MONROE - The Monroe Common Council has a budget to vote on after Monday's Finance and Taxation Committee meeting, but the spending plan leaves little margin for error heading into 2010.
"These budgets are tight," Monroe Treasurer/Comptroller Cathy Maurer said.
The committee unanimously approved the budget, passing it on to a Nov. 17 public hearing at City Hall.
The 2010 budget will increase the city's property tax levy by 1.76 percent over the 2009 levy, from $5.998 million last year to $6.103 million.
Maurer did not immediately know the city's mill rate for property owners, she said after Monday's meeting.
The budget includes some key cost-saving measures the Finance and Taxation Committee asked for at its Oct. 12 meeting, including reducing the grant to Monroe Taxi Cab by $5,000, adding $6,000 to purchase life insurance, and moving a street department employee to the Wastewater Treatment department. The position no longer would be paid out of the city budget, instead from the Wastewater utility, Maurer said.
Though there was little disagreement when it came time to vote on the budget, Alderman Thurston Hanson took issue with a revenue projection in the Police Department budget of $20,000 from downtown parking enforcement.
"I just don't think we should budget revenue because we don't know if we are going to have a system," Hanson said.
He suggested waiting a year to gauge the community's need for downtown parking enforcement.
The parking system Police Chief Fred Kelley proposed using to produce the $20,000 in parking tickets will be an electronic system, rather than a traditional chalking system, he said.
An officer using the electronic system would shoot a video of parked vehicles downtown at the beginning of the determined parking enforcement time period each day. Later in the day, the officer would shoot another video. Once the afternoon video is checked against the earlier video, vehicles that are on each recording would be assessed a fine using global positioning system data and time stamp identification, he said.
It would take about six hours to chalk each tire downtown and check for parking violators throughout the day compared to about 30 minutes for an officer to do the same work with the electronic system, Kelley said.
The system would use about $40,000 from the downtown tax increment finance district, not the city's general fund, to purchase the equipment, but is estimated to generate $20,000 in the 2010 budget, he said.
What specific system and how the system would be implemented still needs to be determined by Jan. 1, Kelley said.
In answering Hanson's concern regarding the wisdom of banking on $20,000 in the budget that might not materialize, Mayor Ron Marsh, who was attending the meeting but is not a committee member, pointed out that the budget was so tight that removing even $20,000 in revenue would increase the levy limit over the 2 percent mark to 2.17 percent, he said.
"Sixty-thousand dollars would put you up one whole percent," Marsh said.
Committee member Dan Henke supported Kelley's idea of electronic parking enforcement.
"If we can come up with that $20,000, I think we should do it," he said.
Marsh said a downtown parking system is crucial to balancing the budget.
"We have to get this thing up and running by Jan. 1, or it will shoot a hole in this budget," he said.
The city's budget, prior to applying debt service and other revenue, will be $13,136,287 in 2010, compared to $10,823,363, an increase of 21.37 percent. After applying debt service and other borrowing, the city's actual spending in 2010 will be about $9,501,649, a 2.66 percent decrease from $9,761,513 in 2009. Much of that difference is $2.1 million in bonds anticipated for street construction.
Also, the budget provides for $957,500 to be taken out in bonds to fund a second fire station, should the council decide during 2010 to do so, Maurer said.
The budget will be published in the Monroe Times at least 15 days prior to the Nov. 17 public hearing.
To also help balance the budget, the Monroe Fire Department cut $45,000 from its pension system, and assessed a fee to surrounding towns that use the city for fire protection services, which would total $12,500 for the 2010 budget, Fire Chief Daryl Rausch said.
Several department heads were in attendance, including Public Works Director Kelly Finkenbinder, Street and Sanitation Supervisor Tom Boll, Rausch and Kelley. In previous budget meetings, committee members were critical of the fact that department heads weren't included in budget talks. Instead, Marsh met with department heads and city staff to help determine what to cut and how to balance the budget before presenting the results for the committee to review and make changes.
Committee member Mark Coplien said he "was really concerned about how this budget was handled," but was happy with the results. He said he preferred not having the committee spend many hours going over the budget in meetings with department heads.
