City Agenda
City of Dunwoody
City Council Budget Committee
Monday September 11th, 1 pm
City Manager Conference Room - 2nd Floor
The City of Dunwoody has called for the City Council Budget Committee to convene to review the Mayor and staff's 2024 City Budget proposal. This meeting will take place Monday afternoon in the City Manager's conference room at 1 p.m. and there is a second day reserved on Tuesday, but typically that second day is not necessary and it may be canceled. The Monday meeting is not live-streamed, nor is public comment shown on the agenda but the forum is open to the public - please join us.
I consider this an odd budget year as we have Federal American Recovery Funds coming to an end, a sale of the Shallowford Medical Building that the council directed staff to direct the funds to capital (we initially purchased the property for parkland), we have a possible renewal of DeKalb SPLOST Tax item on the November ballot that may (or may not) bring funds to Dunwoody in 2024 and then we have the Dunwoody Bond Referendum also on the Nov ballot that will not bring funds to Dunwoody until 2025.
In 2024, the general fund operating costs are anticipated to exceed general operating revenue by a few million just as we have expected in past years but we never used those funds in previous years as we received additional income and/or reduced the expenses to not operate the general fund by using fund balance. Because of Covid and the economic turn down, the City has worked with the revenue available and we have even added to our General Fund reserves in excess of minimum standards set by previous Councils. The budget this year is the same, we are planning on spending some of the resources in the General Fund down to a reasonable conservative level with the hope of not using much or any of these reserves.
The operational general fund budget with us eating a bit into reserves
is not a big deal as we have the funds in reserve to
cover the differences and I know staff / Council will work to minimize
it's use. Spending tax revenues for city services is what the tax funds
are there for; banking the fund balance larger and larger is also
considered inappropriate unless we anticipate more significant funding needs (vs
today's wants) in the coming year(s).
The issue here is that I foresee a possible downturn in office valuation in coming years because of lower occupancy rates when leases are not renewed or sublet which may lower tax revenue for the City. Our homeowner tax rate is already capped and frozen, with valuation increases only coming from recent sales or rental properties. Our operational expenses, namely police salaries & benefits, parks services and IT expenses are rising faster than the city general operation revenue yet we can not utilize capital funds for operating expenses. I will be asking lots of questions regarding the use of the general fund expenditures but finding cuts will be difficult. I anticipate this year's budget committee members (rotating), doing a line-by-line review of the budget with staff answering numerous questions.
This general fund shortfall issue is just starting for us as salaries will continue to rise, new facilities will need to be maintained, and for me, the big issue will be the fact that our governmental service contracts will need to be renegotiated as they all expire in a few years and yet revenue streams tied to property taxes are frozen with Dunwoody having the lowest tax rate in DeKalb County. Today it is a minor issue, in 2025, I see us in a similar, slightly worse situation; then in 2026, the City of Dunwoody will have contract renewals, which I anticipate will have substantial inflationary increases - even after rebidding them.
I am hopeful that the City of Dunwoody will be able to continue providing an outstanding level of general services that match the desires of the community with our current funding strategies but in reading the staff's budget memo, I am also a concerned realist and will raise questions.
Please review the budget (linked below), and it would be appreciated if you could make comments or raise questions on what you see. Thank you.
John
PS: Monday is a City Council working committee meeting - please be aware that we will have numerous public budget hearings in September and October for you to provide verbal feedback. That being said, if you have comments now, I would also like to hear them now as I might be able to tweak the budget based on citizen input.
Memo and proposed 2024 Dunwoody Budget
