Upon hearing resident Barry Brown’s 3 minute speech during the city council meeting of September 22, 2025 we requested Mr. Brown to provide his documentation to SCA for a follow-up story. Text and video of his remarks are below.
——————————-
What would you think if I told you the city has $24m in reserve funds? Well based on these financial statements* – they could. Now, they can’t spend it all because most of it is allocated based on various lender restrictions, regulations and city council rules. However there is $5m in reserves above the self-imposed safety net that city council members decide how to use.
As of this January 2025 (which is the latest information available to the public) there’s $3.4m in the General Reserve Fund and $1.6m above the regulatory demands in the Enterprise Fund (water, sewer and storm water).
A deeper dive into specific line items on the revenue side of the budgeting shows the city has been budgeting the exact same $232,225 per year (a very specific & odd amount) over the last 5 years for “License & Permits” but has been collecting on average $468,223 – over the last 5 years – that’s a budget miss of $1,179,994.
Now, it’s reasonable to assume that “Interest on Investments” should be fairly easy to calculate for budget purposes, but in 2023 the city budgeted only $20,000 in interest investment while actual interest earned was $240,417. A miss of this caliber would have reduced the tax levy to residents by a full 2-3%.
On the expense side of budgeting, in the last 4 out of 5 years the “Administrative Budget” went over by a total of $262,962 or average $52,592 per year. Just the opposite in the “Public Works Dept.” where the last 5 out of 5 years they were under budget for a total of $484,441 or $96,888 per year.
Here’s how the city continues to build upon its RESERVE FUNDS year after year.
- 1st staff provides a soft or highly conservative budget to city council and say we need to increase taxes to residents 8, 9, 10% to get project done
- 2nd after some back and forth with city council they get council to agree
- 3rd these budget misses lead to unspent moneys or overages that go into THE RESERVE ACCOUNTS
- 2020 – $1.1m
- 2021 – $518k
- 2022 – (111k)
- 2023 – $812k
- 2024 – $950k
These are not small amounts and have a significant impact on the taxes paid by residents. Without proper information city council members don’t have a chance at making informed decisions. I could provide more details but my time is nearly up. Look for this readout and more information in Shorewood Citizen Advocates.
