No budget changes
Rio Rancho Governing Body votes down mid-year adjustments to budget
The Rio Rancho Governing Body voted down mid-year budget adjustments Thursday night, leaving the now-inaccurate budget in place.
After meeting for about 4½ hours Wednesday, the governing body recessed until Thursday, when it completed the agenda, including a decision on mid-year budget adjustments.
Councilors Chuck Wilkins and Mark Scott voted against the budget adjustments. Councilors Lonnie Clayton, Cheryl Everett and Dawnn Robinson supported them, and Councilor Shelby Smith was absent.
For a resolution to pass, a majority of the governing body — four people — has to vote for it. Mayor Gregg Hull wasn’t allowed to vote because the 3-2 vote wasn’t a tie. Thus, the budget-adjustment resolution failed for lack of a majority.
City Manager Keith Riesberg said the old budget, created last summer, stands until adjustments pass, even if its projections have changed since the beginning of the fiscal year.
City spokesman Peter Wells said no law requires mid-year budget adjustments. They’re just an efficient way to handle the changes.
City staff will have to bring any necessary budget adjustments to the governing body individually or continue with the old budget, he said.
Smith said he was absent because he had made two appointments in Albuquerque before Wednesday’s late-night decision to continue the meeting Thursday and it would have been unprofessional to cancel them at the last minute. He was disappointed and surprised by the vote on the budget adjustments.
“I apologize to the citizens that we can’t get it together,” Smith said.
Financial Services Director Dan Olsen had recommended reductions of $185,000, or 0.3 percent, in expected revenue and $294,000, or 0.5 percent, in expenditures in the general fund. The changes would have meant $111,000 more in the general fund ending balance.
Olsen said projections for gross receipts tax revenue to the general fund decreased by $1.3 million.
“It still represents a 6.7 percent growth over last year, so the message is the economy is growing, just not as fast as we’d hoped,” he said.
Financial staff also recommended a $138,000 decrease in franchise tax income, mostly because PNM’s activity was less than expected, Olsen said.
The city saw new one-time revenue increases of:
$195,000 in constructionrelated income from extra activity early in the fiscal year.
$537,000 in reimbursements from the state and Federal Emergency Management Agency for cleaning up flood damage in 2013.
$175,000 from a lawsuit settlement.
$142,000 returned to the city from Global Spectrum, the company that manages Santa Ana Star Center, being in better financial shape than expected last fiscal year.
Wilkins said non-recurring revenue increased to $1.33 million this fiscal year from $128,000 last year.
“I think that’s really important to express because we’ve really got to pay attention to next year’s budget because a lot of our reoccurring expenditure is being covered by one-time money, which is super important,” he said.
Responding to a question from Everett, Olsen said he didn’t see anything alarming about the f luctuations between recurring and nonrecurring money.
Olsen and his staff recommended a $300,000 general fund transfer to start the DWI vehicle seizure program that passed the first of two readings Wednesday.
Wilkins opposed the DWI seizure program seed money. He said Albuquerque’s program paid 75 percent of its own costs, so Rio Rancho would probably have to subsidize its program.
If the seizure program passes a second reading, Riesberg said, the governing body will have to approve another, separate measure to be able to fund it without the passage of the budget adjustments.
In the utility fund, Olsen advised decreasing projected revenues by $2.99 million because of lower water consumption, which would mean an estimated $1.08 million less in costs. The utility could keep its 60-day cash reserve of $4.23 million by reducing its capital reserve.
Olsen said the drop in water consumption was concerning but not unusual.