Longboat buys budget prediction tool

More than $16 million.

That’s the amount of money the town of Longboat Key budgeted to collect this fiscal year, — finances it used to clean the island after Hurricane Irma, decipher an application for developing the former Colony Beach & Tennis Resort and offer rewards for felling Australian Pines.

But that’s just one year. Many town investments are financial obligations that will last for years.

So, in an effort to begin planning for such expenses and year-over-year changes in revenue, the town worked with consultants to develop a financial-forecasting model.

The program, which models purchasing and revenue projections using information from the town’s more than 20 funds, is expected to be complete by May, said Finance Director Susan Smith.

“There will be less surprises,” Smith said. “You don’t want to do this nice little project ... and figure out we can’t do anything for the next 10 years.”

The town sets budgets one year at a time, so making financial decisions past that time frame can be time consuming and difficult to predict, Smith said.

The spreadsheet gives the Finance Department — and, by extension, the town manager — a sort of dashboard for gauging the town’s financial sustainability, said Town Manager Tom Harmer. It uses trendlines on town revenue and growth to project years into the future.

“It’s not going to be 100% accurate, but it’s going to be good enough to make decisions,” Smith said of the spreadsheet.

The Finance Department worked with consultants, whom it paid more than $10,000 for support, to develop the modeling system, Smith said.

The idea for the project sprouted with former Town Manager Dave Bullock, who wanted some sort of system to make predictable budget decisions, Smith said.

Harmer said the program will give the town manager latitude in budget presentations to the Town Commission. 

If the commission, for example, asked the town to build four new pickleball courts, a town manager could inform the commission if the project would require a millage increase relative to increasing property values and town revenue to build.

“It’s pretty powerful,” Smith said of the program. “It’s going to allow us to look at the big picture.”