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City manager lays out revenue‑allocation options as council weighs priorities
Summary
City Manager Trevor Cahoon presented a revenue‑allocation exercise that maps property, sales, franchise and fee revenues against departmental needs, highlighting streets shortfalls and a high subsidy for recreation; council members discussed ranking services and matching stable revenues to essential functions.
City Manager Trevor Cahoon presented a budgeting exercise that reassigned revenue streams (business licenses, plan‑check fees, franchise taxes, sales and property tax) to departments to illustrate how the city might align stable revenues with essential services. He said he began by assigning revenues that have an inherent purpose, then examined shortfalls — including a streets shortfall of roughly $544,000 — and the roles of sales tax and franchise fees in covering public‑safety and capital needs.
Cahoon warned that current patterns force a heavy reliance on sales tax to support police, fire and other services, and he suggested exploring options to diversify revenue or reassign certain streams toward capital (for example, using franchise tax for streets to free sales tax for other needs). He also flagged that recreation currently carries a roughly 66% subsidy and suggested exploring programing or tournaments to increase earned revenue. Council members recommended rank‑ordering services by essentiality and matching the most reliable revenues to the most critical services.
Finance Director Corey Christiansen and council members discussed tradeoffs and operational details (enterprise fund charges to administrative costs, the role of impact fees, and the sensitivity of certain revenues to economic cycles). Council members asked staff to bring back materials that rank services vs. revenue reliability and to continue budget‑committee conversations ahead of the next fiscal cycle.
