November 29, 2001
Readers of Dan Rylance's story on last nights council meeting should be told that the vote last night was only the final step in a very long process. The city manager gathers proposed budget data from his department heads and other sources. These initial proposals are sent back to the department heads for revisions within parameters set by the city manager. This process may be repeated several times until the city manager is satisfied with the budget. The council then spends three days going through the budget with the city manager and the department heads , sometimes line by line. During this process dozens of changes are discussed and those changes which are supported by four or more council members are made. This year the state revised their projected contribution to revenue by nearly $700,000 during the budget review process. The change was a result of an error in their original estimate. Many revisions were discussed and several were supported by a majority of the council . The operating budget was trimmed, user fees and some fines were increased and some services to business were curtailed. Enough changes were made to offset the decrease in revenue from the state and to slightly reduce the projected increase in the levy. More than one million dollars in capital improvements were stripped from the capital improvements budget as well. The staff were very helpful to the council as we tried to close the hole in the budget created by the state's revisions. Even before the state's revisions most departments faced net budget decreases outside of payroll and benefits. The budget process included a net decrease of two employees and savings from delaying hiring to fill vacant positions.
At last night's council meeting, the council was voting on a completed work where everyone who attended all the budget sessions already knew where the other council members stood. In the absence of new information it was very unlikely that any change would receive four votes. Any discussion of these budget items was a futile display for the publics benefit. A vote against the budget at that time was a meaningless protest.The constructive work on the budget is done in the budget sessions where the council struggles with the trade- off between services and taxes. Other factors such as the cost of electricity and shared revenue from the state are outside our control. I believe all the council members were frustrated by the size of the tax increase but we were not willing to reduce services further.