Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
Yelm Finance Director Stephanie Nanavich presented some encouraging news to the Yelm City Council during its Tuesday, June 10, meeting, as she highlighted numerous city fund balances set to be amended in the 2025-27 biennial budget.
Nanavich noted this is the second budget amendment of the year. It updates all of the 2025 beginning fund balances with remaining money from the city’s 2024 budget rolling over.
“This is the budget amendment where we’re setting the actual 2025 beginning fund balances. So when we do our original budget in the fall, we are estimating what our beginning fund balance will be for the next year,” she said. “Now that we’ve closed our books for 2024 and we have firm numbers, we now know actual numbers for 2024, which then rolls over to actual beginning fund balance for 2025.”
The City of Yelm’s utility enterprise fund came in at $5,613,905 — or $1,777,621 more than originally estimated. This excludes the $5,379,722 general fund, which increased by $419,214 from the original estimate. The stormwater fund also increased by $182,000 and was presented at $924,005, while the water fund saw a $980,500 increase to $1,637,467.
Lastly, the sewer fund saw a $614,700 increase from the original estimate and came in at $5,613,905.
The city’s special purpose fund, which includes city streets, tourism promotion, affordable housing and transportation facilities, saw a $369,494 increase to the final 2025 beginning fund balance at $1,479,012.
Yelm’s capital projects fund was $2,348,212 more than the estimate, bringing the balance to a total of $6,551,126. The capital projects fund includes specific categories such as municipal building projects, road and street construction, water improvements, and sewer and reuse improvements, and all of those budgets received more funds than originally estimated.
The municipal building projects fund came in at $104,243 more than estimated, for a total of $1,028,763. The road and street construction fund received $534,870 more than estimated, for a total of $1,148,039. The water improvements fund received $1,293,068 more than estimated, bringing the balance to a total of $2,088,039. Lastly, the sewer and reuse improvements fund came in at $416,024 more than originally estimated to bring the balance to a total of $2,275,850.
The only budget to see a decrease in balance was the ER&R fund, which decreased by $140,390 than its original projection. Its 2025 beginning fund balance is $1,804,384. The IT services category under the ER&R fund specifically decreased by $24,585 to bring it to a total of $482,236 — while the capital equipment ER&R fund decreased by $115,807 to bring it to a total of $1,322,149.
“We purchased the police vehicles out of the equipment rental fund, but we budgeted the repairs, supplies and services in the general fund,” Nanavich said. “We want to move those to the equipment rental fund.”
Every other category, including reserve funds, debt service funds, capital project funds, special purpose funds, utility enterprise funds and the general fund, saw an increase to its originally estimated 2025 beginning balance.
“We did review this in the finance committee a few months ago, and again last Tuesday. We did have the attorney (Brent Dille) review it as well,” she said.
