Council eyes more than $900K in cuts
Final budget to be adopted tonight
The Yuma City Council inched its way through a little more than $900,000 in cuts to the upcoming fiscal year’s budget during a work session Tuesday, a process Mayor Doug Nicholls said would reduce the ultimate property tax rate increase for residents by half.
The council is scheduled to adopt its final budget tonight for the upcoming fiscal year, and with the agreed-upon reductions and a transfer of $200,000 from the general fund’s reserves, officials came up with about half of the $2 million in additional property taxes city staff recommended the city collect.
The proposed increase of almost 41 cents to the property tax rate, if at least these budget cuts are implemented, would go down to just over 22 cents, for a rate of $2.0524 per $100 assessed valuation.
Officials said this would amount to a $22.43 increase in city property taxes on a house valued at $100,000 and $35.88 on a $160,000 home, assuming the value did not change.
More changes to the proposed budget could be made tonight, including a 5 percent across-the-board increase in parks and recreation fees, which Council members Gary Knight and Gary Wright said supported, Nicholls opposed and the other council members present didn’t take a position on. Councilmember Cody Beeson was absent.
The largest single item agreed to by the council in dollar figures was $400,000 in the police department’s budget which officials will use or look for different funding sources outside the $64 million general fund.
“We moved some body armor and a few other different things to other fund- ing sources and came up with about $400,000 there,” City Administrator Greg Wilkinson said.
The body armor will be funded through the city’s 2 percent public safety tax, which is collected in a separate fund, Wilkinson said after the meeting.
The general council consensus Monday had been to keep public safety budget
cuts to a minimum if they were done at all, but the leaders seemed to be happy with the cost-shifting for police costs, which make up 41 percent of the general fund.
The council also agreed to a hiring delay of at least three months for all but critical unfilled positions, a policy officials estimated would save about $300,000 next year.
The other cost-saving measures the council agreed to include a 10 percent cut in departments’ travel budgets and elimination of all travel funding for council members other than the mayor, who could represent the city at functions with federal representatives and other leaders. Council attendance at the Arizona League of Cities and Towns convention, which is already booked, would not be affected.
“As a possibility for other departments, I feel that we can try and cut some of that travel, and review in trying to do webinars or training in house and use some of our facilities here,” Councilmember Leslie McClendon said.
The council agreed with Councilmember Bill Craft’s suggestion that the city’s capital improvement budget of $36.5 million and federal and state grants budget of about $19 million be cut by 10 percent, even though neither is expected to have a large impact on the general fund.
Neither fund has been fully spent in the last eight budget cycles, Craft said, and a reduction is “one way to show that we’re trying.”
Other budget cuts proposed during the council’s Monday work session were not pursued by the council, including a 5 percent decrease to the $1.6 million allocated to outside agencies, which include Yuma County Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority, Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation, and social service agencies Amberly’s Place, Crossroads Mission and Catholic Community Services’ Safe House.
Police Chief John Lekan said the latter three agencies assist his department a great deal by dealing with people who need social services. “They literally put our officers back on the street in a very rapid fashion. We turn people over to them and they handle the counseling service, the housing service, they handle the drug and alcohol service, and the homeless service.”
Deputy Mayor Edward Thomas, who suggested a 5 percent cut to all outside agencies Monday, said Tuesday he had never singled out the “health and welfare” outside agencies for reductions.
“Before asking private citizens to pay a property tax increase and then as an option to cutting public safety, and as an op- tion to cut parks and rec programs, as an option to cutting city personnel, if we are truly considering everything, that was an option that should be considered as well,” he said.
Knight backed off his suggestion from last night of reducing by at least half the city’s $200,000 subsidy to YCIPTA, which provides the YCAT public transportation services to the area. Wilkinson told him a $100,000 reduction in city funding could lead to the agency losing $1 million in matching federal funds.
Knight said that YCIPTA had “dodged a bullet” for the upcoming year, but it was his understanding the city’s contributions to the agency, formed in 2010, were not supposed to be a long-term commitment.
On Monday, Wright had asked the city administration to review parks and recreation fees and attendance versus council cost, and Wilkinson said youth programs are the most heavily subsidized by the city so they would probably come up as the least costeffective.
Some youth sports league leaders had been alarmed when they heard about this exchange, but Nicholls said at the beginning of the meeting that “at no time did (Wright) or anyone else on the council recommend that every youth program be cut. So I wanted to head that off early in the discussion.”
Knight said he did feel a 5 percent increase to parks program fees would be appropriate, since many had not been increased for three years or more.
Antonio Ramirez, president of Yuma Fast Pitch and T-Ball League and a board member for Yuma Youth Soccer League, said he was relieved to hear youth sports was not on the chopping block and a 5 percent increase would likely not have a major impact on participation.
But even a $5 increase to a player fee that averages around $60 for the fastpitch league could hit some families hard, especially large ones. “Every day of the year that goes by, the cost of living is going up,” he said.
The city staff-proposed budget, adopted by the council June 3 as the city’s tentative budget by a 6-1 vote, sets the maximum for what the final budget can contain. The grand total of $212 million includes $175.5 in operational costs, a 6.8 increase over the 2014-15 fiscal year, and a capital improvement budget of $36.5 million, up less than 1 percent.
The general fund, composed mostly of city sales and property tax and state-shared sales, income and vehicle tax revenue, is $64.2 million, a $4.2 million increase over last year. Nineteen percent of the general fund comes from property taxes, versus about 34 percent from sales tax.
Tonight’s meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 1 City Plaza.