Last night, Dec 4th, city council members received a presentation on another exciting project for the city.  However, this presentation was done in executive session.  As a reminder Ohio's Sunshine law tells us that in order to go into executive session to discuss the purchase of land the council must believe that "premature disclosure of information would give an unfair competitive or bargaining advantage to a person whose personal, private interest is adverse to the general public interest".  Given that representatives of the developers of Carriage Trails were the presenters I feel pretty confident that these executive sessions did not meet the criteria above.  We've seen this story before.  Usually this means the city is about to reveal a project where they are going to commit to spending millions of dollars.  If you read the law the same as I do and you believe these types of projects should be subject to public scrutiny prior to council committing millions of dollars, then it is important you and your neighbors contact council and let them know we want this presentation at least a week before the vote to authorize spending the money.  Speaking of spending money on these projects.
 
Did the City really borrow $18 million dollars this year?
 
I was wrong when I stated in the pre-Administration committee article that I didn't expect anything interesting to come out of the budget discussion.  As it turns out last December council approved a budget that expected total spending to be $48 million.  This year the budget tells us they plan on spending $65.6 million.  During the committee meeting Mr. Starline asked why was council being asked to approve a budget that is so much higher this year than last year.  The reason that was given was because last year the city borrowed a lot using short term debt instruments.  When the city goes back and refinances the money they already borrowed last year it will count in the budget this year.  If the discussion were accurate then we should be able to conclude that the city borrowed somewhere between $17.5 and $21 million dollars this year (roughly 40% of the original budget for the year).  At the end of this discussion I'm still going to wonder if the city did borrow $18 million this year, but I'm not sure the discussion was really on the mark. What I'm looking at is a comparison prompted by Mr. Starline's original question.  From the city's website I've pulled out the original budget figures for the past few years and compared them to the actual amount spent (actual figures come from a handout given at the Nov 2012 Admin meeting):
 

Year	2009	2010	2011	2012
Budget	Not on website	$44,927,875.00	$44,344,516	$48,144,771
Actual	48,281,404	$66,169,969	62,664,394	As of Oct 31st  $51,539,334

This prompts me to think there is something to Mr Starline's concern that city has recently gotten into the habit of spending considerably more than the originally approved budget.  So the question becomes does this year's request actually reflect what the city plans to spend or can we as citizens expect the real expenditure to be $18 to $22 million more than the $65 million asked for in this year's budget.  Since the reserve funds are nearly depleted will the city be borrowing the extra expenditures?
  
Now back to how much did the city borrow this year.  The city's finance manager did tell us that from a brief glance at the numbers it does appear bond financing is the primary reason for the differences between the requested amount in 2012 and the requested amount in 2013.  This does imply the city borrowed $17.5 million this year.  If the committee discussion was accurate, this is concerning because the tax budgeting process that occured in July 2011 showed total city debt at the beginning of 2012 was about $37 million (pg3 of attachment).  Is city debt really going to be $54 million (or more) next year?