Streetsweepers or Not?

This is getting mildly befuddling. I have been told by two different people that the city's streetsweeping program is back in the budget but got told today that it definitely isn't in there. One of the original sources I spoke with say they were agreeing with my question rather than having any official knowledge. Confused? I know I am.

Street Sweepers

I haven't found the item in the proposed budget for 2011-2012, but two different sources have said it includes money to reactivate the city's two streetsweepers. The daily sweeping program went on hiatus a couple of years ago as a money saving measure, since running both of them cost the city $200,000 per year. Ergo, instead of getting cleaned weekly, the streets got swept only a couple of times a year, before graduation and the beginning of the fall term, when lots of out of towners visited the city. Of course, they still cost money, even while sitting idle, since the city still had to make payments on the money to pay for them.

At least, the Sustainability Commission has one less thing to fret about, since the cleanliness of Carbondale's streets was a topic that had come up a couple of times.

Summer Enrichment Reading & Math Program

In case you want to see where the Mayor's proposed $150,000 Summer Reading and Math Enrichment program appears in the budget, click here and go to thumbnail #179. You'll notice funding for this one new program equals 75% of the funding provided for all of the contractural/social service providers to which the city provides money.

Also of interest is that this new program doesn't warrant a mention in the summary of the budget starting on thumbnail #10. Given that the city plans to spend $750,000 on this new program over the next 5 years, I would think it would get a nod or a note in the summary section of the budget.

FY2012 Budget

An update to the budget got handed out at Tuesday's city council meeting and it's pretty much been overlooked in the discussion on rezoning and Mike Neil's appointment. It's not good news either.

Police pensions will increase 29.6% or 302,729; fire dept. pensions up 26.3% or $168,953 and workman's compensation will increase 10% as will the cost for health insurance. This is over and above the pension increases for Fy2011 that prompted the sales tax increase last June. According to the accompanying letter, city staff will look at the increases and make recommendations at a later date.

Rate Increases

Several rate increase will kick in on July 1, according to the proposed budget. There's the 1/2% sales tax increase adopted last December, a 5% increase in water and sewer rates, a 75 cent refuse fee increase, as well as a 25 cent increase in recycling fees. No cost of living or merit pay increases for city employees not part of bargaining units with multi-year contracts and no further use of unpaid employee furlough days. Zero city property tax levys continue as well.

On and this will be the first year of payments to SIUC for the Saluki Way project.

Budget Woes

Here's a major reason Carbondale is in financial trouble: pensions and workers' compensation premiums. According to the proposed budget over the last five years, the amount the city has to fund has increased by:

Fire Pension: 46.82%
Police Pension: 38.55%
Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund: 140.56%
Workers Compensation: 95.98%
Health Insurance: 40.26%

These are all plans the city has to fund by state law, but we're not getting any money from the state to help fund them. Your classic unfunded mandate. Don't look for the increases to let up. The city projects police pension funding to increase by 26% in FY2011

Blogging the Budget

Assuming revenues and expenses come in as projected (which is doubtful), we should see the following changes in fund balances as of April 10, 2010:

General Fund--up $2,431
Motor Fuel Fund--down $238,203
TIF District #1--down$22,562
Child Care Services--up $922
Debt Service Fund--down $568
Community Investment Funds--down $596,894

for a net decline in funds of $854,824.

Blogging the Budget

Since the Hayes Child Care Center is coming up for further examination, here are the figures for it from the budget:
authorized budget 2009 $629,759
estimated actual 2009 $459,331
Actual 2009 $440,460
Budgeted 2010 $555,212

If the council does shut the Hayes Center down, there's enough money there to fund the Building and Neighboorhood Services director's position again.

Blogging the Budget

Interesting figures for police and fire department costs for last year and next:
Police Dept
authorized budget 2009 $7,372,962
estimated actual 2009 $6,987,418
actual 2009 $6,973,073
budget 2010 $7,185,703

Fire Department (including emergency management)
authorized budget 2009 $3, 287, 038
estimated actual 2009 $3,222,745
actual 2009 $3,050,025
budget 2010 $3,126,819

Blogging the Budget

These numbers are painful looking. From page 17 of the budget, the city expects $25 million in revenues coming into the governmental funds, and $32.6 million going out in fiscal '09-10. Proprietary funds (waterworks, parking, etc) anticipate revenues of $1.2 million and expenditures of $18 million, leaving a shortage of a hair over $7 million. There are some other financing sources for both and depreciation and pre-paid bond expenses to apply to the proprietary funds, but the net result is that the governmeal funds wind up $854824 short for this fiscal year and the propiretary funds are short $583,107.

Blogging the Budget

Pages 14-16 of the budget cover the time frame for development and approval. Looks like early last November, the final figures for 2008-2009 were entered into the Five Year Revenue Statements and that's the first step in developing the 2010 budget. After that, there're 2 and a half pages of target dates until May 5, when the Certificate of Anticipated Revenues and certified copy of the Budget Ordinance is filed with the County Clerk. That's about 5 months from start to finish, though it looks like most of the work on the 2010 budget starts about Jan 9th, with most of the time before that focused on finalizing info from 2008 and 2009.

Blogging the Budget

Financial structure of the city is on page 11. All financial transactions by the city are accounted through the use of funds. C'dale has two categories of funds: Governmental and Proprietary.

I see 4 Governmental Funds:

General Fund- the general operating fund of the city. Most operating expenses are paid out of here.

