Reply To: 2022-23 Draft budget 2

[David Jennings]

Bo, I’ll try to answer your specific questions.

1. That is correct.

2. The Utility Fund in Draft 2 calls for a rate increase for two reasons. The first draft (and current state) shows that the UF has more expenditures than revenue. We need to operate that fund at least at a break even point and to contribute to the bond repayment. Secondly, as you are aware, any increase in taxes does not affect those residents over 65. During our workshops, members expressed that because of this, a water/sewer/trash increase would be the fairest way to address some of the imbalance.

3. Yes.

4. It was a cost savings and in fact did work as planned for a while. As we cleaned everything up and made certain that all functions were being done properly, the workload became higher. We also knew that health problems would probably affect the part-time position. With that in mind, Troy and I added an optional Draft 2-AP for council to consider leading up to the third budget workshop. I don’t know if council will approve that or not but now that we do not have a part-time person, I will put a Draft 3 together for council to consider. That draft 3 will include a full-time employee and defund the part-time position. Council will have to decide what direction the city should take.

5. I cannot find that. 6130-30 is the 1/2 of the bonus for the city manager. I’ve looked through the other lines to try to find something like that but have not been able to. Could you clarify?

6. That is Innovative Solutions. This is one of the problem areas that cropped up because of my answer to your #4. We have found multiple coding errors where amounts were assigned to the wrong expenditure categories and are in the process of correct those. Draft 3 will have $63k in that account, which was originally assigned to 6369-10. That account will now show $8k.

DJ