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Approval of a budget adjustment to align the Emergency Medical Services Fund budget and eliminate a negative variance in Fiscal Year 2025.
(Fiscal Impact: $790,000)
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(Staff Contact: Allison Feurtado/Joshua Watters)
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Summary Explanation/Background:
The City must present its budget to actual performance for financial reporting purposes for its governmental funds with a legally adopted budget. Negative variances within these functions would violate the City's budgetary-level controls.
Section 166.241(8) of the Florida Statutes states that the governing body of each municipality at any time within a fiscal year or within 60 days following the end of the fiscal year may amend a budget for that year as follows: (a) Appropriations for expenditures within a fund may be decreased or increased by motion recorded in the minutes if the total appropriations of the fund is not changed.
Resolution 2016-262 authorizes the City Manager to transfer funds between any line items of any division and between departments of the same fund. Any transfers between funds require authorization from the City Commission.
Preliminary results for FY 2025 indicate that the EMS Fund overspent its budget by approximately $790,000. This is largely due to personnel costs exceeding budgeted estimates for the year.
Furthermore, the EMS Fund is projected to receive approximately $2 million from the Medicaid Managed Care Public Emergency Medical Transportation (PEMT) program. This amount was approved in the FY 2025 budget. However, due to the federal government shutdown, the State is still awaiting approval from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) before disbursing these funds. Assuming the federal shutdown ends in the next few weeks, approval is anticipated by the December meeting of the Legislative Budget Commission, with payment expected in the first quarter of 2026.
This budget adjustment would transfer funds from the General Fund to cover EMS over expenditures for Fiscal Year 2025. Once the City receives PEMT revenues, the EMS fund will fully reimburse the money back to the General Fund.
Origin of request for this action: Finance Department and Budget Office
Fiscal impact and source of funding: $790,000 General Fund transfer to the EMS fund, to be repaid to the General Fund once the City receives PEMT revenues.