Well . . . police and fire seem to be having the biggest negative impact on our budget, spending too much. And Room Taxes and building permit fees aren’t bringing in as much money as we thought . . . Police and Fire spend whatever they want and we just pay it, business community over-promises. And we let it happen year, after year, after year. And guess what, this is going to be the worst budget ever in the history of the universe! So, predictable.
The 7 page memo is here.
Here’s the highlights:
Our fund balance (savings) is supposed to be 15% of our operating budget so that we can keep our AAA A bond rating and get good lending rates. This year’s budget is $289,507,433. So we should have around $43 in reserves. We were at 14.8% at the end of 2014 and $14.6% at the end of 2015.
We ended 2015 with a $653,000 surplus in budgeted revenues. Extra money came from property taxes (penalties and interest), room tax, tickets and ambulance fees. We were behind in building permits, investment income and “miscellaneous”. In 2015 they only spent $700,000 from the contingent reserves and returned $500,000 to the fund balance.
For 2016, we expect to come in half a million dollars short on Room Tax and nearly half a million short on Building Permits. But we plan to have a $1.7M surplus due to agency spending. No thanks to police and fire.
Agencies projected to come in short (more than $50,000) are:
Clerk (due to elections) – $120,000
Community Development – $268,034
Fire – $965,205
Police – 1,083,407
Traffic Engineering – $621,518
Those making up for it are
Streets – $1,381,902
Undefined – $2,022,674
Assessor $214,203
Building Inspection – $216,535
Civil Rights – $158,817
Economic Development – $285,378
Finance – $68,814
Mayor – 122,921
IT – 122,340
Parks – 88,599
Looks like Fire and Elevator Permits are down about $259,000 as well
We will also have a surplus in the snow budget. $643,000
That’s about it, more details in the memo, but overall – seems typical . . . and hard to know after just one quarter. Seems as tho we usually do better than the dire predictions.
