City’s budget process comes to a close
Second and last public hearing is Thursday, September 25 at 5:05pm

The mayor and St Augustine city commissioners are wrapping up work on and poised to adopt a budget for the fiscal year 2014-2015 this week.  All that remains is the final second public hearing which will be on Thursday, September 25th at 5:05 p.m.

The meeting will be held in The Alcazar Room, City Hall, 75 King Street in St Augustine. The meeting is open to the public and will be streamed live via CoSATV.com.

The 2014-2015 budget goes into effect with the start of the fiscal year on October 1st.

According to the Department of Public Affairs, the first step in the process was to “identify priorities”.  A staff-led brainstorming session was held in which the mayor and commissioners identified specific goals to guide staff during the budgeting process.  A list of eleven “strategic action items” was used to establish project development priorities.

Each item is broad in nature, but includes specific actions that will be pursued to achieve the larger goals.

The eleven action items are:

• Infrastructure and streetscape aesthetics
• Promote a proactive visionary planning department
• Livable city initiative
• Parking and traffic management
• Economic development
• 450th Commemoration
• Historic preservation
• Policy to balance residential, tourism and commercial interests
• Sustainability
• Public safety
• Improve customer service and information dissemination

To see the entire list and access a printable version, click here.

Ahead of the commission’s budget workshop on August 21st, the city’s financial staff prepared a workbook and a summary of a five year capital plan as a reference.

• City of St. Augustine 2014-2015 Budget Workbook

• City of St. Augustine Five Year Capital Improvement Plan 2014-2019.

To facilitate and organize the discussion, staff also prepared a presentation that summarized much of the budget information, but also outlines a number of priorities for the city.

• Budget presentation

• The August 21 workshop is available by clicking here.
• The September 11 public hearing is available by clicking here.