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Council frames 2027 budget around finishing comprehensive plan and millage options
Summary
At a City of Clermont workshop, council members urged finishing the comprehensive plan as the top priority and asked staff to prepare budget scenarios at current, rollback and a lower 4.21 millage so elected leaders can weigh trade-offs ahead of July budget workshops.
A City of Clermont council workshop on budget priorities centered on a repeated council request: finish the comprehensive plan before locking long-term budget decisions.
Council members said the comprehensive plan will shape most items on the priority list — transportation, safety, water and sewer, libraries and recreation — and asked staff to return with clear budget scenarios. “Finish the comprehensive plan as soon as possible so that we can make clear decisions on a lot of these other questions,” a council member said during the discussion.
Members sought three preliminary budget options for staff to prepare: status quo at the current millage, the roll‑back (maintenance) millage, and a lower illustrative rate cited repeatedly in the meeting as 4.21 mills. Staff was asked to show the revenue and program implications of each scenario, list which proposed projects would be funded under each, and identify reserve balances that could be used for capital work.
Council and staff also discussed the level at which the council wants to engage in department-by-department line‑item review versus adopting higher-level philosophical direction (for example: preserve water and sewer capacity; prioritize multimodal transportation; pursue employee health‑care cost containment). Several members said a smaller set of high‑level priorities would help staff present clearer budget packages at the July day‑long workshops.
The council did not make formal votes at this workshop. Staff agreed to prepare comparative budget packages and to include information on staffing changes by department, projected FTE impacts, and options to present zero‑based or alternate millage scenarios at the July meetings.
The next procedural step is that staff will provide the requested materials ahead of the July 8–9 budget workshops so council members can evaluate trade-offs and direct final budget amendments before the fiscal‑year adoption process.
