City Budget

The budget for fiscal year '10-'11 I believe will be posted to the city's website sometime tomorrow. The council will discuss the budget at next week Monday's committee meetings and the vote to approve on Monday April 19th. The time for public comment will be Monday April 19th at 6:45 just before the city council meeting.

I would strongly encourage people to pay attention to the process this year. The state will more than likely cut into what the city normally gets back from state collected taxes. It will be interesting to see how the city budgets the money this year.

I have a fear the city will budget anything that can be deemed a capitol development expense item to get its funding from the capitol development fund, this may work for a year or two to adjust for the reduction in state provided money. If the state never increases the funds to current levels then this fund will be depleted and the city will then have to make drastic changes. Also with how the budget has been running lately on the city level funds will be hard to find to rebuild these cash reserves.

I fear the "barebones budget" that will be proposed will not have the reductions that are really needed. If this year should have taught the council something it would have to be that the "worst case scenario" that you plan for can always be much worse than you imagined.