Minutes 04/14/1987 - Laserfiche WebLink

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4 TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1987 STATEMENT BY COUNCILMAN McCLAIN First, having reviewed the proposed Budget in some detail, I realize the time, effort and concern put into its development by Mr. Brown and many others in the City Administration and I want all of those involved in development of the Budget to know how much I appreciate their efforts. I wish I could simply support the Budget as proposed but I cannot. Unfortunately, the bottom line on this Budget is that, under it, the City would be living beyond its means. True, the Budget proposes no new taxes and no change in current tax rates and is said by Mr. Brown to be balanced. But it has only been balanced by utilizing $1,193,369 of reserves accumulated through past fiscal responsibility. Employment of our accumulated surpluses to this extent is unacceptable to me. The inevitable result of depleting these accumulated surpluses is that they will disappear and the City, used to living beyond its means for several years, will be forced to either impose an unacceptably drastic tax increase on its citizens or to experience a drastic reduction in personnel and services, which would, I believe, be equally unacceptable. To prevent the necessity of these equally unacceptable alternatives, I believe a number of modifications need to be made to this Budget. First, the Budget for Housing Services needs to be scrutinized very closely. Although the expenditures here are budgeted to be down by $13,347, the main area of reduction is a $16,500 reduction in payments to contractors while there is a 20% increase in personal service for the Housing Rehabilitation Program, Local Administration. It would appear to me that we are paying more and getting less. Also, for the first time $3,000 is budgeted to be appropriated from the General Fund for Housing Services as well as $3,000 from Henry County. How much will be needed from the General Fund next year? Has Henry County agreed to this? Similarly, a 33% increase in budgeted expenditures from the Stores Fund for the administrative cost of central purchasing and warehousing, with proposed pay increases of only 5% and no additional personnel, I find hard to understand and support. The increases in the amount of transfers to the General Fund from the Water Fund and from the Sewer Fund appear to me to be proper as they appear to come from current, rather than accumulated, surpluses of those enterprise funds. On the other hand, the increase in the transfer from the Electric Fund to the General Fund proposed would come entirely from the accumulated surplus and, thus, would create the illusion that the Electric Fund could continue to support the General Fund on an on-going basis at this level. Therefore, I consider this increase improper. If this increase were elimi- nated, expenditures from the Electric Fund would still have to be reduced by $147,855 to retain, intact, the Electric Fund accumulated surplus. A major increase in proposed expenditures from this fund is $150,000 for contract labor, presumably to cover the cost of installing lighting on the new portion of Market Street and installing facilities for the new hotel and shopping. Could the former work be done with our own forces and could the developers of the hotel and the shopping mall be called upon to mnake a contribution to offset, at least partially, the cost of their electric facilities? I believe these alternatives should be explored to bring expenditures and transfers in line with anticipated revenue in the Electric Fund.