Fayetteville city departments raise budget requests for 2009

Please click on image to ENLARGE photo of Grindella squarrosa, one of the hundreds of species of native wildflower that will flourish at no cost in many parts of city parks if mowing stops, Vice-Mayor Lioneld Jordan has said. Selecting areas to return to nature is easy. Use of parks will rise as people find wildflowers, tall-grass dependent birds and wildflower-loving pollinators near the walking paths and trails and just outside the fields of the ball parks. Mayoral candidate and current Ward Four Alderman Jordan has said that reduced mowing can save a large amount for the park budget to use in more important ways. Mowing not only wastes an enormous amount of fuel and worker time but also pollutes the air and decreases the ability of park land to retain and use stormwater runoff.

 
Money matters : Department funding requests $700,000 more than city’s target
BY MARSHA L. MELNICHAK Northwest Arkansas Times
Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/68413

An early look at raw data budget requests for 2009 funds from Fayetteville’s general fund reveals the potential for challenging decisions ahead.
Initial funding requests for 2009 are more than $ 700, 000 higher than the administration’s target budget for the year, and that target budget is more than $ 600, 000 greater than the city’s adopted 2008 budget.
According to a preliminary summary from the office of Paul Becker, finance and internal services director, the city’s adopted budget in 2008 was $ 35, 023, 000.
That figure was approved after months of meetings with department heads and council members looking for ways to cut the budget after the council said “ no ” to Mayor Dan Coody’s suggestion for a property tax increase.
Coody has said he will not seek a property tax increase when he takes a 2009 budget recommendation to the council. Earlier this month, the City Council passed a resolution asking for the city administration to present a balanced budget, one in which city cash reserves are not used to meet expected expenses. Coody has said he may need to go to the reserves when a budget is presented to the council. Cash reserves can be considered the city’s savings.
2009 target On behalf of the city administration, Becker set a 2009 target budget at $ 35, 678, 378. The basic differences between the 2008 approved department budgets and the target budgets for those depar tments are salar y increases, Becker said. The 2009 budget requests came back to his office at $ 36, 465, 095, which is $ 786, 717 higher than Becker’s expectations. That includes requests from the general government department, operations department, finance department, police depar tment, fire department, the Fayetteville Public Library and a group of nine outside agencies. Every department’s total request was larger than the target Becker recommended. The police department’s request for $ 365, 035 more than the target budget was the highest of the overrun requests while a general government department overrun request of $ 2, 762 was the smallest among the departments. Becker said he is not ready to comment on what will or will not be recommended to the City Council. “ We’re still in the analysis stage, ” he said. Up, up In 12 different categories where Becker recommended target increases, department heads asked for higher increases. These include the city prosecutor’s office, where the request was for $ 5, 012 more than the target; the library, which asked for $ 65, 913 more; general maintenance in building services, $ 3, 000 more; park maintenance, $ 58, 763 more; engineering operations and administration, $ 1, 030 more; engineering public construction, $ 7, 310 more; accounting and audit, $ 8, 500 more; police department central dispatch, $ 10, 685 more; police department support services, $ 107, 547 more; fire department prevention, $ 4, 964 more; and fire department operations, $ 166, 306 more. Fuel prices and salaries are prominent among the one-line explanations for the overrun requests.
Down While no overall department totals were less than the administration target amount, some categories within the departments were lower. City Clerk Sondra Smith estimated that her department will spend $ 10, 500 less in 2009 than in 2008. She indicated she does not anticipate any city elections next year — the reason for the savings. The public information office expects to spend $ 6, 500 less largely due to proposed reductions in printing costs, travel and training. Largest of the anticipated budget reductions is the $ 35, 000 expected to be saved because power was turned off at the former Tyson Mexican Original building, which had been used for storage.
Fire and police The two departments budgeting the most from the general fund are the city’s fire and police departments. The fire department is requesting $ 8. 5 million in 2009. That is $ 171, 270 above the target budget Becker suggested. “ A lot of that is overtime and personnel costs due to training and those types of things, ” Elizabeth Mann, financial analyst for the department, said. Fayetteville’s police department is requesting a 2009 budget of $ 13. 6 million. About $ 11. 8 million of that is for patrol, drug enforcement and support services. Another approximately $ 1. 33 million for central dispatch and about $ 900, 000 for animal services are under the police department umbrella. Police Chief Greg Tabor said the additional money is needed to catch up to where the department was before the 2006 and 2007 budget cuts. Altogether, the police department budget request is for $ 365, 035 more than the targeted budget amount. Tabor estimated about $ 120, 000 for additional fuel costs for his department. Ammunition costs have almost doubled as well, his budget request indicates. Additional costs for training — including narcotics training, tactical officer survival training, tactics for street crime suppression and defensive tactics for patrol officers — are also on the list of why the department needs more money than targeted by the city administration. In 2007 the department made a 2-percent reduction in total budget and reduced its budget again in 2008 by. 9 percent, the chief said. “ We’re trying to get back to where we were a couple years ago, ” Tabor, who added that the department’s crime prevention budget was zero in 2008, said. “ What happened is, the first year, in ’ 07, when we really had to cut our budget, we had some things on hand that carried us through. But, since we couldn’t buy any or buy very little, this year, all of our supplies and minor equipment … we have completely depleted our supply. We’re just trying to get some of that stuff back in there, ” he said. When the police department asks for additional money for supplies, they go beyond copy paper and general office supplies to supplies for fingerprint kits kept in patrol cars, crime scene tape, replacing lights for bicycles and Tasers. One of the larger overruns is a request for $ 20, 000 for the city to help share in the cost of the joint firing range, which it helped establish. Keeping up with software maintenance is another overrun item, Tabor.
It’s not an easy budget to prepare. The department has to estimate, for example, how many people they will jail because the county charges on a per booking basis. Tabor said the city has been told the county will raise the per booking fee from $ 50 to $ 55 for 2009. “ What we’ve tried to do in recent years, once we started paying to book people, we got with the judge and the prosecutor and we did what we call, ‘ alternatives to arrest. ’ So, we try not to arrest anybody that we absolutely don’t have to. We try to write them a ticket and give them a court date... a criminal ticket instead of a traffic ticket, ” he said. Tabor estimated arrests have dropped from about 10, 000 a year to 7, 000 a year because of the alternative arrest effort.
Parks The city’s parks and recreation department, which is part of the operations department, projects overruns of $ 58, 763. Connie Edmonston, Parks and Recreation director, also cites fuel and motor pool charges among the reasons for overruns. Also more trails mean more maintenance costs: from about $ 13, 000 for electricity for the lights to about $ 500 for additional dog waste bags for the extra miles. A land swap arrangement with a railroad company for trail space impacted the Parks and Recreation budget. The deal included a requirement for about $ 5, 000 in insurance that will come from the Parks and Recreation budget. Ice melt is needed to preserve the new sidewalk surface of the Fayetteville Square, and 100 new trees along North College Avenue are going to need irrigation and care. Both are listed as reasons for overrun requests. Catch-up has also been the name of the game for the Parks and Recreation department because of past budget cuts. “ We have not caught up, ” Edmonston said. Her department will be looking again for donations to support the Gulley Park concert series. “ No ‘ Movies in the Park’ program unless we get donations, and the pool will still be closed every Monday, ” she said.
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