A look into proposed amendments to Eagle’s 2022 budget

Eagle town staff asked the Town Council to increase the 2022 budget by more than $800,000 in a meeting Tuesday evening. Here is a look into the proposed amendments.

Of the $800,405 that would be added to the budget, more than half ($416,086) comes from “rollover” expenses from 2021 and $384,319 would be for newly proposed items, according to a report prepared by Eagle’s Finance Director Jill Kane.

The proposed budget amendments represent a “historical practice” that the town uses to “capture carryover projects from the prior year and recognize revisions to the budget that were not identified at the time the budget was originally adopted,” the report states.

Eagle’s 2022 budget was approved by the Town Council on Dec. 21 after a public hearing was held to elicit input from residents. The new budget created eight new positions in town after former town manager Brandy Reitter told Town Council members “we have more projects than people.”

The 2022 budget also allocated just over $10.8 million to capital improvements large and small, from $827,850 in street improvements to $50,000 for the first phase of improvements to the Eagle Pool and Ice Rink.

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Now, Eagle residents will have another chance to make their voices heard on how their taxpayer dollars are being utilized. Before the amendments to the 2022 budget are put to a Town Council vote, the town will hold a public hearing on April 12 at the town hall building located at 200 Broadway Street in downtown Eagle.

Making this “historical practice” of budget amendments public supports the town’s strategic goal of promoting “transparency and community engagement,” according to the staff report.

The amendments

Various funds operated by the town of Eagle are anticipated to increase by $1,681,255 by the end of 2022, enough to fund the proposed budget increase of just over $800,000, according to town staff.

The amendments presented by town staff showed a revenue increase of $95,545 across the town’s general fund and the Downtown Development Authority Fund. Of this revenue, $87,000 is a transfer of funds and the other $8,545 comes from a grant that was recently awarded to the Eagle Police Department from the Colorado Department of Public Safety to support the continued use of body-worn cameras by police.

The proposal would increase expenditures by $895,950 with much of that coming out of the town’s general fund and funds set aside for water-related expenditures and for capital improvements. With the uptick in revenue, this would result in a net budget increase of about $800,000.

In presenting the request before the Eagle Town Council Tuesday, town staff organized the added expenditures into three categories — rollover expenses from 2021, added expenses that the Town Council was already aware of and added expenses being requested by town staff.

The rollover expenses from last year mainly consist of capital improvement projects. Staff accounted for future costs associated with ongoing projects like the town’s Open Space and Trails Master Plan with estimated expenses in the 2022 budget.

More than three months after the approval of the 2022 budget, these estimates need to be adjusted based on the town’s progress on various capital improvement projects. Much of the new money planned to be spent in 2022 under the amendments represents money that was allocated in the 2021 budget but was not spent due to delays.

The largest line item in this category was a $150,000 increase in what the town will shell out from its general fund to spend on street resurfacing in 2022, taking the total from $650,000 to $800,000.

Last year, the town planned to resurface part of Sylvan Lake Road but “due to staffing, we were unable to get any resurfacing completed in 2021,” according to the budget amendments. Thus, some of the money saved last year will be used for street improvements this year, but the delay will still “push all street resurfacing projects by a year.”

The new expenditures already approved by the Town Council in decisions made in the first quarter of this year represent an increase of $242,469. This includes a $30,000 increase in the town’s “events production budget” to fund Flight Days, Eagle’s favorite community-wide block party.

The new requests made by staff included a $20,000 increase to the landscaping maintenance services budget — $10,000 for the Brush Creek Pavilion and Information Center and $10,000 for the “restoration of dead/missing plants on Broadway and in the roundabouts.”

Town staff also requested $10,350 to cover uniform costs for all public works employees and $25,000 to launch a “professional nationwide police chief search,” among other things.

The full document of Eagle’s 2022 budget, as well as past town budgets, can be found at TownOfEagle.org/275/Budget.

Email Kelli Duncan at kduncan@vaildaily.com