12 City Council (08/18/03) - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Regular City Council Meeting August 18 2003 Page 3 said they had a meeting with TML around the first of the year and that is when they started putting in the higher rate. Councilman Guest said his question is the budget request calls for a budget decrease. Councilman Guest said under the fourth line there is a request for $18,467.00, and the year to date expenses shows $16,056.00 and that divided by .7916 yields $20,538.00 that is 15% less than was spent for this year to annualize. Mr. Anderson said he was not sure what that would be, but he will research what is in that $16,000.00 and see if there is anything unusual there, but he should be able to use that $500.00 a month per employee plus $50.00 a year for life insurance and about $50.00 for the long term disability and come up with the $18,467.00. Mr. Anderson also said he was not sure on the timing of those payments, so some of those are paid quarterly and not monthly. Mr. Anderson explained that extrapolating using that percentage will only work exactly if they spend evenly every month and that is never going to happen on anything. Councilman Bell referred to page 63 as a good example of what should be considered if they are to "do something" with the budget. He stated that he was finding a reoccurring theme, giving line item 0306, Traveling Expenses, budgeted $2,500.00 the year before and only $1,625.00 was spent. He said that only $1,200.00 has been spent this year. He said that it seems that there is padding here when they don't need to be if we really need to be watching expenses. He said there is the same thing on publications where this department has spent $400.00 previous in 2001-2002, and they are spending $270.00 and budgeting $600.00. They are spending one-half of what was budgeted, and associations are even greater than that. He wanted to know why? City Manager Malone explained that the Council will probably not find many of the departments like this. For example, there are a lot of opportunities for travel and training that he does take advantage of because he stays too busy. He advised that past managers have had more budgeted in those line items. City Manager Malone stated that the budget was very lean and that there were expenditures that came up that were not budgeted at all.