Fiscal Year 2022-23 Audit passes unanimously
ATASCADERO — The Atascadero City Council met for their regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 23, at 6 p.m. The hybrid meeting was held in the City Council Chambers.
At the start of the meeting, both the Agenda for the evening and the Consent Calendar passed unanimously.
The first Management Report of the meeting was an Update on Council Goals and Actions, with City Manager Jim Lewis starting off the presentation before handing it off to Deputy City Manager Lara Christensen.
“This is a neat moment to step back, and you work so hard every other year to set the key priorities for the city,” Lewis said. “You spend a whole day and a half basically doing that, and from that, action plans are crafted, and a whole bunch of work goes into this. It’s really a best practice every year to look back and see how you’re doing, so the staff pulled together a report for you here. It’s incredible the amount of work the staff is doing. It’s been an honor to work alongside such a hardworking professional group of people.”
Christensen started off by going over the council’s strategic priorities and goals. Those being:
- Economic and Community Vibrancy
- Fiscal and Infrastructure Efficiency and Sustainability
- Ensuring Public Saftey and Providing Exceptional City Services
Under Economic and Community Vibrancy, the city is moving forward or has completed many projects, including the Downtown Infrastructure Enhancement Project (DIEP) with an anticipated bid release in April, the completed Downtown Paving Project, creative support of development in commercial nodes like Del Rio and Dove Creek, Broadband Infrastructure, the council approving the Restaurant Loan Program, ongoing collaboration with downtown businesses to help enhance community events, and the city’s General Plan process, which is over halfway completed.
Fiscal and Infrastructure Efficiency and Sustainability highlights include the upcoming rebuild of Fire Station #1 and upgrades to the Police Station and Fire Station #2; The Essentialism Task Force, which has members from all city departments; and working more with the Friends of the Charles Paddock Zoo, just to name a few.
“The last priority is Ensuring Public Saftey and Providing Exceptional City Services,” Christensen said. “As a staff member, I think this one is most exciting to me because there has been such a significant investment from the City Council into staff. I know it’s made a tremendous difference in coming to work every day, in getting excited about things we’re doing. Just being out there and sharing and wanting to bring the public in and share with them about all of the exciting things that are happening in the city.”
She also mentioned the fact that Atascadero now has a new police chief and a new city attorney and that she’s excited to see the change in the last couple of months in these areas. Atascadero will also be adding an eighth dispatcher and another firefighter coming on board.
The item was received and filed with no voting action taking place.
The second Management Report was the Fiscal Year 2022-23 Audit, which was given by Administrative Services Director Jeri Rangel. The independent firm of Moss, Levy & Hartzheim performed the audit. The night’s focus was on the General Fund.
“The city was in a good position at the end of the year,” Rangel said. “Most key revenues were up, and operating expenses came in as expected. The city has been accumulating funds over several years with the focus of using these funds on some major infrastructure projects, like we just heard about, downtown, for roads, for public facilities. Revenues primarily from Freedom Funds due to the American Rescue Act (ARPA) and Meassure D-20 Funds have been collecting in the fund balance as we prepared for these projects.”
Top General Fund Revenue were:
- Property Tax at $12,066,128
- Sales Tax at $11,319,432 (with the exclusion of F-14)
- Transient Occupancy Tax at $2,156,988
- Intergovernmental Revenues $3,847,914 (including ARPA)
- Development $2,023,924
“The city is dedicated to a solid financial plan using our resources wisely. With the help of Measure D-20 and some other resources, we’ve been better able to focus on council priorities, as we heard earlier this evening. We are financially healthy but not wealthy,” added Rangel.
The Fiscal Year 2022-23 Audit passed unanimously and can be found as part of the night’s agenda packet here: atascadero.org/meetings.
The next Atascadero City Council meeting will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 13, at 6 p.m.
