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Finance committee reviews November fiscal report; officials flag timing and collection issues
Summary
At a finance committee meeting, the CFO and treasurer reported modest revenue increases for FY25 but higher expenses in some funds and noted delayed postings and servicer errors that reduced reported real-estate collections; accounts payable and collection-rate declines were highlighted.
The City Finance Committee received its November fiscal report in a meeting that included a presentation from Stacy Jordan, the city’s chief financial officer, and a detailed treasurer’s report from Maya Bowling.
Jordan told council members that citywide revenues for fiscal year 2025 were trending about 1.72 percent higher than for 2024 (roughly $6.9 million), while expenses were also up. She said the general fund showed approximately $944,000 more in revenues but about $2.5 million higher expenses compared with the prior year; Jordan said the adopted FY25 operating budget was larger than FY24, which accounts for much of the difference.
Jordan described enterprise fund performance as stronger year over year, reporting enterprise revenues up roughly 3.57 percent (about $4 million) and enterprise expenses down about 13.7 percent (about $4.2 million). The committee was also told that the schools fund showed slightly lower revenue—about 0.68 percent, or $761,000—and higher expenses of roughly 3.22 percent (about $3.7 million), a variance Jordan attributed to the timing of state and federal funding postings.
Treasurer Maya Bowling reviewed tax and fee collections. She said 2022 real-estate collections were about 97.03 percent; 2023 real-estate collections in the report were about 95.78 percent overall, but 2023 personal-property collections remained in-house and were lower—about 75.54 percent—because staff had not yet turned many 2023 personal-property balances over to collections. Bowling said the treasurer’s office planned to forward outstanding 2023 personal-property receivables to a collection agency, which should raise the reported rate.
Bowling explained two technical posting problems that reduced the numbers shown in the report. She said the office received $2.9 million from a mortgage-servicing company (CoreLogic) after a formatting error delayed the posting, and a wire from another servicer related to VHDA was kicked back and is expected to produce additional receipts for roughly 575 parcels. Those corrections, Bowling said, would raise the second-half real-estate collection percentage.
The committee also heard that data-integrated utility collection rates dropped to about 88 percent in November—below the high-90s rates recorded in prior months—and staff tied the decline to standard holiday-season collection challenges. Accounts-payable processing for November included 1,462 invoices totaling about $4.7 million, and the treasury reported $14,751,698.30 in cash on hand and a combined 'cash and investments' figure of $39,834,946.55; the transcript contains a garbled line for the standalone 'total investments' figure that was not clear in the record.
Jordan said staff will present updated annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) information for 2021–2024 and a second-quarter presentation at next month’s meeting. The finance committee adjourned and the body moved to the special meeting agenda that followed.
Quotes from the meeting include Jordan’s formal opening, "This is the November finance committee report," and Treasurer Bowling’s explanation of the CoreLogic posting: "we have accounted for $2.9 [million] of the $4.3 [million]."
