Tightening belts to balance books
For the second straight year, the Columbus Consolidated Government will consider a proposed budget that would be balanced without the necessity of dipping into the reserve fund. That would keep the fund balance above, if just barely, the threshold of 60 days’ operating costs considered a minimum for maintaining the city’s bond rating.
That’s the good news, of which there’s not a lot more. The $268 million operating budget for FY 2018 Mayor Teresa Tomlinson presented Tuesday to Columbus Council proposes an overall spending cut of about 1 percent, to offset an expected drop in revenues of more than $4 million.
The other good news, of course — which might not manifest itself in significant numbers right away — is that this is the first proposed budget since the end of the long, expensive lawsuits against the city by four elected officials.
But the successor to one of those officials has made a start. Sheriff Donna Tompkins has eliminated what the mayor called a “hybrid” overtime pay system that accounted for big chunks of that department’s budget overruns. As reported by staff writer Alva James-Johnson, Tompkins has also renegotiated inmate visitation, phone system and pharmaceutical contracts, which should benefit the city in the mid-six-figure range.
The fund balance has been a mercurial matter, both politically and mathematically, over the years. As noted in James-Johnson’s story, the reserve, hit hard by the recession, had climbed to near 77 days of operating funds as recently as five years ago. But in the years since, Tomlinson wrote, unspent budgeted money had been “converted from salary savings to much needed capital expenditures and targeted salary enhancements … This deviation from longstanding policy is not sustainable if we wish to maintain a reserve level over 60 days.”
Council ended that “deviation” earlier this year with a resolution that salary savings be returned to the fund reserve. Still, the downward revenue projections for the coming fiscal year have the fund balance estimate at a precarious 60.20 days.
Property and business tax revenues are expected to increase by a combined $1.3 million, less than half the total $3 million loss expected from declines in sales and title ad valorem taxes.
The budget hearings begin next Tuesday afternoon, May 2. At least there are some major expenses, most of them to lawyers, that officials of the Columbus Consolidated Government know they won’t be paying this fiscal year. It looks as if the expenses of at least one major department are being substantially reduced as well.
It would probably be good timing for other city agencies to follow suit. At the very least, holding the budget line this year would definitely be in most city department heads’ best interests. Not to mention the taxpayers’.
This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Tightening belts to balance books."