The City Council amended its budget Tuesday to avert a $536,064 shortfall due mainly to rising fuel prices, police overtime pay and annexation.
Councilmen unanimously agreed Tuesday afternoon at a specially called meeting in City Hall to approve 25 amendments, which reflect $538,898 in expenditures and $2,834 in revenue that wasn”t listed in the 2011 fiscal year budget.
CFO Mike Bernsen expressed dissatisfaction with the way the budget had been created this year and in past years — by looking at previous budgets instead of at specific projects.
“This budget”s not worth a damn, to be honest with you,” Bernsen told the council Tuesday.
Instead of correcting the budget by more than half a million dollars, taking the money from the reserves, amendments should be for emergency repairs and other surprise expenses, he said.
“Every year, we eat more into our reserves and more into our reserves,” he said.
Instead of “kidding ourselves with our budget,” Bernsen said the council should show fiscal restraint.
“There”s a lot of things that can, in my opinion, wait until next year,” he added.
Ward 5 Councilman Kabir Karriem said that in his two years on the council, making hefty amendments to the budget was a common practice.
“This is deja vu all over again,” he said.
Even though the budget amendments do dig into the reserves, the city is still ahead on tax collections, Bernsen said.
Even so, he added, the “best approach” to building a budget in this economy is to be conservative.
“It sure as heck doesn”t hurt to have (expenses) covered,” he said.
The most costly amendment added $157,031 to the $450,000 fuel budget, which would otherwise have been overrun because of rising fuel prices, which may hit $5 per gallon this summer, and higher-than-expected usage by city employees, he said.
In discussion about the fuel budget, which feeds 80 to 120 city vehicles, Mayor Robert Smith mentioned the possibility of switching the public works department back to a four-day workweek to save gas money.
But Ward 3 Councilman Charlie Box said the problem could be solved by using tracking software, like Waters Truck and Tractor uses on its city school buses, to monitor city employees more closely to make sure they aren”t leaving their vehicles idling.
“If (prices) are getting to $5 a gallon, I think we should seriously look at cutting use,” he said.
According to Box, the tracking software would cost about $375 per vehicle.
Even if the city doesn”t pursue software to track usage, Bernsen said he will use the city”s new computer system to analyze how much gas goes to which vehicle in which department to give the city a closer look at the budget.
“If you can”t measure it, you can”t manage it,” Bernsen said.
Police overtime
The second most costly amendment, of $150,000, went to offset a large amount of unexpected overtime in the Columbus Police Department.
Even though police overtime has cost the city more than $300,000 each year for at least the past three years — $370,000 last year — city officials budgeted $200,000 because they assumed new officers would reduce the overtime.
The problem, said Chief Joseph St. John, is that the officers are still in the process of joining the workforce, which has resulted in other officers still receiving overtime.
The police department has already spent $186,155 of its $200,000 overtime budget as of April 1.
Another way to reduce the amount of overtime would be to have festival organizers hire private security instead of using police officers, St. John said.
However, St. John, Smith and others expressed distaste with the idea, calling into question some security guards” professionalism and ability to handle crisis situations.
Ward 5 Councilman Kabir Karriem said that if there”s a large amount of overtime, the department heads should be held accountable.
“It shows a lack of management, efficiency,” he said.
But both Smith and St. John said they regularly check how much overtime is given out, although there have been abuses of the system in the past.
“We do look at it,” said St. John, who added that “there is always fat we can cut.”
The third amendment added $88,500 to the $5,000 budget for annexation of four areas, mostly along Lehmberg Road and Highway 12.
The plan was expected to be delayed a year at the time the budget was decided, but the council decided to go ahead with the project earlier this year.
The annexation will add 1,500 citizens, five miles of road and three square miles of land, including the Riverwalk, to the city. Although the annexed land will cost $187,742 annually in operating expenditures, taxes are expected to bring in $461,601.
Bernsen said the city, which amended its budget earlier this year than he”d seen before, will take another look at the budget later this year.
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