"These budgets are tight," Monroe Treasurer/Comptroller Cathy Maurer said.
The committee unanimously approved the budget, passing it on to a Nov. 17 public hearing at City Hall.
The 2010 budget will increase the city's property tax levy by 1.76 percent over the 2009 levy, from $5.998 million last year to $6.103 million.
Maurer did not immediately know the city's mill rate for property owners, she said after Monday's meeting.
The budget includes some key cost-saving measures the Finance and Taxation Committee asked for at its Oct. 12 meeting, including reducing the grant to Monroe Taxi Cab by $5,000, adding $6,000 to purchase life insurance, and moving a street department employee to the Wastewater Treatment department. The position no longer would be paid out of the city budget, instead from the Wastewater utility, Maurer said.
Though there was little disagreement when it came time to vote on the budget, Alderman Thurston Hanson took issue with a revenue projection in the Police Department budget of $20,000 from downtown parking enforcement.
"I just don't think we should budget revenue because we don't know if we are going to have a system," Hanson said.
He suggested waiting a year to gauge the community's need for downtown parking enforcement.
The parking system Police Chief Fred Kelley proposed using to produce the $20,000 in parking tickets will be an electronic system, rather than a traditional chalking system, he said.
An officer using the electronic system would shoot a video of parked vehicles downtown at the beginning of the determined parking enforcement time period each day. Later in the day, the officer would shoot another video. Once the afternoon video is checked against the earlier video, vehicles that are on each recording would be assessed a fine using global positioning system data and time stamp identification, he said.
It would take about six hours to chalk each tire downtown and check for parking violators throughout the day compared to about 30 minutes for an officer to do the same work with the electronic system, Kelley said.
The system would use about $40,000 from the downtown tax increment finance district, not the city's general fund, to purchase the equipment, but is estimated to generate $20,000 in the 2010 budget, he said.
What specific system and how the system would be implemented still needs to be determined by Jan. 1, Kelley said.
In answering Hanson's concern regarding the wisdom of banking on $20,000 in the budget that might not materialize, Mayor Ron Marsh, who was attending the meeting but is not a committee member, pointed out that the budget was so tight that removing even $20,000 in revenue would increase the levy limit over the 2 percent mark to 2.17 percent, he said.
"Sixty-thousand dollars would put you up one whole percent," Marsh said.
Committee member Dan Henke supported Kelley's idea of electronic parking enforcement.
"If we can come up with that $20,000, I think we should do it," he said.
Marsh said a downtown parking system is crucial to balancing the budget.
"We have to get this thing up and running by Jan. 1, or it will shoot a hole in this budget," he said.
The city's budget, prior to applying debt service and other revenue, will be $13,136,287 in 2010, compared to $10,823,363, an increase of 21.37 percent. After applying debt service and other borrowing, the city's actual spending in 2010 will be about $9,501,649, a 2.66 percent decrease from $9,761,513 in 2009. Much of that difference is $2.1 million in bonds anticipated for street construction.
Also, the budget provides for $957,500 to be taken out in bonds to fund a second fire station, should the council decide during 2010 to do so, Maurer said.
The budget will be published in the Monroe Times at least 15 days prior to the Nov. 17 public hearing.
To also help balance the budget, the Monroe Fire Department cut $45,000 from its pension system, and assessed a fee to surrounding towns that use the city for fire protection services, which would total $12,500 for the 2010 budget, Fire Chief Daryl Rausch said.
Several department heads were in attendance, including Public Works Director Kelly Finkenbinder, Street and Sanitation Supervisor Tom Boll, Rausch and Kelley. In previous budget meetings, committee members were critical of the fact that department heads weren't included in budget talks. Instead, Marsh met with department heads and city staff to help determine what to cut and how to balance the budget before presenting the results for the committee to review and make changes.
Committee member Mark Coplien said he "was really concerned about how this budget was handled," but was happy with the results. He said he preferred not having the committee spend many hours going over the budget in meetings with department heads.