario Pereira said arrests and calls for service were down 7% under a new records system and singled out larger reductions for some crime categories: aggravated-assault calls down about 40% and motor-vehicle thefts down about 43%. Pereira said the department does not have disposition data (convictions) on every citation and that court outcomes would require municipal-court or district-attorney records.
Aronani presented the investment report showing quarterly interest income of $524,998. She told the commission that some city holdings are in month-to-month money-market accounts, while a Certificate of Deposit held at East West Bank is set to mature on June 11, 2025; commissioners discussed the trade-off between locking funds in CDs and keeping liquidity in month-to-month accounts such as those at Texas Regional Bank.
Commissioners asked that the new investment consultant be invited to future meetings to explain strategic guidance. Aronani also noted the hotel-motel fund had current assets of $807,486 and that the city is still identifying shortfalls in collections tied to some short-term rental platforms (Airbnb, VRBO) that are not currently remitting local hotel-motel taxes directly to the city.
The finance packet and KPI materials will be posted on the city website as part of the meeting record, and commissioners indicated they may seek more detailed line-item reports and follow-up presentations from the investment consultant.
No formal action was taken on the financial or investment reports during the meeting.
