Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.
By DAVID CLOUSTON
Salina Journal
Gas pains are causing headaches for the city of Salina just as much as they are for households struggling to afford $3.50-plus-a-gallon gasoline.
An update on the city's budget to date, presented to city commissioners at their weekly study session Monday, showed fuel expenses have risen 54 percent over last year at this time. That's gasoline and diesel fuel both, said Rod Franz, the city's finance director.
To date, the city has spent $295,000 on fuel, compared with $192,000 last year. This year, it's already spent 46 percent of its projected fuel budget of $643,000.
"That's not all due to gas prices. We've been running a lot of trucks around the city picking up limbs," Franz said, referring to damage caused by the December ice storm that knocked down tree branches all over town.
The bottom line, Franz told commissioners, is that the city's revenues aren't keeping pace with mounting expenses. He predicts the city will run a deficit this year, and that fund balances will decline as a result.
"There's no great big surprise. We budgeted to pull down our fund balances a little bit," Franz said. "I think the difference this year, compared to prior years, is we've always been able to pick up significant budget savings in relation to the amount we had budgeted ... there were usually fairly good vacancy levels in some departments.
"I don't see that happening this year."
The widest funding discrepancy is in the city's general fund, where revenues have risen 2 percent, while expenses are up 17 percent. One reason, the city's public safety departments -- police and fire -- and its engineering department, are nearly at full staff.
"That's a fairly significant change from last year," Franz said.
About half of the city's budgeted general fund expenditures, which total about $28.4 million, is for salary and benefits for city workers, he said.
As commissioners go into discussions this summer on the city's 2009 budget, City Manager Jason Gage said, they would be presented with a budget that, on the operations side of the ledger, would be conservative.
He said the city would most likely continue to fill worker vacancies as they come up but would not authorize any new positions for up to two years.
n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.
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