The Collinsville City Council gathered at City Hall Monday night for a special called meeting to review the budget for fiscal year 2024-2025.
Finance Manager Karla Young presented the group with a baseline proposal to show the council where city funds currently stand. The presentation was the result of nearly a month’s worth of work crunching numbers and sifting through three years of historic figures to make projections for this year’s financials.
Her work showed that, while cost of products and services has increased over time, the city hasn’t made many budgetary adjustments to account for those increases. The budget also previously didn’t show any separation of funds, making it difficult to identify where exactly expenses were coming from.
Young not only separated the budget but also took into consideration things like water well debt and employee holiday overtime, items that weren’t included previously.
“What I’ve created here is a baseline,” Young said. “I’ve included many of the department heads’ requests already, and now we need to consider which requests beyond what’s been included you want to add in.”
Each year at budget time, department heads submit requests for things to help improve the efficacy of their departments.
The police department is seeking personnel and radios. The fire department is hoping for office supplies, safety gear, a new truck, increased PRN and a salary boost for the chief. The public works department asked for a lawn mower, pull-behind sprayer, vibrating plate for road maintenance equipment and several needs for water and sewer work. Unfortunately, based on the information Young provided the council, the money isn’t available for all of these requests.
“Right now, the general fund needs the most attention,” Young said. “We’re currently in the red, and that’s partly because [the city] wasn’t budgeting at a fund level in the past. That plus the fact [the city] hasn’t increased taxes in years means [the city] is currently spending more than it’s bringing in.”
Young explained the city needs to find ways to increase revenue, and the two main ways to do that are through property taxes and sales tax.
“Collinsville property taxes have essentially been frozen for the past 15 years,” Young said. “Sales tax comes from commercial development, in which we’re extraordinarily low. Nobody wants to raise taxes and we want to provide big-city services, but the reality is, money has to come from somewhere.”
Some of that money could potentially come from part of a water/sewer fund, which has been used in the past for this purpose. But Mayor Derek Kays doesn’t like the idea of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
The city is still waiting to hear back from Grayson County with firm numbers for this year’s tax rates. In the meantime, City Attorney Patricia Adams encouraged the council to prioritize their list of budgetary requests.
“Until we get those numbers from Grayson County, we don’t really know what we’re looking at, numbers-wise,” Adams said. “I suggest for now you look at the proposals [from the department heads], determine needs versus wants, and get creative with those needs.”
The council spent more than two hours working through each budgetary request, determining whether it was a necessity or something the city could live without for another year.
In the meantime, Young is working to put financial policies in place to help avoid this situation for the future.
The council continues to weigh options and seek solutions and will continue the discussion at future meetings. No other action was taken at the meeting.
Source: Freepik.com