The City Manager proposed his budget last night. We haven’t had any work sessions on it yet (the first is Wed night if you’re interested) so I don’t know the nitty-gritty yet but at first glance, I’m as happy as the situation allows. The Council guidance to the Manager was to hold property tax bills flat.
As the Manager developed the budget and took into account the falling real estate values, he elected to cut the budget some more and came in with a smaller budget than we had looked for. The primary reason is that the valuation for commercial property isn’t falling as fast as are residential properties so when we increase the rate 20% to keep residential tax bills the same, commercial tax bills go through the roof.
So, some numbers: if the average residential tax bill was held even the rate would have been $1.57. This would have increased commercial taxes by 41%. Staff felt this wasn’t really workable (I agree) and the manager has proposed a rate of $1.37. At this rate, the average residential bill will fall by 12% and the average commercial bill will increase by 23%. In order to offset some of the increase in the commercial tax bills, several business taxes are to be trimmed to help even the load. This is very fair as commercial property owners have seen increases in excess of 20% for the past 3 years and it is a problem. In VA we can’t have different rates for residential and commercial properties.
The general fund is proposed to be $100,829,510, a 6.4% decrease from this year. This budget also eliminates a further 12 FTE’s from the budget.
What does this affect? Well, some customer service activities are impacted: lines inside of City Hall might be longer. We have less structural oversight than we have had in the past inside the organization and we’ve trimmed other activites as previously noted. The schools are also directly impacted. City funding for the schools will be reduced from previous estimates by an amount I don’t have in front of me but it is substantial.
I’ll spare you the speech about how the economy sucks because we’ve all already heard it. If you have comments, do your thing. Oh, Randolph will kill me if I don’t mention that the first work session is Wed. 5:30 in the second floor conference room.
February 25, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Your right the economy stinks right now. We all have to tighten our belt and some very tough and unpopular decisions need to be made.I personally have seen my property taxes go from $1650 per year to $3900 over the last 8 years. The value of my house has gone back down to a realistic level. I expect my tax bill to go down the same rate. My employer has no problem telling me no more 401k match,no more free health insurance,no raises,etc.. These same type of decisions need to be made. Its definitely not anyones fault its just the times and sacrifices have to be made and new expenditures are out of the question. Make the cuts, we will survive. Thanks for the oppourtunuty to reply.
February 27, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Andy,
The manager’s budget summary has the “Duel Fuel Conversion project for generators” in both the Electric Fund and Equipment Fund. Both show $2.058M. Does this mean this was a double count or is this cost split into two categories and total cost for this is $4.116M?
February 27, 2009 at 4:53 pm
How much is the fire district supposed to generate towards this year’s budget? How much did it generate last year?
February 27, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Ted: I don’t have that in front of me but I suspect they were moving money out of one fund and into another.
DB: I think they need about half a million. I’ll double check.
February 28, 2009 at 8:18 am
Maybe I wasn’t clear. Seems to me it should be public information that Mr. Grezkja could provide exactly how many dollars the fire levy brought in last year and what is the forecast for this year?
February 28, 2009 at 9:31 am
It is public but I don’t have it memorized.