City Manager Lyman Howard provided the Sammamish City Council with a preliminary budget overview for the 2017-18 biennium at the Sept. 20 council meeting at City Hall.

Offering a timeline, Howard informed the council a first draft of the budget needed to be filed Oct. 1 with the city clerk, and state law required the city manager to file a preliminary budget for council consideration by Oct. 31. The council will host a study session on Oct. 11, followed by a public hearing and first reading on Nov. 1 and a second reading on Nov. 15.

During the presentation, city finance director Aaron Antin told council members the preliminary budget includes no new taxes, nor the allowable 1 percent property tax rate increase. It does include a continuation of the stormwater fee rate increase of 2.5 percent.

In the city’s operating funds, Antin said the General Fund will see a 6.4 percent revenue increase in 2017 and a 1.4 percent increase in 2018, coming to an ending fund balance of $6.4 million at the end of 2018. He added the Street Fund showed an ending fund balance of $6.7 million, the Surface Water Management Fund showed a balance of $700,000 and Internal Service Funds showed a balance of $1.4 million.

Combined, each of the city’s ending fund balances showed a 2018 total budget balance of $18.1 million.

Deputy City Manager Jessi Bon told the council the city was anticipating a very high volume of work across all departments in the next biennium.

“I think this biennium is going to be about prioritization because the workload is high and we don’t have a lot of room to take on anything beyond what’s already here,” she said.

Bon noted the high number of major plans on the horizon for the city, with some 13 plans in the works, including the Transportation Comprehensive Plan and Impact Fee updates, Town Center planning, the Urban Forestry Management Plan and a Stormwater Rate Study. She called the workload “significant” and said nearly all of the upcoming plans include “robust public process.” Bon suggested the council discuss how to manage the workload either at its retreat or at an upcoming study session.

“In my time here at the city, I have never seen a biennial work plan with this many plans on the list,” she said. “I think it’s going to be really important for us to spend some time, staff and council, to talk about how we work through this list efficiently and effectively.”

In a summary of new staff positions, Bon said the city is proposing new non-maintenance staff positions for 8.75 FTEs across all departments as well as 13 new full-time maintenance positions.