September 3, 2026 Town Council Budget Workshop — Agenda Breakdown

The newest schedule: the elected-pay raises are out

What it is. The Town posted no packet for the fifth workshop before it met. The one now on the portal is a 22-page PDF whose own creation stamp is 5:30 PM on September 1, the workshop's start time, and it is now the newest budget document in the public record. Pages 14–22 are a position-by-position salary schedule headed "AFTER 8-31-2026 WORKSHOP." Set beside the fourth workshop's schedule, it shows what the August 31 discussion did:

Every one of those lines is back at, or near, its current-year figure. The five elected salaries return to $39,564 in total — the same figure the Town has budgeted for them for three years running. The schedule's grand total for salaries falls from $2,690,364 (the figure printed in the four-year salary history; the August 31 schedule's own summary page printed $2,690,362.05) to $2,546,605, and total personal services — salaries plus benefits — from $3,506,349 to $3,297,765.

What the schedule keeps: the Clerk's office part-time line — labeled "Deputy Town Clerk" in the fourth packet and "Record Clerk Part-Time" in this one — at $45,594, the full-time figure the Council declined to fund on July 21; the police Evidence Clerk and Records Clerk at $40,000 each; the new Planner at $60,000 and Special Events Coordinator at $30,000; the Administrative Permit Clerk at $42,000; and both lieutenants' raises. The third crossing-guard line, removed in the fourth workshop's schedule, is back — all three at $16,867. The reserve officers' line stays at the halved $11,000, with a note in the schedule's Notes column reading "Handwritten: $17.66/hr, 1,245 hrs" — figures that multiply to about $21,987, the line's pre-cut amount, not $11,000.

What the packet doesn't say. Nothing in the 22 pages records who proposed the changes or what was said on August 31; the workshop was not broadcast, and no minutes are posted. A worksheet is not an adopted budget. Nothing has been voted on, and the raises can return in the budget the Council adopts at its hearings. If they do, the charter question the last two breakdowns raised — by what instrument, and with what effective date — is exactly where it was.

Worth watching. One line does not match itself. The schedule lists the part-time HR / Risk position at $26,250, while the worksheet for the same department (page 5) forecasts the part-time wages line at $28,000. That is the position named in a walk-on resolution at the September 1 regular meeting — an amendment to the current year's budget "to provide for personnel and salary adjustments" for it — which drew no motion.

The General Fund forecast no longer balances

What it is. Pages 2–9 are the Town's budget worksheets, headed "INCLUDES 8-31-2026 WORKSHOP CHANGES." The July workbook that opened this cycle forecast FY2027 General Fund revenue and spending at an identical $5,802,969 — balanced to the dollar. The revenue side is unchanged. The spending side is now $5,990,898, and the fund summary prints the result — a General Fund deficit of $187,929 — on the same page as the line "Section 166.241, Florida Statutes requires a balanced budget."

That is the smaller of two deficits the Town's own worksheets now show. A version of the same worksheets with the fourth workshop's raises folded in — appended to the August 31 packet after it was first posted — forecast spending at $6,154,575, a deficit of $351,606. Department by department, the two versions differ where the August 31 workshop cut, and in three places where it added:

The Finance reduction is the raise coming out, with payroll taxes following: wages from $312,407 back to $255,866. The Legislative reduction is the elected raises coming out — $65,406 in salaries and $5,004 in payroll taxes — offset by $15,000 restored to the Clerk's contractual-services line, which the with-raises version had cut. The Executive/Admin reduction is something else. The department's salaries move by less than $2,000 between the two versions; the insurance line moves by $125,000, from $443,330 to $318,330, with no note explaining it. This year's budget for that line is $430,417, and $304,803 of it had been spent by May 31. Legal Counsel goes the other way, from $100,000 to $150,000 — consistent with a new Town Attorney engagement whose pricing option the Council never settled on the record. Public Works rises even though the Director's and Administrative Assistant's raises come out, because $45,000 goes back into two building lines: repairs from $30,000 to $60,000 and improvements from $10,000 to $25,000.

What the worksheets carry forward. The contingency account is still forecast at $0, down from $163,433. The reserve balance carried forward falls from $200,000 to $33,515. The TIF line still records $1,789,254 paid to the CRA this year against a $230,000 budget, with $232,136 forecast for next year — the running question. The Police forecast of $1,781,624 against this year's $2,735,184 budget is the policing-grant lines going to zero — $726,744 in grant construction, $128,744 in grant contractual services, $60,000 in youth activities, $35,000 in equipment, $69,512 in grant-reimbursed wages — while $990,000 in federal grant revenue falls out of the revenue side. Unchanged between the two versions, and so absent from the table above, is the largest increase in the General Fund: Planning and Community Development rises from $262,291 to $408,993, driven by regular wages going from $78,750 to $197,428 as the new Planner and Special Events Coordinator are added. And the 22 pages contain no CRA fund at all. The summary lists the General, Capital, Water and Sewer, Refuse, and Stormwater funds, and nothing else; the CRA appears only as the payee of the Town's TIF line and as the source of a CDBG match in the Capital fund.

