Published: June 17, 2009 08:11 pm      

Slight dip in Waurika budget

Commissioners set goal to trim costs during FY ’09-10

WAURIKA — It’s not like the budget that will sustain Waurika city government in the next fiscal year isn’t a considerable amount of money — it is.

But city administrators note that the FY 2009-10 General Fund budget they accepted Monday is actually a bit smaller than the past year’s allocation, and they stress that conservative principles led to a figure of $713,600.

Following a public hearing, during which no one from the public addressed the proposed FY ’09-10 budget, the city commissioners and the Waurika Public Works Authority unanimously approved a $713,600 General Fund budget presented by City Manager Chuck Brown and City Treasurer Gail Kelley

The budget was the result of weeks of collecting input from auditors, financial experts, commission members and city department heads. The $713,600 budget that evolved is $10,931 less than the $724,531 budgeted for FY ’08-09.

“We were being a little conservative with this budget. We know prices are going to go up for a lot of things, but we want to pay as we go, so we budgeted a little less for some things,” Brown noted. “We did raise some salaries, but the raises weren’t that much.

“While we prepared the budget, we felt spending a little less was the feeling of the council, so we took that approach. But, $713,600 is still a pretty healthy budget.”

On paper, that amount is actually far greater than the “amended” budget for FY ’08-09. Going into Monday’s special meeting at City Hall, only $532,173 of last year’s budget had been spent. However, before the middle of July, that total will have risen substantially due to carryover funds.

“We don’t know what the carryover will be until the end of (FY ’09), which ends July 1, and we’ve gotten a few days into July. We do know there will be a carryover that will affect last year’s budget — we just don’t know how much, yet,” Brown said.

Mayor Gayle Johnson said a change in budget planning was reflected in last year’s budget and continued to have impact this year.

“In the last couple years, we’ve changed the budget plan, after talking to our auditors and budget-planners,” she said. “They talked to us about two different types of budgeting plans, and we’d always used the old plan. We moved to the newer plan last year.

“We made that change, because it allows us to budget more for expenditures, but not necessarily ‘use’ more money for expenditures.

“I hope we spend less than we’ve budgeted for the upcoming fiscal year. I don’t want us to be overly conservative, but these are public funds, and the economy right now dictates that we should be more prudent with public funds.”

The agenda for the special meeting included an item to discuss and perhaps take action on a proposal for a new software program for the municipal court, and the possibility of Waurika becoming a BETA city as part of a program offered by KELLPRO Inc. of Duncan.

However, the commissioners wanted more time to study information on those proposals and the item was tabled to the July regular meeting.