Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Budget And Personnel topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Council approves judge's $200 monthly contract increase; finance director reports FY24 results
Summary
The council approved a contract addendum raising the municipal judge's monthly pay by $200 amid projected increased caseload; the finance director then presented an unaudited FY24 year-end report highlighting SDC timing, a $465,000 HUD grant delay and $20 million in city cash earning higher interest.
The Stayton City Council approved Resolution No. 1115, a contract addendum that increases the municipal judge's monthly amount by $200 (from $2,200 to $2,400) to account for increased caseload and case complexity linked to the city's decision to hear certain misdemeanors in municipal court.
Finance Director James Brand told the council the $200 increase was requested by the judge and that the fiscal impact for the current year is about $1,800, with a full-year impact of $2,400 next year. Brand said the increase was included in the adopted budget.
Brand then presented the city's fourth-quarter (fiscal-year) finance report using unaudited numbers. He explained a drop in charges-for-services this year compared with FY23 was largely due to unusually high system-development charges (SDCs) collected in FY23 (he cited roughly $2.2 million in SDCs in 2023), while FY24 reflected fewer SDC receipts and corresponding delayed capital spending. Brand also said a HUD downtown-improvement grant ($465,000) was budgeted but primarily represents a multi-year reimbursement tied to design and construction timing.
On expenditures, Brand highlighted a roughly $400,000 street-sweeper purchase and a delayed aquifer-storage-recovery water project (about $1.25 million) that pushed planned spending into the next fiscal year. He reported the city collected about 95% of budgeted revenue and spent about 77% of the budget overall, attributing the gap to project timing. Brand said the city holds roughly $20 million in combined cash and has moved much of it into a Umpqua money-market account to earn a higher locked-in rate (about 5.4% at the time of the meeting); interest earnings are allocated proportionally among funds.
Councilors asked for clarification of cash allocations, the source of the $500,000 under-spend in general operations (tied to HUD grant timing), and whether interest earnings are assigned back to the originating funds; Brand confirmed the allocations and provided the requested context.