What is said to be left: water, sewer, and stormwater

What it is. The September 1 list of unfinished business is two enterprise funds — utility operations meant to pay for themselves through the fees they charge — and the worksheets for both are in the packet.

Water and Sewer (Fund 400). Revenue is forecast at $1,646,165, up $319,700 net from this year's budget: $400,000 more in two lines — water utility revenue from $500,000 to $700,000, and sewer utility revenue from $600,000 to $800,000 — partly offset by a $100,000 federal pandemic-relief line that falls to zero. Through May 31, eight months into the year, the Town had collected $420,627 in water revenue and $497,686 in sewer revenue. Expenditures are forecast at $1,589,488, down $209,359: a $100,000 "administrative expenses" line and a $39,062 contingency go to zero, regular wages fall from $237,822 to $195,259, the Altamonte Springs contract rises from $309,000 to $318,270, and the principal on the Town's state revolving-fund loan — a low-interest state loan program for water and sewer projects — drops from $74,000 to $62,900. The fund shows a $56,677 surplus. This year's actual column is a different story: $2,416,526 spent against a $1,798,847 budget, most of the overage in three state revolving-fund project lines with no budget — $162,073, $507,990, and $256,143 — and $685,082 in contractual services against a $50,000 budget.

Stormwater (Fund 402). Revenue $236,934; expenditures $179,774, with salaries falling from $133,756 to $91,193; a $57,160 surplus. Both enterprise wage lines fall by the same $42,563 while the General Fund's Public Works wage line rises $84,612, as the Public Works Director's full $86,514 and the Administrative Assistant's $40,404 now sit on the General Fund schedule.

The other two. Refuse (Fund 401) is $632,500 in and $632,500 out, up $82,500 on both sides. The Capital fund (Fund 300) is $8,631,105 on both sides — the $5,986,105 water-system hardening grant, the $2,000,000 affordable-housing line, a $465,000 CRA match to a federal community-development block grant, and $180,000 for the FDOT arts project — which was described on September 1 as already in place.

Worth watching. One resident raised water bills from the podium on September 1, and Council Member Mack again floated a monthly credit for what he called a problem of the Town's making. A forecast that adds $400,000 in water and sewer revenue is the place to ask what that means for the bill.

The fourth workshop's packet grew after it was covered

What it is. The packet linked from the Town's portal for the August 31 workshop is no longer the document Cheatonville broke down on August 27. That breakdown described a 12-page packet — the agenda and an 11-page salary schedule. The file now served at the same link is 33 pages; its creation stamp is August 28 at 4:21 PM, the afternoon after the breakdown was published. The original 12 pages are unchanged. Appended to them:

• Budget worksheets headed "INCLUDES PROPOSED PERSONNEL CHANGES" (pp. 13–25) — the same worksheet set as the fifth workshop's packet, but with the raises folded in. This is the version that forecasts the General Fund $351,606 short.
• A four-year salary history by position (pp. 26–31) — each position's approved salary for FY2023-24, FY2024-25, and FY2025-26 beside the FY2026-27 proposal. The Mayor and Council seats sit at the same $13,188 and $6,594 in all three approved years.
• An email chain (pp. 32–33): a message from Council Member Randolph, sent August 28 at 12:30 PM to the Chief Administrative Officer and the Town Clerk, restating the proposed raises for the Mayor and Council and asking that a salary comparison be sent to all elected officials; the Clerk's office forwarded it "by request" that afternoon. The message carries a one-table comparison of six municipalities. Its source is not stated:

On the table as submitted, Eatonville's Mayor is already the highest-paid of the six and its Council seats the second-highest, on the smallest population and the second-smallest budget. Randolph wrote that she "would like to speak on this information" at the next budget meeting. The August 31 breakdown said that no memo or comparison of what other towns pay had appeared in any packet; that was true of the packet posted when it was written, and this table arrived the next day.

Worth watching. The comparison is dated August 28; the schedule posted after August 31 carries no elected raise. What was said between the two is not in the public record: the workshop was not broadcast, and no minutes are posted.

What the posted record leaves open

What it is. The running list, updated for what the fifth workshop's packet answers and what it does not.

Answered, for now. The fourth workshop's $104,970 for the five elected salaries is out of the schedule; the Legislative worksheet carries $39,564, the current figure. So is the Finance Director's $135,000. Whether either returns is a question for the hearings.

Still open. Which instrument sets elected pay if a raise comes back, and with what effective date — the charter's own rule ends mid-sentence. The General Fund forecast is $187,929 from balancing, with the contingency account at $0 and the reserve balance forward cut from $200,000 to $33,515. The CRA budget: the fund summary lists five funds, and the CRA is not among them; the July workbook marked its rows "not presenting," and no CRA budget workshop has been noticed. The $1,789,254 recorded as paid to the CRA this year against a $230,000 budget — carried since the third workshop. The $125,000 drop in the Executive/Admin insurance line between the two versions of the worksheets. The HR / Risk line's two figures. And the calendar: the first hearing was described on September 1 as September 9, and as of September 2 nothing is noticed on the Town's portal.

Worth watching. This workshop was added because the Council said it was not ready. Whether it leaves ready — with numbers in the two open funds and a General Fund that balances — is the measure of the night.