Following the two draft budget proposals discussed at the Sept. 23 regular meeting, Port of Chehalis CEO Lindsey Senter walked the port commissioners through the second draft of the port’s budget at Thursday morning’s regular meeting.
Senter and the rest of the port’s staff went to work retooling the budget proposal following the meeting two weeks ago and produced a more streamlined preliminary budget plan for the fiscal year 2023.
“This breaks it down in a better way, it’s easier to follow for anyone who reviews it,” Senter said.
The preliminary budget is broken down into operating and capital budgets.
Total operating cash inflow was calculated to be $337,193.20, total operating cash outflow was $832,425.66 and the total inflow from taxes and debt was $495,232.46.
After expenses, the net capital cash increase will be $6,705,990.00. The port estimates that it will start out 2023 with $1,762,139.00 meaning after the net capital cash increase they estimate ending the year with $8,468,129.00 in the bank.
The budget was also created with the next four years in mind, according to Senter.
“There was a request to do a five-year forecast so we went in and went back through our past expenses and made an average calculation of what we can expect year over year to add to the budget, we put those calculations in,” Senter said.
She added that to address inflation concerns in the future that contract rates will be updated every year using the Consumer Price Index.
The port’s second preliminary 2023-2027 budget can be viewed on the port’s website at https://portofchehalis.com/agenda-and-minutes/ in the “next meeting agenda” folder.
Port employees will continue to make adjustments as they prepare the final draft budget.
The Purchase of a Parcel
Apart from the budget discussion, there was discussion over the port’s purchase of a parcel of land located at 2021 Bishop Road in Chehalis. The 10-acre parcel is directly adjacent to a 23-acre parcel already owned by the port.
CBRE First Vice President Teresa Patton, a consultant for the port, explained the purchase was being proposed to make the 23-acre parcel more desirable to prospective businesses.
“We’ve had a number of discussions with brokers and a couple interested users and the addition of the 10 acres making it a 33-acre parcel much more attractive to all these folks than a 23-acre. Their buildings lay out better, they have additional parking availability, so it’s just a better configuration for a larger building,” Patton said.
The land will require work to clear it and install the correct infrastructure needed for business to be conducted.
The purchase of the parcel had already been approved in a previous regular meeting and CBRE was brought in to answer any additional questions if the commissioners had them.
Possible Porch Pirates?
Port of Chehalis Operations Manager Bill Teitzel brought up security issues that had arose in the two days prior to the meeting.
“One of them was quite significant, the entrance into our equipment yard and the theft of one of our tenant’s packages,” Teitzel said.
The trespassing and theft have been reported to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and reports have been filed, according to Teitzel.
“I actually talked to Sheriff Rob Snaza yesterday and he’s going to be looking into getting more resources out here in the middle of the night to keep an eye on things a little bit,” Teitzel said.
He also explained that the port had been demoing a free security camera from Verkada, which using motion sensing captured an image of a possible suspect in the package theft on port property at 9:22 p.m. on Oct. 5.
The packages were delivered after hours by Amazon and were ordered by the port tenant Rayonier Forest Resources. According to Teitzel, the items stolen were chain saw supplies.
Aside from the additional sheriff’s office patrols in the area, the idea was proposed to purchase a secure package dropbox for future after hours deliveries.
