$335M city budget heads to full council

Plan includes increases for police, fire departments and 2 percent raise for city workers; other areas could see cuts

The city Finance Committee on Wednesday approved adjustments to the proposed $335 million city budget for fiscal year 2019 that will provide funds for increased financial auditing and maintenance of the vacant cityowned midtown college campus.

Next week, the full council will consider the final budget — the first created under the city’s new strongmayor system of government, and one that has been shepherded through the committee and hearing process without the city manager and finance director who crafted it.

The budget proposal, what administrators have called generally flat, includes increased spending for the police and fire departments and a 2 percent pay raise for government workers. Other city departments, including the Public Utilities Department, would see some decreases, which staff have said is largely a result of a zero-based budgeting approach.

During Wednesday’s meeting, the Finance Committee approved $545,000 toward maintaining the 64-acre St. Michael’s Drive campus in the coming fiscal year, which begins in July, while officials continue to draft a plan to redevelop the property, according to a memo.

Asset Development Director Matt O’Reilly said the money, already budgeted in another campus fund for next year, would be put toward utility, security and insurance costs at the site, the former home of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

The committee also approved a request from O’Reilly to budget $100,000 in revenue from the campus in the next year. Revenue could exceed that sum, he said.

“I think it’s safe to say I was being conservative,” O’Reilly said of the projection. “We’re working on lots of different opportunities here. I see it being quite a bit more than that … based on some of the leases we’re working on now.”

The city has budgeted $2.2 million in annual debt service payments on the property following the shutdown of the university.

The committee approved $200,000 for a suite of three prospective independent audits — a compliance audit, a performance audit and a forensic audit — in the wake of an external review last fall that found city processes were riven with the possibility of fraud, waste and abuse. The group also approved a slight increase in the budget for internal audits, to $182,000, which would cover as many as six annual reviews, up from two to four in recent years.

The full council soon will determine whether to jointly conduct internal audits with outside firms or whether to outsource them entirely — a suggestion from last fall’s report from Albuquerquebased McHard Accounting Consulting.

Funds for increased auditing would come from roughly $1.4 million in unused money from the current fiscal year, which can be put toward one-time, nonrecurring expenses, city finance staff said.

Some councilors were skeptical, however, that the funding would fully cover the audits.

“I personally think this is underfunded,” Councilor Signe Lindell said.

In budget hearings earlier this month, the Finance Committee pushed for Sunday operations at the La Farge Branch Library, the only one of three city libraries that is closed any day of the week. City staff this week added $56,000 to the Community Services Department budget so La Farge can open four hours on Sundays.