6 Responses to “Proposed city budget, FY09”

1. posted by tg4360 at April 14, 2008 8:08 am :
   

   Yes we all have a life but I’m going to attempt to go through this line by line and find out where the money is being wasted.

   My pet peeve so far is that the city needs not be spending money on light pole banners if we can’t afford better pay and more cops and teachers.

2. posted by Chuck at April 14, 2008 9:12 am :
   

   …and $800K for the golf course.

   I know, I know…soon I’ll leave that poor horse to it’s demise and stop beating it.

   ..but ditto re: going through it. Working with budgets (both proposals/requests/submissions and reconciliation of spending) on the State level for many years I’ve learned alot and it’s fun to look at the specifics.

   ….God, I’m a geek.

3. posted by tg4360 at April 15, 2008 12:29 pm :
   

   After a quick read I have questions… probably mostly to do with never having seen a city budget before.

   Is it just me or is it a tad thin on details? Should there be, for instance, some other documents that itemize some expenditures or is that a “financial statement” that would come after the fact.

   If that’s the case then I think we’d need to find that statement for the past year for comparison purposes.

4. posted by brenda p at April 15, 2008 1:30 pm :
   

   Toward the back of the doc are figures that show changes over the last few years.

5. posted by Chuck at April 15, 2008 2:04 pm :
   

   The comps back to FY06 (CY05-06) are right before the departmental narratives (the things short on information). In my spreadsheet I’m playing with I want to enter in all of that so I can do a percent change (+/-) to see how the various budgeting priorities have changed since FY06.

   What you see is a bit thin on the details. The actual agencies probably have a more detailed break down of budget categories (one would hope).

   Say, you have a personal home budget - the main line item of Automobile Expense for the year would show $7,315 but that breaks down to $3600 car payments; $1500 car insurance; $1920 fuel; $35 DMV registration; $60 oil changes; and $200 misc. expenses (i.e. car wash, new wiper blades, etc.)

   I know from handling the budgets for the Sheriff’s office that Sheriff Crawford’s State budget from the Comp. Board is only shown as Personnel, Temporary/Part Time Personnel, Office Supplies, and Equipment but, within those categories, there are certain items that can be claimed.

   It would be interesting to see the justifications for supplies from some of the agencies.

   *Health Dept.-Preventative Health with N/A as far as personnel but a $766K supply budget

   *Finance- Risk Management with 2 Full Time Personnel with a $614K supply budget

   *Public Works - Administration with 2 Full Time Personnel and a $508K supply budget

   Then look at the entire Police department all operations with 164 Full Time Personnel and only $581K for supplies.

   Very few agencies had (or listed) any type of performance measures in place to make sure they are accountable. It was also interesting reading some of the goals of agencies and well….frankly finding them laughable - when you look at what they say they do on paper versus looking at the city.

   And my personal favorite - the golf course. $147K for 2 full time staff *shrug*

   Sorry this was so long.

6. posted by tg4360 at April 15, 2008 6:46 pm :
   

   Not to long at all.

   That will give me a good idea of how to take a closer look at the budget document we do have.

   It’ll have to wait till after the massive reading I have to do for school though.

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