Where the Money Flows — All City Funds
The General Fund is only about half the story. This is Vacaville's entire FY2025-26 budget — every fund, every department — showing which pocket pays for what.
View every published line item as a table
| Side | Group | Line item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| revenue | Funds | General Fund | $158392508 | The discretionary fund — includes Measure M and $7.7M of transfers out; net of internal cost allocation. |
| revenue | Funds | Enterprise funds | $73471719 | Sewer, water, and transit — funded by ratepayers and riders, not taxes. |
| revenue | Funds | Special revenue funds | $62985733 | Restricted money — gas tax, state/federal grants, housing programs, park maintenance districts. Can be large and still unavailable for police or parks. |
| revenue | Funds | Successor Agency (former RDA) | $6533563 | Winding down the dissolved Redevelopment Agency's obligations. |
| revenue | Funds | Overhead add-back (internal cost allocation) (derived) | $6574920 | Department budgets are gross; fund totals are net of $6,574,920 of overhead charged between funds. Added back so the two published schedules balance. |
| spending | Public safety | Police Department | $59724191 | |
| spending | Public safety | Fire Department | $45099727 | |
| spending | Utilities | Sewer utility | $39584213 | |
| spending | Utilities | Water utility | $28970113 | |
| spending | Housing & redevelopment | Housing & Community Services | $28816238 | |
| spending | Housing & redevelopment | Successor Housing Agency | $9361541 | |
| spending | Housing & redevelopment | Successor Agency (RDA wind-down) | $6533563 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Public Works (general) | $13277582 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Park maintenance districts | $6958254 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Engineering services | $5502168 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Transit | $4917393 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Parks division | $4125868 | |
| spending | Public works & engineering | Development engineering | $2059233 | |
| spending | Administration | Finance | $5817527 | |
| spending | Administration | Non-departmental | $4760870 | |
| spending | Administration | Human Resources / Risk | $3858986 | |
| spending | Administration | City Manager's Office / Clerk | $3587154 | |
| spending | Administration | Information Technology | $3497528 | |
| spending | Administration | City Attorney | $2793011 | |
| spending | Administration | Economic Development | $1078113 | |
| spending | Administration | City Council / Treasurer | $128755 | |
| spending | Community dev. & recreation | Parks & Recreation | $11330706 | |
| spending | Community dev. & recreation | Community Development | $8433292 | |
| spending | Transfers out | Transfers out (capital & equipment funds) | $7742416 | General Fund support to capital improvement, vehicle/equipment replacement, technology projects, and districts. |
How to read this
The left side is the city's fund structure — the four pockets the budget is organized into. The right side is what the money buys, by department. The fund a dollar sits in determines what it is allowed to buy: enterprise dollars come from your utility bill and can only run the utilities; special revenue dollars are restricted by the state or the granting agency; only the General Fund is broadly discretionary.
That's the core insight this lens adds: when residents ask "the city has a $300M budget, why can't it fix X?", the answer is usually that most of the $300M legally can't. About $143M of the citywide budget — utilities, restricted funds, and the RDA wind-down — is spoken for before the council makes a single choice.
Methodology & sources
Figures are the FY 2025/26 budget column of the City of Vacaville FY2025-26 Final Budget Document: the Summary of Expenditures by Fund (p. 13) for the fund totals and the Summary of Expenditures by Department (p. 11) for the department detail. The published City Grand Total is $301,383,523.
- Fund totals are net of internal cost allocation while department budgets are gross, so the diagram adds the $6.6M of interfund overhead back on the left; with it, the two published schedules balance (to a $1 printed-rounding difference).
- The budget does not publish a single citywide revenue schedule, so this lens shows fund → department rather than revenue source → department. For revenue sources, see the General Fund lens; for audited citywide revenue, see the ACFR lens.
- Transit appears under Public Works & engineering (its managing department) even though it is funded as an enterprise; the Summary of Expenditures by Department is the source of that assignment.
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Questions or corrections: ryan@civic.studio.