Scottsdale budget review commission to use 2013-onward data, requires staff previews of upcoming agenda items

The City of Scottsdale Budget Review Commission voted Dec. 8 to base its budget-trend review on data from 2013 forward and to require staff to provide brief previews of future agenda items with a 10-minute limit on the preview and follow-up discussion.

The decisions came after a staff presentation from Sonia (City Treasurer) summarizing commissioners’ suggested focus areas — financial health metrics and sustainability, capital improvement project estimates, revenue projections and budget-to-actual variances — and proposing a schedule for covering those topics in upcoming meetings. Sonia said the city’s financial conditions report covers 2007 through 2025 and staff can present historical trends going back to 2013, which led the commission to accept that range for analysis. "The financial conditions report does provide from 2007 through 2025," Sonia told the commission.

Why it matters: the chosen data window will shape how the commission interprets trends that were affected by the pandemic and by more recent revenue shifts, and the new preview process is designed to give commissioners the ability to request additional detail without disrupting staff workloads during the city’s ERP conversion. Commissioner Mark said the city’s system conversion has strained staff: "the city is going through a really painful system conversion, and it's really drawn on the resources of, our treasurer's personnel, and I think there's been some attrition," he said during the meeting.

Key votes and directions - The commission approved a motion to use data beginning in 2013 for trend analysis; the motion was moved by Commissioner Carla and carried by voice vote. The motion followed discussion about whether a five-year span would show meaningful trends versus a longer period needed to place pandemic-era data in context. - Commissioners asked staff to present quarterly budget-to-actual variance reports and offered guidance to focus follow-up questions on variances above certain thresholds. The chair noted the commission’s practice from last year and suggested flags for items substantially over budget: "Anything that was over 10% over budget or over $1,000,000 over budget were things that we might have some questions about." (chair) - The commission adopted a procedural change: under a standing "future agenda items" preview, staff will briefly state what will be provided at upcoming meetings and commissioners may ask for limited additional detail. Commissioner Carla’s motion, seconded by Commissioner Stevens, set a total time limit of 10 minutes per agenda item for the preview and related discussion; the commission voted to adopt the change.

Staff cautioned about reporting limits tied to the city’s ERP implementation. Sonia said standard city reports that were provided last year will be available and that staff can supply more detailed, line-item information where feasible, but warned that the new ERP’s reporting capability is currently limited and third-party tools may be required for complex extracts. Jeff Walter, city manager sitting in for Greg, noted the new ERP may include a back-end analytics component: "there was an AI a back end AI component, of the new system that can do some of what I think, commissioner Newman is talking about," he said, encouraging staff to assess existing system capabilities before pursuing outside solutions.

On capital projects the commission agreed its role is to review budget estimates and notable variances rather than decide project merits. Commissioners requested educational briefings from the city engineer on how project estimates are developed and said they want to understand procurement types (low bid, CMAR, design-build, job-order contracting) because each has different exposure to cost change.

Next steps: staff will present financial health and sustainability reporting at the commission’s Dec. 18 meeting, a preliminary capital improvement plan at the Jan. 22 meeting, and quarterly budget-to-actual variance reports throughout the year. The commission adjourned after adopting the procedural change.

Sources: Commission meeting transcript, Dec. 8, 2025. Quotes and attributions are drawn from the public meeting record.