On Monday and Tuesday of this week the city council met for about seven hours as part of the yearly goals and objectives process. Although this was my first goals meeting as a sitting councilperson, I have attended several of these meetings in the past few years and have a fairly good understanding about how the process has played out in the past.

In reality, the meeting is a pre-budget discussion in which department heads present their requests for funding for the new fiscal year, as well as an overview of some of their 2-5 year goals. Based on the input from the city council, this series of meetings should help the city manager and finance director (at the moment, one and the same person) develop a budget for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

In past years, this meeting was generally dominated by the city manager, with brief input from the department heads themselves. As a matter of routine, these meetings were essentially rubber stamp sessions in which the city council moved quickly through the process and approved whatever was being asked for.

Now Comes 2008

As many readers already know, I have openly taken the position that the council needs to seriously look at a tax cut for the upcoming fiscal year. In fact, that was one of the main positions I took during my campaigning last fall, and it was an issue that many people I spoke to were interested in seeing through. Other candidates also spoke directly about a tax cut, and it’s my impression that the consensus on the current council is to look very seriously at doing just that.

One of the problems with the past budgeting process is that the manner and method in which the city budget was compiled and provided to the council made it difficult for them to determine just how much money was available for discretionary spending. In fact, even financial experts (which I am certainly not) expressed difficulty in understanding the past budgets. This year, the budget has been reduced to a more user friendly format and it is possible to get a much better handle on just what money exists and in what account it resides.

Some of these funds, however, reside in individual department accounts that add to the bottom line of the budget, but are ultimately not spent during the course of the year and thus should be considered as part of the discretionary dollars available for council review. In other words, these funds are not necessary to fund essential city services, but rather are available (once located within the budget) for discretionary spending. Or for a tax cut.

How Things Stand After Two Meetings

Because of the deliberate way the council is approaching these budget meetings, we were not able to complete the process in the two meetings scheduled. We have asked the city manager to further compile new budget numbers which will provide us with a better idea of the true financial picture relative to discretionary spending.

Once we receive that information, a third meeting will be necessary to finish the process. We have yet to delve into either the DDA budget (the part of it that is relative to the city council, that is) or the city council budget itself. Contained within these two budget classifications is where most of the discretionary spending occurs. Once we receive more detailed information from the city manager we will better be able to discuss and make recommendations in these two budget areas.

One particularly interesting item was a recommendation by Interim City Manager John Hiller that the position of Assistant City Manager be removed from next year’s budget. This would dovetail with the retirement of Assistant City Manager Carl Renius on February 22, 2008.

Mr. Hiller further recommended that the city move to fill the vacant Assistant to the City Manger position. This position has been vacant for nearly two years. It is expected that there will be considerable savings that result from this position shift. I commend Mr. Hiller for taking steps to reduce overall costs while maintaining the current level of city services.

In Conclusion

I was very impressed with how the two budget meetings evolved. The department heads provided detailed and useful information and were free to address the issues within their own departments. Each of them deserves our thanks for two long and grueling evening budget sessions. They did a very nice job, as did Interim City Manager John Hiller.

This entry was posted Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Budgeting, My Views. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.