City Council members are scheduled to hear from the public about the proposed $187.8 million 2010 budget proposal Monday, Nov. 23.
The proposal is basically unchanged so far from what was offered up by Mayor Dan Pike and his administration, though council members still have chances to make changes in the weeks ahead.
Council members for weeks have been getting the details of each individual city department’s budget during public meetings. Now is the time for residents to have their say.
City Councilman Jack Weiss said that though council members do have thoughts on some items that they “haven’t really coalesced behind various things.”
For Weiss, some of his major concerns have to do with the millions, if not hundreds of millions, in various capital projects the city must undertake in the next few years and the long term. That includes various road infrastructure improvements, many waterfront redevelopment projects and a wastewater treatment plant upgrade that public works staff members say could cost between $45 million and $50 million.
Other council members are also concerned about those costs, and with the urging of Council President Barry Buchanan, approved the creation of a capital projects taskforce that will review the issues and try to make suggestions about what to prioritize.
Mayor Pike’s office is acception applications for that group.
It will take some time for that group to make decisions, Weiss acknowledged, and just as in 2009, it’s likely the council will have to revist the budget on a quarterly basis to assess if the city’s revenues and expenditures are on the right track.
The 2010 budget is cut by 13.1 percent from the 2009 adopted expenditures of $216.1 million due to drastically reduced revenues from sales taxes, business and occupation taxes, real estate taxes and investment interest income. Year over year, city officials under Pike’s proposal, plus cuts from 2009, will have reduced the budget by about $28.3 million.
Pike’s administration is proposing to tap $7.9 million from various reserve funds to shore up the budget, including about $1.85 million in general fund reserves. The general fund is the pool of money that pays for services residents see most, such as library, parks maintenance, police and fire protection.
