March 28, 2024

Community Investment Plan under discussion by city council

City Administrator Bob Knabel gave a presentation about the city’s Community Investment Plan (CIP) at Monday’s city council meeting.

The CIP is one of four documents that make up the city’s strategic plan. The other three documents are the comprehensive plan, action plan goals and objectives and the annual budget. It is a five year plan covering from 2015 through 2010.

“When you look at these four documents and you put them together and collectively see the direction the city is taking, where we are going and what we hope to achieve,” Knable said.

The CIP allows the city to plan long term. There are many projects that take a number of years to complete because of issues with funding, policy and additional unknown problems that can arise.

“There are all kinds of issues that come with the big projects that come before the city and this five year plan does give us the means and where with all to appropriately plan,” Knable said.

The CIP is funded by seven different sources. The community investment plan has $5,662,200, the general fund has $465,600, the ending fund balance has $1,026,200, the landfill enterprise fund has $4,330,000, the road use tax fund has $3,170,000, the TIF fun has $3,170,000 and the water pollution control fund has $4,638,900 to total $20,377,700.

The community investment plan, general fund and ending fund balance all rely on the general fund and property taxes for revenue sources. The landfill enterprise fund gets revenue from the landfill, the road use tax fun receives state revenues, the TIF fund relies on taxes specific to districts and the water pollution control fund is supplied by sewer revenues.

“The landfill and water pollution control enterprise funds, TIF and road use tax have separate revenue sources and capacity to complete most projects presented,” Knable said. “The community investment fun, general fund and ending fund balance have limited capacity and will require funds beyond current resources as mentioned in franchise fee discussion.”

Over the past five years, the general fund has committed 3.2 percent to capital, which was an average of $309,000 and is projected to be less than $200,000. In this CIP, $93,000 would need to come from the general fund. Knable gave a word of caution that in two of the past five years there has been under $45,000 available.

From the ending fund balance an average of $350,000 has been available over the past five years, which puts a capacity of $175,000. The current CIP requires $205,240 and Knable once again said that the amount needed may not be dependable.

In order to meet the needs of the community investment fund, Knable proposed using a bond issue, which the city has a history of doing, approximately every two years to cover major needs. The initial amount the fund projects for the first two years is $2,887,700 with projects in six different areas. The airport has projects costing $49,700, new fire equipment totals $940,000, the library has $60,000 in projects, the parks has $1,024,000, streets and sidewalks have $770,000 and new warning sirens will cost $44,000.

Knable posed several questions to the council on how it would like to proceed including if bonds should be used every two years for major capital needs, what should be the target for the debt service levy, what are the guidelines for the maximum amount duration and term of the bonds, what areas should be included for bond use and should targets be set for the general fund and ending fund balance.

“Honestly, if we don’t have support from council wanting to commit yourselves to this then let’s not waste a lot of time and energy and public discussion if we’re not interested in doing it,” Knable said.

Council member Noreen Otto replied that she does not like the idea of using bonding but agrees with the way the franchise fee went, the council needs to make some decisions about the capital projects. She would like to continue the conversation about bonds and get further questions answered.

Council member Jeff Price agreed that conversation should continue but did say that he thinks bonding is absolutely necessary for the streets. Overall, the council agreed that conversation should continue with further questions to be discussed at the budget meeting.

“I do not believe that we should just allow things to happen to us. I think we should step up and make them happen. We make them happen to do something or we make the decision not to do something, but do it intentionally and we make the conscious choice either we do it or we don’t,” Knable said.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com