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City Council makes progress on 2011 budget
12/15/2010 10:27:58 AM
By Kelly Moore
Splash Staff Writer
The Liberty Lake City Council made notable headway on budget discussions at Tuesday's special meeting. With $140,132 of unexpected revenues to allocate, the Council got down to business distributing all but $47,844 to various areas of the budget.
"We saw better cohesion amongst the council members," Councilman Josh Beckett said after the meeting. "I feel good about the decisions."
In light of news that the city's parks superintendent was retiring, the Council asked Mayor Wendy Van Orman to present an adjusted job description that combined this with the golf superintendent position, which was recently reduced to a seasonal position as part of budget cuts. After the meeting Van Orman said the salary for this position is likely to come out of the remaining revenues. The parks superintendent position salary is budgeted for 2011, the question is over whether or not the salary will be high enough with the added golf superintendent responsibilities and cost effective for the city.
In addition, the Council voted to restore the golf pro position at Trailhead Golf Course to a full time position effective 2011. They didn't vote to make a line-item change for the anticipated $27,000 adjustment because that money should be covered in existing budget, now that the Golf Superintendent position is being reevaluated.
The Police Department also saw a substantial budget increase at the meeting. Council members voted to fund the entire purchase of a second patrol car for $27,000. One patrol car was already spoken for in the proposed budget with $9,000 allocated to the first payment on a three-year lease. Advertisement
The Council also voted to allocate $15,000 to the LLPD budget for fencing materials to contain its facilities. The materials include fencing, electronic access programming and two automatic gates. Volunteers are lined up for the installation.
Council members also reviewed the finance committee's recommendation for the library budget from Dec. 7. The recommendation bumped the budget to $340,000 with additional revenues of $21,163.
The library budget saw additional relief from the finance committee's recommendation not to hold them responsible for the entire building insurance and utilities fee of $56,025. The library only occupies 31 percent of the building shared with the LLPD and Council members decided that 31 percent is all they have to pay toward those fees. Rather than going back into the general fund, the remaining 69 percent of the money allocated for those expenses went toward operating costs.
With the additions to the library budget, Council members voted to maintain the two full-time positions through 2011, while reducing the operating hours from 46 to 40.
The remaining balance for the building insurance and utilities costs was also added to the LLPD budget from the unexpected revenues.
Other amendments to the budget included a $9,000 elimination of the city's newsletter budget and $106,000 from the library capital fund was allocated toward the street maintenance and street capital funds.
Budget discussions will continue at the Dec. 21 meeting and the public can expect to see the Council's review of Tuesday's decisions, as well as the information on the combined Parks Superintendent and Golf Superintendent positions.
"I'm confident we will get this passed (at the next meeting)," Van Orman said after the meeting. "I don't think any of us want to be back here after Christmas."
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