Last nights Administration Committee meeting included a discussion of the draft 2014 budget. The short version is available on the city website. I've scanned and posted the larger version of the draft budget. Sorry it is not searchable (and it is 11mb). The city finance director has again this year warned council that there is a systemic problem with the budget (we are spending more than we take in). The budget is balanced again this year because the city is using reserve funds to make up the difference between expenditures and revenue. In this draft budget the difference is about $2 million dollars.
The presentation to council was made in a fashion to show that the "problem" is there is not enough money to pay for police and fire services. On initial look, this appears to be a well made argument. This can be confirmed once all the transfers of money from one fund to another fund and allocation of departmental time is fully mapped out.
The majority of the budget discussion was dedicated to talking about how good of stewards everyone in the city is of the taxpayers money and how it will be possible to raise more revenues.
Couple of items to note. There is .3% of the current income tax that is going to expire in 2015. Most of this is dedicated to police and fire services. If this were to expire without a replacement levy then this would result in about $1.6 million less revenue for police and fire services. Council could put a .3% levy on the ballot as a replacement levy. A replacement levy does not solve their systemic problem ($2 million less of revenue than expenditures).
Going back to the draft budget. If you look at it keep in mind I would like to know the following. If you see any of these send me an email with the page number:
Which funds / pages are the expenses for Dry Run llc found?
Where are the aquatic center / YMCA revenue and expenses found?
Where are the Music Center costs found?
I'm sure most people are interested in seeing how these are laid out in the budget. Lets see who finds them first.
Edited
Comments
The budget
You obviously have a pdf format here. Several sites online will change this to a Microsoft Write format for free. Either a Doc or an odt file format will work. It then becomes searchable. If you need help with this, please feel free to contact me at lordbasil1@sbcglobal.net. I bought the appropriate software about 4 years ago. I comes in quite handy.
Perhaps the City Manager can offer explanations for what is allotted for what.