Last week, the Emporia City Commission approved the 2011 budget. The good news for taxpayers is that commissioners held the line and are not raising taxes.
To accomplish this, however, they expect to take $750,000 out of emergency reserves to cover the budget deficit.
Good stewardship by city leadership has accumulated cash reserves, but the question becomes — is this a good use for the reserve funds?
Commissioners said that they would probably not have to borrow that much money, and with strong fiscal management that the amount could be much less. Commissioner Jeff Longbine indicated the $750,000 was a worst-case scenario.
The budget passed 4 to 1, and Bobbie Agler was the only commissioner who voted against it. Agler said he could not justify using the reserve money for this situation.
The commissioners could have made cuts to programs and staff to avoid using the cash reserve, but they decided not to, hoping the local economy will improve.
Now, let us look at the Lyon County budget.
Although the city didn’t raise taxes, the county likely will. They are talking about a 5-mill increase.
This latest increase has voters questioning what happened to the county’s promise of mill levy reduction when the 1-cent sales tax was approved in 2008. Voters saw a reduction for year or two, only to have the mill levy higher now.
One person commented this week that the county budget is an out-of-control freight train.
If things don’t improve for the city and county, the time is coming for commissioners to make hard decisions to cut programs or staff to help get the budgets back in line, and for county commissioners to fulfill their promise to voters.
Chris Walker
Editor & Publisher
reddog (K. B. Thomas Jr.) says...
Ass-U-Me assume. I think both the City and County Governments assume that the economy will get better. Investors have removed 38 Billion Dollars out of Mutual Funds and parked the money in bonds which might be the next bubble. The local housing values I believe will be down 10 to 15% by years end and will bottom out sometime in the summer of 2011. My biggest fear is that both the City and County might be downgraded on their bonds and this could cause higher interst rates in the future. The private sector is making adjustments and cutbacks but, the government-Federal, State and Local are making hardly any cuts or adjustments, except those 38 states that are bankrupt.
August 25, 2010 at 7:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
methusla (anonymous) says...
Cuts or adjustments to budgets, when speaking of local, State and Federal governments are " Dirty Words " that bring out the " Non-Compliance " monster in government leaders and legislators.
The whole ideology of " Budget Cuts and Adjunstments " are meant for the private taxpaying citizen to comply with and not meant for compliance by Local, County, State or Federal governments.
August 25, 2010 at 11:01 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Steve_Corbin (anonymous) says...
You are finally starting to "get it" aren't you Chris?
The current commissioners didn't make cuts now because they didn't want to upset all of their business clients.
In a couple of years they won't be in office and the hard work of budgeting will have to be made by those in office.
August 26, 2010 at 8:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )