Council 7-28-2026 [71:00-76:01]

Slide 15, revenue and expenditure growth. I already mentioned that for expenditures, we have used 3% growth on the previous year's budgets and then we're extrapolating that off 27, 28, 29. Revenues, most of the revenues have stayed relatively stable. If there was growth showing in the trends, we tried to show that growth over those annual average growth factors. We can also show scenarios on the operating disbursements. If you want to see what wages would look like if we did more of an increase than the 3%, we can go 5, 6, whatever percentage you would like to see. That's pretty easy to plug in and out of the model. Slide 17, the overall operating fund trends. Again, the operating fund balances are increasing over time, which is a good thing. Again, the first time we presented this report, they were kind of trending the other way. There's a few funds to health aviation reassessment that were decreased in 2025 and 2026 to utilize those excess cash reserves, like we mentioned earlier. This just mentions the cash reserve targets, ideally we want to stay between 15 and 50%, depending on the type of fund. I don't think any of the funds in this report are outside of that. They're definitely not underneath that for 2027. So, if there's any that we need to discuss, we'll discuss that on the cash flow pages. Slide 19 has the revenue changes between 20, actually I should say 2024 and 2027, because we're actually showing 2024, 2025, estimated for 2026 and estimated for 2027. We do have some notes down there, as you'll notice, between 25 and 26, the general fund did decrease slightly. Part of that is because of adopting underneath that max levy, and part of that is because of the increased circuit breaker and property tax credits with the new legislation. And then you'll see in 2027, it's staying right around that 18.7 million, again, because those property tax credits are kind of going up a little bit more each year. NVH is the only other one that I really want to talk about on this page because we are showing kind of a large decrease in 2026. That's mostly because of the pause on the gas tax that started back in April. I think that's set to expire at the beginning of August. When we got the reports from the state, July looked like it was about 50% of what the previous July was. So, for the remainder of the months, we have estimated 50% of their receipts from the previous year. But there has been a gas tax holiday reimbursement mark that you've probably seen. That was just for the first two months. It's possible that they may extend that and give some more relief, but those would have to be approved by the state. So, at this point, we haven't included those, but the hope is that the state will make the county hold for those lost revenues. Has anybody seen a low-cat gas rate because of that tax holiday? I haven't heard anybody talk about that there. I haven't noticed that. It's been lower. Well, we traveled to Missouri and typically, Missouri is 20 cents a gallon, 30 cents a gallon cheaper than India. We were cheaper than Missouri this time. So, there was a difference. Yeah, I guess that's the case. I also have been out of Indiana to see if it's different than the rest of the... In Illinois, you want to make sure you don't ever get gas. Okay. So, we are on to slide 21, which... Yes, go ahead. The bridge, the community bridge bus. That's taken quite a pretty good hit. What's the reason for that? That would be because of the slowed net assessed value growth on top of the additional property tax credit. So, the cumulative bridge fund is rate driven. So, it's based on whatever the net assessed value is. So, since we're seeing that that rate in 2027, we're expecting the NAB to be to have less growth than the revenues are going to decline because they're not increasing with the MLGQ. Is that an answer to your question? Thank you, in caps, taking a hit, too. Again, that's... Any rate driven fund, which I think those are your only... Yeah, Cumbridge and CCD are both rate driven. So, they're going to be reliant on the assessed value growth. And now there's another one, too. I'm sure you guys caught on the plaza. Yeah, I know, I just... So, you might want to get with Commissioner or Martha. Keep that on your thoughts.