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City finance director outlines budget pressures and projects as council presses on delayed payroll system
Summary
The finance director summarized 2024 department workloads, staffing and initiatives and warned the general fund will rely on one-time balances without revenue improvements; councilors expressed frustration at nearly two years to implement a time-and-attendance/payroll system and asked for vendor documentation.
Leslie Dieter, finance director, told the council the finance department is fully staffed and provided 2024 activity counts — more than 2,184 new business licenses, 4,462 renewals, roughly 234,000 cash receipts posted, nearly 282,000 utility bills issued, and more than 10,000 accounts-payable checks — and outlined priorities for 2024–25 including vacant-lot inventory work, online business licensing, grant coordination, development of financial policies to clarify unrestricted fund balance, and time-and-attendance rollout.
Dieter said the city will transition payroll/time-and-attendance staff in phases, noting training began in summer 2023 and finance was scheduled to go live in January–February 2025. "The one thing that I will not do is mess up somebody's pay," Dieter said, and she emphasized the complexity of moving employees who work in varied field schedules onto a single electronic system.
Council member Jackson sharply criticized the rollout timeline. "I can't believe this has taken almost 2 years," Jackson said, asking for vendor contact information so he can verify the vendor's standard timeline. Jackson said he has previously received answers from city management that he found untrue after digging into documents, and he pressed for written vendor playbooks and timelines.
A city official offered to share the vendor-provided "playbook" with the council. Other council members cautioned against individual council members contacting vendors and urged centralizing vendor communications through the city manager.
Dieter also said the city has received opioid-settlement payments on an interval schedule and staff are still identifying the total amount; she said the city will return to the council with specifics once known.
Why it matters: delayed implementation of time-and-attendance and payroll systems can affect employee pay accuracy and administrative efficiency; council members expressed frustration at the duration of this project even as staff pointed to training, audit cycles and the complexity of field-based schedules.
The council did not take formal action; staff agreed to provide the vendor playbook and additional written updates.
