|
Wednesday, 16 December 2009 |
By MIKE BURKHOLDER
Managing Editor
ST. MARYS — A city official says crafting the 2010 appropriations included prudent planning and frugal spending habits.
“What we did over the last several years is we made a lot of organizational changes and it kind of helped us in 2009,” St. Marys Safety-Service Director Tom Hitchcock said. “We didn’t have to make as many cuts because of that.”
Hitchcock said the $33 million measure, which councilors approved the first reading of Monday, is as lean as possible without cutting employees. Hitchcock said cutting personnel is something the city would not have to do at this time.
“It would take something pretty drastic at this point for that to happen,” Hitchcock said.
The sagging national economy has impacted the city’s coffers. Hitchcock said in addition to lost revenue from income taxes, the city lost money on what it invested during the past two years.
“Off the money we invested, we earned $1.1 million in 2009,” Hitchcock said. “We earned $233,000 off that same money because interest rates went down. Not only did income tax go down, but interest off money we invested went down — between the two we are down almost $2 million.”
Despite the hit on revenue, the city’s coffers remain relatively intact. A healthy carryover, Hitchcock said, provides the city with a safety net.
“It’s definitely a blessing for the community,” Hitchcock said. “We haven’t really had to dive into it but it’s a nice safety blanket to have. The best thing it does is it buys us time, we don’t have to do knee-jerk reactions because something happens. We can wait and see which way it’s going before we have to make a solid decision.”
One thing that has helped the city’s coffers is the fact many of the projects done have come in less than the engineer’s estimates. Hitchcock said low bids helped the city do more projects than anticipated in 2009.
“We kept our projects fairly lean but we did quite a bit this year because the bids came in so low,” Hitchcock said. “We weren’t planning on doing as many projects as we did but because the bids came in low we did. A lot of the money came out of the Capital Improvement Fund, which can only be used on projects. We hardly spent any money out of the General Fund.”
Looking ahead to 2010, Hitchcock said he plans to be frugal with city funds. Projects, he said, will be examined before any work is done.
“I don’t want to spend more than we bring in,” Hitchcock said. “We budgeted some projects that we may or may not do depending on what the economy does.”
|
|
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 January 2010 )
|
