The City is getting creative in trying to keep the general fund solvent. I'm going to mention two in the paragraphs below.

If you recall from discussions when the city had a couple of ballot measures the city has a lot of money in some funds (street improvement, water) but is not as healthy in others (General Fund, Police and Fire). Donnie Jones noted that many of the city employees complete tasks in support of street improvements and water but then get paid only from the general fund. The city has decided to monitor how much time these employees spend supporting these funds and then charging a portion of their salary against those funds. This seems like a smart accounting practice because it will give residents a better understanding of how much individual services really cost. The pitfall to avoid is to have the "managers" assign more of the cost than is appropriate just because one fund has more money than another.

The second thing council proposes and appears about to adopt is to exempt itself from paying its water bill. The logic is that because the city owns United Water then it doesn't make sense to track the payments and then have the city pay the bill from the general fund. The discussion at the committee meeting was that it was labor intensive for each of the departments to get and pay the bill. In addition, they are trying to construct the resolution so that the city will get a refund of the water payments they made since 1997.