Benicia Finance Committee will examine its role today as overseers of the city’s local one-cent sales tax that was approved by voters in 2014 and took effect April 1.

In her report to the Committee, Finance Director Karin Schnaider said the city won’t see the first quarter of sales tax until July; May’s receipts will arrive in August; June’s taxes will come in September, and California will maintain that remittance schedule in the future.

The Finance Committee’s job is to estimate revenues and expenditures for Measure C taxes, to receive quarterly and annual financial reports and to prepare its own annual report on the prior year’s financial activity once the annual audit is done.
“The state also completes quarterly and annual reconciliations,” Schnaider wrote. “City expenses, on the other hand, are reported as they occur.”

She said only during the annual accrual process do those periods match each another.

“In other words, the interim reports will often be shown actual revenue collections short of paid expenditures until the periods are reconciled through the audit process,” Schnaider wrote. “This is noteworthy, as the Finance Committee will be waiting for the completion of the annual audit in order to report out actuals.”

The Finance Committee’s annual Measure C report to the City Council should explain the status and performance of the programs and services funded wholly or in part by Measure C taxes, she wrote.

However, Schnaider noted, it isn’t the Committee’s responsibility to give direction to city staff, to recommend any particular contract or to define the scope of a project that would be underwritten with Measure C funds. Those jobs are under the authority of City Council and such professional staff as City Manager Brad Kilger.

The City Council has chosen 11 projects to be underwritten by the first two years’ expenditures, according to the city resolution that established the Measure C spending plan. Schnaider included that document in her report.

The projects are police and fire dispatching, a fire engine’s replacement, police radio replacement, the First Street Waterfront Promenade railing project, the Community Park playground project, a road project at Benicia Middle School, another at the Benicia Industrial Park, downtown sidewalk repair, pothole and street resurfacing, a storm water management and flood mitigation plan and repairs to the James Lemos Swim Center.

In other matters, the panel will receive an update on the Enterprise Resource Planning Finance Systems Implementation, a citywide finance computer software system designed to improve employees’ efficiency by reducing paperwork as well as to streamline its fiscal reporting.

Bids for the expensive system overhaul are being evaluated, and contract negotiations might begin as soon as next month.
Once implementation of the system begins, the Finance Committee will receive a work plan that will outline the steps and milestones of that leg of the program, Schnaider wrote.

Although reports and presentations about the proposed 2015-17 budget already have been made to the City Council, the Finance Committee will review those documents today.

In the General Fund budget, presented May 5 to the Council, city employees identified $1.2 million in one-time projects that Benicia could fund with one-time sales tax revenues, including the Enterprise Resource Planning Finance System.

The Council also told city employees to increase the budgets for Arts and Culture Commission and Human Services Board grants.

At the May 19 report on other portions of the budget, Schnaider told the Council the working capital reserves would be reduced by $5.1 million. The Water and Wastewater funds revenues aren’t enough for any capital improvements or to pay for delayed maintenance.

“In fact, the Water fund has been so severely impacted by the drought costs and conservation efforts, it must pull from reserves in order to cover operations and debt during the next two-year budget,” she wrote.

The Council will see department-level budgets and proposed staffing levels for the next two years at its June 2 meeting, at which the 2015-17 budget may be adopted, Schnaider wrote.

The Committee will choose its vice chairperson for the remainder of the fiscal year, ending June 30; review the city’s warrant register for March and April as well as the All-Funds summary for the third fiscal quarter and examine its work plan.

If You Go
The Finance Committee meeting starts at 9 a.m. May 28 in the Commission Room of City Hall, 250 East L St.