At Long Last, the fun begins…

The manager presented his budget last night.  That’s one meeting down and 12 more to go.  First blush was that he has done a very thorough job and that always makes the budget process go better.  As opposed to the last several years there aren’t a lot of what I’ll call “loose ends” in the budget due to the expectation that revenues will continue to fall over the course of the year.  Do recall that when this document was distributed last night was the first time anyone on the Council had seen it.  A couple of what I’ll call “top line” items here:

– Manassas continues to have the lowest tax bill among the big jurisdictions NoVA – $400 cheaper than PWC.
– Tax rate will fall but average residential bill will go up 3% (about the same as PWC)
– Commercial tax bills will fall slightly ($276).
– Overall property tax collections will fall slightly but are offset by improving business climate
– Cost of Employee benefits is reduced by ($938,000)
– From FY2009-FY2011 we have shed 44 FTE’s – a fair number for us.
-Employees are awarded an average merit increase of 2.25% (first raise in 3 years and in-line with PWC)
-CIP funding is non-zero for the first time in 2 years.
– Several positions in the PD have been re-staffed with civilian employees and the officers returned to the street.

As this is the first time I’ve seen this stuff, I (and others) will have some questions about some of the things in there.  This isn’t unusual and the Manager will explain the above as well as his initiatives in one of the first couple of budget meetings.  VERY IMPORTANT to note: the Manager does not “make up” the initiatives out of thin air.  These come from the retreats that the City Council conducts (same is true of the communications study we approved last night).  Council may disagree with scope or direction of initiatives but they aren’t surprises.  The initiatives this time around are building out a STEM academy over at OHS and the other is a Staff training initiative.  We’ll hear more about both shortly.

Stuff that needs more explanation during the budget that I don’t know much about:

– Manager has proposed adding 3 batallion chiefs and 3 firefighters.
– Pay and classification study.
– Wellness incentive
– Public Safety compression (actually I do know something about this but we need to really dig into this issue).

There are 13 budget meetings this year.  Please come and be edumacated.  Here is the budget calendar.