When we started this budgeting process I predicted we would need to be at the 2006 spending limits.... well we are right on the number or actually .008 from the number so pretty darn close.....I think you would be hard pressed to find any government entity that can boast this type of budget discipline and reduce actual spending over 5 years.. .not a cut in increase but an actual dollar for dollar cut.....our tax levy is also looks like a ski slope going from 74% in 2005 to 54.47% for 2011.... we actually cut our levy rate by 2.5% from last year.... again the best i have seen out there is keeping the rate flat and many of our neighbors have increased their property tax levies.... Now there is real pain in this budget and that will been seen even more so as time goes on but with declining property values and state cuts we have to make the painful systemic cuts now to lessen the impact later.
The Council will be finalizing the 2011 budget Tuesday night and we will be discussing a possible cut of a police officer position due to the police union's insistence to be compensated at a higher rate than all over City workers. The City might be able to float a year with this inequity but the longer we wait to fix the problem the more expensive it will be and the greater harm it will do to City moral.
The biggest saving to the general fund budget was refinancing our City Debt with our higher credit rating - saving us over $100,000 a year.... We have this better credit rating due to our strong fiscal discipline and maintaining a prudent fund reserve to ensure we can be self sustaining as a City. If we leave this path for feel good spending measures we will soon be in dire financial straits.
There will be much more to say after Tuesday's Council meeting. I hope everyone understands where we are at from a budget stand point. The next two big issues are the sewer and water fund balances that were used by previous Council's and Mayor to fund the irresponsible rapid residential development. These are loaded with unsustainable debt and we are obligated to fix this problem just as we did with the our general fund budget crisis. The option for these two funds however are very limited and the answers seem painful... this will be one of the top topics at our upcoming community meetings....