Specific Revenue Funds- these hold moneys received from specific taxes or grants. Three of them: Motor Fuel Tax fund, Tax Increment Fund, Child Care Services Fund.

Debt Service Fund--this is where money is held to pay principal, interest and agent fees for city bonds.

Community Investment Funds--account for financial resources used for the acquisition or constructions of major capital facilities and infrastructure, not financed by legally restricted special revenue or proprietary funds. Currently only one the Local Improvement Fund.

The second category of fund is the:

Proprietary Funds--established to account for municipal activities funded by specific taxes and service fees. There are four of them:

--Waterworks and Sewage
--Parking System Operations
--Solid Waste Management
--Rental Properties

Blogging the Budget

Some other interesting goals and objectives from the Strengthen and Promote Neighborhood Living section on pages 9-10:

--Maintain the integrity of residential neighborhoods though strict enforcements of occupancy limits
--Maintain a proactive approach to responding to neighborhood issues and concerns
--promote the community policing philosophy throughout the residential neighborhoods
--seek cooperation from property owners and tenants in the correction of code violations and aggressively prosecute those who fail to comply with the law
--increase awareness of and participation in Neighborhood Watch programs.

Blogging the Budget

Some interesting goals and objectives in the budget. Some that stand out are:

1. Expand the City's boundaries and jurisdiction in an orderly manner while maintaining quality services.
2. Support transportation improvements that will improve access to and from the community and properly channel traffic through the City.
3. Develop and maintain a comprehensive bicycle trail network in the community.
4. Provide customer service training to all City employees.
5. Transition the City's vehicular fleet to energy efficient vehicles.
6. Acquire energy efficient equipment for City facilities and operations.
7. Encourage and attend neighborhood meetings to serve as a source of information and provide more community outreach.
8. Seek cooperation from property owners and tenants in the correction of code violations and aggressively prosecute those who fail to comply with the law.
9. Maintain the integrity of residential neighborhoods through strict enforcement of occupancy limits.
10. Promote the concept of citizens helping themselves and each other rather than relying entirely on City government.

Blogging the Budget

Pages 5-10 cover community goals. The budget addresses four main goal, with a heck of a lot of subgoals and objectives under each one. Hopefully the city will get the final revised budget up on line sometime as I really don't want to type them all out. The four main goals of the city are

1. Promote economic development and community growth
2. Provide quality services with fiscal responsibility
3. Encourage citizen participation and community pride
4. Strengthen and promot neighborhood living (which interestingly does emphasize the importance of the Building an dNeighborhood Services Division to achieving this goal. Gonna be intersting to see how well it achieves that one when it doesn't have a Buidling and Neighborhood Services director anymore.

Blogging the Budget

Pages 2-3 show the organizational and departmental services charts. Since this was produced before the recent changes to the budget, Building and Neighborhood Services still exists as a separate department. Be interesting to see if it says independent or is combined with Planning Services or Development Management in the revised budget.

Blogging the Budget

Working my way from page 1 to page 274. Page one is a short history of Carbondale with the main focus on the community's economic development, the importance of the railroad in the early years and the ever increasing importance of SIUC, which currently, according to the budget, employs about 40% of Carbondale's labor force.

Blogging the Budget

This is interesting. On page 5, under objectives of the budget, there are only 2 organizations specifically named to get support from the city in the budget. Objective 10 is Support the Main Street Program for Downtown and Objective 15 reads Provide resources to support the Boys and Girls Club of Carbondale. No mention of the Hayes Center, Chamber of Commerce or Conv3ention and Tourism Bureau. Give the amount of money allocated to the Convention and Tourism Bureau, you'd think it would be listed on there but the closest thing is Objective 6: Encourage development of tourism related destination facilities.

Blogging the Budget--Water and Sewer Edition

The Water and Sewer Fund summary from page v indicates an expected 5% rate increase in related utilities fees to defray the costs of needed improvements. Planned expenditures include:

--final design and construction of a new $4 million water tower, with financing from the Illinois EPA Revolving Loan Funds

--construction of a storm water equalization basin a the Northwest Wastewater Treatment plant, cost $1 million.

--$40,000 for financial incentives for water and sewer infrastructure in new residential subdivisions.

--shoreline stabilization and erosion control at CedarLake

--new truck and sewer video camera system for identifying location of repairs in problem lines. Cost $385,000.

--professional utility rate study to analyze utility cost of operation, project cost of future capital needs, allocate costs to water and sewer division and recommend rate structures to produce required revenues.

--possible addition of an additional staff person in the Water Plant Central Laboratory

--a number of maintenance and design projects for various water projects throughout the city.

Blogging the Budget

The city highlights a number of city goals achieved or in the process thereof on page iv of the budget including:

--Building and Neighborhood Services will implement new computer software and stepped up rental property inspections (once that last position gets filled).
--design work continues on the new police and fire facilities
--repair work moves forward on East Main, West Main and downtown.
--continued improvements on the new city website.
--continued work on an updated Comprehensive Plan
--Police department will continue a number of projects including D. A. R. E., G. R. E. A. T. Citizens Police Academy and domestic violence prevention
--continue the Community Service Office Program
--Fire department will continue fire hydrant testing, smoke detector replacement, and training in NIMS, among other programs.
--though reduced, the housing rehabilitation program will continue
--Building and Neighborhood Services will mount an aggressive approach to removal of condemned structures (despite not having a head)
--a number of local agencies and organizations will continue to receive funding.