The Auburn City Council held its first forum on its proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget Tuesday night, which is down almost 6 percent from last year.
The $3.3 million in the proposed general fund is down $197,514 from FY2010 with cuts coming from 13 of 18 departments.
One major cutback comes from capital improvements, where the city has budgeted zero money for 2011 compared to $625,000 in 2010.
City administrator Ron Griffith was on hand at the called meeting to explain some of the changes.
“We don’t have any funds appropriated for (Capital Improvements) for this year, except for SPLOST,” Griffith said. “When I say capital fund — capital projects — this is coming from our general fund operations and our water operations. It’s not coming from SPLOST.”
Griffith said that the city does not budget SPLOST except when it does the SPLOST negotiations.
Seeing a reduction of $22,051 from last year is the police department. There will be the addition of two patrol cars, however, the extra money for one will be paid for with seized drug money.
Down $33,411 from last year is legislative council.
“We really dropped (legislative council),” Griffith said. “One thing is we’ve been paying all the boards out of that – the Parks and Leisure Board, the Planning and Zoning Board, the DDA Board — everything out of that account. So we’ve moved it into other categories, so we’ve put it into the category it should go or the department it should go, so that’s the reason it’s lower.”
In addition, the city is offering no across the board raises for staff and has eliminated one part-time position.
The majority of city funds come from Local Option Sales Tax, at 35 percent, however, it’s down from 2010.
“That is a decrease from last year,” Griffith said. “Our Local Option Sales Tax has gone the other way, and last year it was around 40 percent, so it’s dropped about five percent.”
Most of the city’s money — 50 percent — goes to public safety and court costs, while public works and roads takes up 19 percent.
Griffith told city leaders that he’s confident in the proposed budget for 2011.
“We feel comfortable in those accounts that we will meet those projections for next year,” he said.
It was a point that mayor Linda Blechinger concurred with.
“I’m just really honored and amazed in all that we can accomplish and yet everybody is still cutting back and just doing a fantastic job,” she said. “I really, really appreciate it and so does our citizens and so does our council.”
The next step in the budget process will be Aug. 19 when the council holds a public hearing for citizen input on the budget. The council will be presented an ordinance to approve the FY2011 budget on Sept. 2.
