5-9-22 BOC Budget Work Session - Laserfiche WebLink

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Memorandum— Budget Considerations TO: Lee County Board of County Commissioners FROM: John A. Crumpton, County Manager DATE: May 9, 2002— Budget Workshops Kickoff Meeting As the Commissioners and staff begin work on the FY 2022-23 Budget, it is becoming more apparent that our funding partners are seeing the growth that is coming to Lee County and asking for more assistance. With growth comes growth in ad valorem and sales tax revenues. The agencies that are dependent on us for funding are wanting a bigger slice of the revenue pie. Due to commitments made by the Lee County Board of Commissioners, large increases will not be possible to our partners based on the Board's desire to lower taxes while improving County operational effectiveness. Looking forward,the following commitments will require general fund revenue to cover additional operating expenditures: Moore Center—CCCC, New Library for LCG, and the Sports Complex. The Commissioners now allocate 8.61 cents to debt service and capital reserve fund. This commitment will cover the debt service for all three projects. However,the ongoing operational expenditures to support these facilities will create a challenge in this budget and the next two—FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25. Moore Center The Moore Center's ongoing expenses will be large. The County purchased over 300,000 square feet of industrial space for the College to use as a workforce development center. To give some perspective of how much space this is under one area, all of the County buildings we own together are close to 300,000 square feet in total. Utilities alone at this facility will run almost $500,000 per year. This is a similar amount the County pays for all our buildings combined. Including maintenance and personnel costs the total annual operational budget for this facility will be around $1,000,000 per year. This figure is in the FY-2022-23 budget along with CCCC's requested increase for other facilities and programs of over $430,000. The Community College will see a reduction in operational expenditures when they sell the two workforce development facilities at the industrial park. However, the "credit" for these buildings will hardly make an impact in the annual operation budget for CCCC. CCCC's ongoing operational funding increase will be around $1,400,000 per year. New Library The new library should be much more efficient from a utility standpoint than the current facility. Even with this efficiency the cost to operate from a utility standpoint will increase due to doubling the square footage of the library to 30,000 square feet. We are also anticipating an increase interest in the library due to the new location. The Librarian has already indicated a desire to increase hours of operation. We are expecting an increase of$30,000 in utility expenses annually to operate the library assuming we sell the existing library when the new one is ready. To cover the additional square footage and the additional hours of operation six new full-time employees and four part-time employees will be needed. We anticipate that based on the current construction schedule the building should open in the 2024-25 fiscal year. To cover the new employees and operational expenditures the County should anticipate an increase of$600,000 per year.