Sean C. Morgan
City of Sweet Home staff members will present a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that is generally status quo, with some modifications in parks spending.
Members of the Budget Committee and City Council met for their initial 2013 session, a budget orientation, on March 19.
Staff expects revenues next fiscal year, 2013-14, to remain about the same as they have been this year, fiscal 2012-13. The fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30.
At this point, Finance Director Pat Gray said, city officials are anticipating no increase in property tax revenues.
Compression, property taxes that are not imposed due to tax limitations, should be similar, Gray said. She expects revenues to be stable throughout all funds and doesn’t foresee any big changes.
Unfunded liabilities in the Public Employees Retirement System won’t affect Sweet Home much this year, unlike other government agencies, Gray said. City employees who are part of PERS will see an increase of .2 percent in the rate. Police officers are the only employees in PERS. The rest of the city’s employees are members of a 401(k)-style retirement plan.
Sweet Home doesn’t have an unfunded liability, Gray said. The newer PERS employees are in a plan that more closely resembles a 401(k) as well.
The city is beginning the bargaining process with its employee unions, and the impact of the bargaining remains unknown as they begin preparing budgets, Gray said.
We’re budgeting status quo, maintaining existing service levels,” said City Manager Craig Martin. Parks will have a few changes.
After settling a lawsuit with a former parks caretaker, the city abandoned its caretaker program. In the program, a caretaker would help out around Sankey and Northside parks in exchange for rent on a house at Sankey Park and an RV space at Northside Park.
But the caretakers must have regular hours, and multiple members of a family helping out must also receive a schedule and compensation, Martin said. The money available to the program covered too few hours of caretaking, and parks will add a .5 full-time equivalent position to help out during peak periods. The parks have one full-time employee now.
The Parks Board has directed Community Development Director Carol Lewis to focus on a new master plan, Lewis said. The annual Harvest Festival will be eliminated and summer recreation program reduced in 2013-14 to cover the costs of the planning.
The summer recreation program will cut the Tree Climbing Institute and river rafting activities, Lewis said.
Elsewhere in the budget, city officials were anticipating a shortfall of $371,000 in 2013-14 and $1.9 million in 2015-16 in the police services budget, with the shortfall growing over the following two years. The library was projected to have a $41,000 shortfall in 2014-15 and $93,000 shortfall in 2015-16.
In late 2011, the city learned that compression had drastically reduced its anticipated revenues, directly impacting the revenues for police and library services, which rely on temporary local option levies to operate.
By holding the line on spending and staff reductions, the city has pushed back the first year the Police Department will go into the red, Martin said, and the library is projected to remain in the black through at least 2015-16, the end of the levy cycle.
City officials project a $90,000 shortfall in 2014-15 and a $734,000 shortfall in 2015-16 in police services, Martin said.
The new projects are based on the assumption that there won’t be any large decreases in revenue, he said, and that savings will continue as they have been.
We basically moved the marker out one more year,” Martin said.
When the audited numbers came in, we essentially picked up another year,” Gray said.
After funding current service levels, Martin said, then staff will look at other considerations, such as the community grants program and building reserves.
We are going to try to do what we can to further minimize use of reserve funds,” Martin said, to keep them as healthy as they are.
The use of reserve bonds helped pay off construction bonds for the Police Department early, Gray said. Funds originally earmarked for building reserves also helped balance police services in late 2011 when the revenue shortfall materialized.