I checked the City of Shoreacres website last Thursday and council has scheduled another budget workshop for Monday night, 10-7. Note that these workshops start at 6 pm, not 7 pm as is usual for council meetings. Also, they are held in the small conference room, not in the normal council chambers. The public is not allowed to speak, just listen.
Last week, Alderman Mike Wheeler was unhappy with my report. You can read his comment here, as well as my response. Although my information is limited, I decided to take him up on the challenge and propose my own budget. The starting point was so bad that even I could not get it to zero, but it is pretty close, especially if you consider the operating portion that I cut. I had to adjust the revenue down – City Administrator Stall did not correct the property tax revenue estimate on council’s revised budget. I also kept $75,000 in capital expenditures that pull from the reserve.
I realize the hot button issue is employees. Here is an org chart that I came up with:
The officer highlighted in Yellow resigned after the fiasco at the Houston Yacht Club. You can watch the report on ABC 13 here. Council decided not to replace him. Although hesitant, I went along with that cut. I hope that if revenue comes in above forecast, the council will replace that officer first. I also cut one employee from the Mr. Sutton’s department – I didn’t highlight the specific employee, I would leave that up to Mr. Sutton. I lowered the salaries of all but Mr. Sutton and the two public works employees. I also reduced the city clerk’s hours from 32 to 24 per week to avoid having to budget for insurance. I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion that our employees are covered by the new Affordable Care Act but since Mr. Stall said they were, I reduced the hours to eliminate that possibility. I also eliminated bonus pay for various certifications. There are a lot of salary estimators out there and I used one to find the average rate for our area with the exception of the Police Department. I generally left that alone since Alderman Moses has a good feel for what we need there and I think the police and our extremely low crime rate are a big asset to the city. And for those that are curious, I did reduce Mr. Stall’s salary after his current contract expires in February. At least I think that is when it expires. See what I mean about having internal information? And we need to ask why we are contributing 7{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of each employee’s salary to the Texas Municipal Retirement System and paying Social Security as well. We can’t simply drop that because of state law but we could eliminate it for new hires.
I think that all of the city’s employees are good people but sometimes we have to make hard choices in order to keep an organization afloat. I hope that they understand that.
Here is an overview of Mayor Webber’s original proposal, the council’s revised proposal, and my proposal for Alderman Wheeler:
Shoreacres Proposed Budget Overview 10-6-13
As you can see, I was able to reduce the reserve drawdown from Mayor Webber’s original proposal from $846,702 to $154,698, saving $692,004. And from council’s revised number of $481,476 to $154,698, saving $326,778.
Click on this link to view the budget details: Shoreacres Proposed Budget Details 10-6-13
If I had had more internal details, I think that I could have gotten to a balanced budget. Several accounts had footnotes on them that they had to be dedicated to certain functions – I’d like to know more about those. And the Sales Tax for Road Maintenance skewed the expenditures because it looks like it was being used as a placeholder. Again, I would have liked to have had more information about that. I would hope that Alderman Wheeler spent as much time preparing a proposed budget as I, a lowly citizen, did. I’m looking forward to seeing his recommendations tomorrow night.
The budget hole is deep but pointing fingers at past decisions isn’t going to fix it. Hard decisions have to be made if we are going to survive as a city. Public safety has to be the number one priority.We need to work hard on that contract with La Porte for fire protection as it seems out of line, especially if they refuse to respond to emergency calls. And we can switch from CLEMC to a national provider for the same or lower amount and expect lower response times and better qualified personnel.
There are things we can and must do to remain solvent. Let’s git-r-done.