Finance Committee Agenda and Packet 2024 10 17

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City Council Finance Committee Meeting Minutes September 24, 2024 Page 4of8 The Director of Finance commented that what the committee is reviewing is a six -year plan that will be revisited each year. He also added that the capital plan presented today is financially sound and does not go negative he would give pause to go beyond $100,000 additional expenses in this plan because appropriations would go negative starting in 2028 and 2029. Councilmember Fahey asked if the $10M is sufficient to build the underpass, if we are figuring in $1M from the LRC or getting grant money from somewhere else. The Director of Public Works responded that right now we show we will receive $1M in LRC, $3M from DRCOG, and $2M from Lafayette, which leaves $4M needed in city funding. We currently have $3M in contingency on the project because of where we are at in the design phase. As design work progresses, we may be able to reduce the overall cost of the project, possibly lowering the city's share from $3-4M to $1-2M. Councilmember Hoefner asked if we don't change anything right now, are we putting any future grant funding at risk. The Director of Public Works responded that he believes we are showing it in the packet as cash funded. Councilmember Hoefner clarified that he is referring to the entire Future 42 project in his question, not just the underpass project. The Director of Public Works responded that when we apply for a grant, we don't normally have to have anything committed and when we receive the grant we generally have time to match and accept the grant through agreement. Councilmember Hoefner suggested that the Future 42 project can be left as -is, recognizing that in the coming years we may revisit. Councilmember Hoefner asked for a better understanding for the overall fiber loop buildout, both the IT and Public Works portions of the project. The Director of IT responded that the fiber build received funding in 2023 to create a connection between all city locations to reduce outages. The allocated funding will complete the ring around all facilities and enable us to provide better services to the community. Fiber is always a good addition for the future when we are digging under roads, it reduces the number of times we have to dig and it's always there if we need it. We can lease out strands to people like cell providers to provide better services to our community, we can provide leasing options for our partners like BVSD. Public Works has a request for fiber to connect the water treatment plants. Right now it is a very volatile connection which requires line of sight and is very difficult to maintain. Additionally, there is funding to complete to the Wastewater Treatment Plant and some very old fiber which has broken down which needs to be replaced. These are two different projects; one is to complete the connectivity between all city facilities and the other is connect public works facilities to each other. Councilmember Hoefner commented that intrepid is giving us some conduit for part of it but not the fiber. The Director of IT responded that, yes, they are giving us conduit in a specific area but we still have to put the fiber strands in the conduit. We want to control the number of strands we put in because we can lease them out for various services, such as leasing fibers to cellular providers to improve cellular service in the area. Intrepid is also handling digging under the railroad which is very difficult. Councilmember Hoefner suggested we communicate that this is possibly a way to get better cellular service to the community. Councilmember Kern asked what the gaps are in the budget that residents are going to know and feel and can $1M of the budget be put into some of these other projects to help us fulfill the requests of our community now. The Director of Finance commented that in a full review of the CIP fund there are many 13/87