Palmer ponders tight budget

PALMER — It’s budget season here, and the line has largely been held.

With an emphasis on maintaining public services and attracting new businesses, Palmer’s proposed fiscal year 2010 budget sees an increase of less than 1 percent over last year’s.

“Less than 1 percent is unusual,” said Kelli Veech, the city’s director of administration. “The goal is to keep it at 3 percent.”

Of the more than $13.5 million in estimated expenditures, 61 percent will go for public safety and public works, Veech said. Palmer is also going to push heavily on advertising the city in an effort to increase its sales tax base, she said.

A tight budget is warranted, Veech said, as sales tax revenue — Palmer’s main source of funds — is expected to increase by just 2 to 3 percent instead of the typical 7 to 10 percent. Yet, with the money saved by improved efficiency in city operations, the $720,000 increase in the budget will still be below the predicted $729,000 increase in city revenue.

Palmer is saving money by having police officers working 12 hour shifts, Veech said, and more frequent safety checks are lowering insurance rates. City personnel are being trained on operating the airport approach lights, and the city is looking into its information technology services contract to see if money could be saved by doing it in house. These are all suggestions of the budget review group, Veech said.

Efficiencies were also found by putting more control into the hands of department heads, Veech said. The city manager set the overarching goals of maintaining services and marketing Palmer, but with maintaining the necessary three-month operating surplus. Then, each department head was responsible for coming up with their own predicted expenditures, knowing they would have to answer for each line item.

“We have had three departments come in below their own requests from last year,” Veech said.

The budgets from each department were then complied by the budget review group and passed to the city council. In a series of meetings over the past two months, each department head presented the substantial increases or decreases of their budgets and how their staff is allocated, Veech said.

The draft budget was scheduled for a public hearing last week. Veech said she was amazed at the lack of contention at the hearing. At other municipalities she has worked at in the past, employees would often come to the public hearings irate and asking for more money. Including the department heads in the process largely avoided this, she said.

“Here, we’ve got a lot of planning. Having this (budget planning) group is key. The manager sets the goals, and as a team we follow up,” Veech said. “This makes it so the manager is not the bad guy.”

Other than the operating budgets for the various departments, capital projects will largely be funded by grants from outside of city money. The only capital expenditures will be $120,000 for a steam truck to thaw frozen water mains and $50,000 for fleet vehicle maintenance, Veech said. Operations are the focus, she said, because of the lack of surplus in the predicted funds.

“We were able to balance the budget with predicted revenue, and that was the goal of the manager,” Veech said.

The council will vote on the proposed budget at its meeting on Dec. 8.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.