2024 Mid-Year Update

It’s already been a very productive year in Clayton and I wanted to provide you with a Mid-Year update!
 
At the June 4th City Council meeting we approved the Five-Year Capital Improvement Plan for Fiscal Years 2023/2024 through 2027/2028 and incorporated the proposed FY2024/2025 Capital Improvement project allocations into the overall Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Annual Budget.
 
We also approved the Fiscal Year 2024-25 General Fund, Lighting Maintenance District Fund, Fiduciary Funds and Other Fund Budgets and Fiscal Year 2024-25 Salary Schedule. This was the result of several weeks of in-depth meetings and ongoing review and due diligence by Adam Politzer, Regina Rubier (then Finance Advisor), City staff and the Budget & Audit committee (Trupiano,Wan). See entire video of the meeting here. The budget discussion begins at approximately 1:14.

Hiring:
We have a new City Manager, Kris Lofthus, whose contract we confirmed on August 20th and his start date will be Monday, September 16th.
 
We also hired our first Assistant City Manager/Administrative Finance Director, Regina Rubier, who started on August 5th. Regina began working with us in May and helped us navigate through this year’s budget process and we are delighted that she has joined the staff full time.

Recently Promoted:
Stephanie Cabrera-Brown, City Clerk, to City Clerk/Assistant to the City Manager and Jennifer Giantvalley to full time Accountant. Congratulations to both of them!

Community Development Department:
The City recently contracted with 4Leaf, Inc. for Community Development and Code Enforcement services. We welcome Daniel Hortert, as interim Community Development Director, and Jason McKinley to oversee all code enforcement. This is a temporary agreement that we will be assessing again later this year.

City Events:
We had the best 4th of July parade ever (according to many our residents) and we cannot thank Sandy Johnson, from our own Clayton Police Department, enough for agreeing to chair the event again this year.
 
We’ve also had a very successful Concerts in the Grove series this year (May 25th to August 31st) and thank you to Mayor Jim Diaz for keeping that event going for 17 years. Visit our city website for information about upcoming events and to view our city calendar.

Climatec Update:
Our $2 million project with Climatec is well underway and all city-owned lighting has transitioned to LED throughout the street light district and at many of the city’s buildings throughout the downtown. Other projects include a new HVAC system at the library, installation of new irrigation controllers throughout the city, final design work for EV charging station (coming to the library parking lot) and solar array in the maintenance yard. You can expect a presentation from Climatec at the October 15th City Council meeting.

Library Refresh Update
The County librarian, Allison McKee, recently presented an outline for a three-phase refresh project for Clayton’s library to the Budget & Audit committee. As a result of that presentation, the City of Clayton will be creating a working group, with representatives from the County, the City of Clayton and the Clayton Community Library Foundation to begin the refresh process. Here’s a link to that meeting and staff report about the project.

We look forward to more improvements our city. If you have questions about any of these topics, please contact me at kimt@claytonca.gov.