Page 13 - Colleyville FY19 Budget

increases, without needing any additional property tax revenue from citizens.
Health insurance costs make up the largest portion of the City’s personnel budget
after salaries.

• Expands public safety services

Public safety continues to be one of the community’s highest priorities and this
budget maintains funding for the high level of services Colleyville citizens expect.
Funding for 43 sworn police officers is maintained in the fiscal year 2019 budget,
with 10 of those officers paid for by the Colleyville Crime Control and Prevention
District (CCCPD) budget (funded by a ½ cent sales tax). This year in the CCCPD
budget funding has been added for two new part-time public safety officers.
These public safety officers are non-sworn employees of the police department
(often retired officers), who will provide non-emergency duties now being
performed by police officers such as assisting with traffic direction, assisting
school crossing guards, and taking minor reports. The addition of the public safety
officers will free up our police officers to spend more time patrolling our
neighborhoods, building relationships and solving community issues. Funding for
41 certified firefighters is also continued in the FY 2019 budget. This will also be
the first fiscal year in which the department will operate two advanced life support
(ALS) ambulances, enhancing service levels and response times.

• Maintains current overall utility base rates for 1-inch residential
meters, while providing additional funding for utility Capital
Improvement Plan (CIP) projects

Water and wastewater base rates are directly related to the City’s budget for the
Utility Fund, and rates are set to only recover the City’s cost of operating the
utility system. In fiscal year 2018, the budget funding needed was less than the
prior year due to declining debt payments, and it was possible to lower water and
wastewater base rates. The citizen’s Water and Wastewater Rate Advisory
Committee met to discuss long-term strategies for rates and how to fund future
utility capital projects with cash, as opposed to debt. The committee
recommended creating a new, separate capital funding component in the rate
structure (CIP base rate) with the difference above what was needed for
operations. The City Council implemented this recommendation, creating a CIP
base rate in October 2018, while still maintaining the same base rates for
customers in total.

Based on the fiscal year 2019 proposed utility operational costs, it is again possible
to lower water and wastewater base rates. Continuing the direction received from
the citizen committee, the fiscal year 2019 budget takes the amount that the
water and wastewater rates could be decreased by and adds that amount to the
CIP base rate. Original projections anticipated the need to increase the CIP base
rate for fiscal year 2019 by $2.85, but the fiscal year 2019 budget only
recommends an increase of $0.72 that is entirely funded from decreases in the
water and wastewater base rates—meaning that the total for all base rates stays
the same for 1-inch residential meters.

13