Well, August is over and we’re back to it. We had a budget retreat last Friday, I had a Historic Resources meeting last night and a Finance meeting tonight. Judging from what I saw at the budget retreat and tonight at the finance meeting, the budget will be a repeat of last year.
The main variable in the budget picture is what the Governor does to the state budget. I’ve heard that (he) they are kicking around a bunch of different options, none of which is going to be any fun for the City and even less fun for the schools. One interesting item I’ve heard is that they are considering getting rid of all or some of the car tax relief. That’ll be fun…anyways, I expect we are going to have to make cuts to our City budget in the near future.
We should hear more concrete information from Richmond in the next couple of days so stay tuned.
September 4, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Hmm, I wonder how many people who thought they were getting a “deal” on the cars for clunkers program are having second thoughts? They not only will have to pay for their “rebate” in the years to come with more Federal taxes, but if the State does roll back the car tax relief, oops I guess they will be paying twice for their new cars. How much of a deal is that? Ouch!
September 5, 2009 at 7:30 am
What a deal indeed. Mr. Gilmore and the GA didn’t do the state any favors when they played hokey-pokey with the car tax. Should have either made an honest adjustment to the budget, gotten rid of it or told the citizens that the state needed the money.
September 5, 2009 at 10:48 am
“NO CAR TAX” was a great slogan/idea to win an election with,
but a challenging one to put into practice.
First, it isn’t a state tax, but a local one. The governing body of
any jurisdiction in Virginia could have eliminated it, but
didn’t because it would leave a large hole in their budget.
The Gilmore plan was for the state to make the locals “whole”
via state revenue designated in each budget. The state
never did this 100%, and now, in the current fiscal challenge,
strong rumors are they will stop doing it at all.
September 5, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Recently the city council received a presentation on
“The Potential Impacts of a Shrinking State Budget”,
which noted, over the next few years, the state budget
will continue to be under “severe pressure” which,
of course, has a major impact of our city budget.
We, too, are under “severe pressure”.
From the report:
– “Localities should anticipate further reductions in state aid for
FY10 and the 2010-12 biennium.”
– “Virginia’s budget is still not right-sized for new revenue reality
‘one-timers’ used for half of 2008-10 budget balancing”.
– “Falling real estate and car values, and reduced sales and
business taxes, will make it difficult for localities to continue
backfilling declining state support”. That is certainly true in
Manassas.
– “Major policy changes will be required to align funding with
revenues, unless state and/or local taxes are raised significantly”.
There is no move, I can detect, to raises taxes “significantly” in
Richmond or City Hall so that leaves “major policy changes”.
Hope you have a happy and safe weekend. (And a kind word
for President Grover Cleveland on Labor Day).
September 6, 2009 at 9:38 am
Looking back that might be the case, Andy. Though, I don’t think we need the tax, as usual, I’ll say we just need to be smarter in how and what we spend our money on.
September 7, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Steve, you mention “major policy changes” as a key point, and I personally think the City has just about done all it could. This FY brought about a lot of streamlining and reorganization – shoot, look at how Community Development grew into being more of “Community Central” than just focus on brick & mortar building!
I also, for one, like how that move went – the key elements of what makes up aspects of the Community pulled under one umbrella.
That said, I don’t see myself Richmond doing that – combining departments to reduce overhead and improve efficiencies. Look at Human Services – there are Departments for Aging, Disability, Social Serivces, Mental Health and on and on and on. All of them float around at the core of Medicare & Medicaid Services, and yet we have to special interest departments. Many states, such as Texas, have moved to eliminate the duplicatation of services by combining and streamlining.
But as Delegate Brink said a year ago at a conference I was at: Virginia is a state known for two things – Nothing new ever originiates here, and everything is done in increments.
Just a shame folks in Richmond don’t realize the time for increments is over.