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Budget Address April 30, 2013 Mayor Dan Snarr Thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening. Through the years, it has been my pleasure to bring a City budget to the Council and present it for your consideration. Each year at this time we find ourselves in various circumstances, sometimes with flexibility in our numbers and other times stretching to make ends meet. I have appreciated the opportunity to work with you throughout the year on the Council/Administration Budget Committee. It has allowed us to understand together the financial status of the City and manage to accomplish the many goals in lean times. While we have struggled through the economic downturn along with the rest of the nation, I am encouraged that our sales tax revenues are slowly rebounding. It may still take a while to return to the high numbers we enjoyed in 2007, but we are steadily seeing businesses rebound in our City. In 2011, we undertook a process to develop a Strategic Plan and put a Capital Improvement Plan in place. These tools have made a positive difference in the way we look at our City budget. We understand what goals are important for us to achieve and now have an ability to set funding aside to plan for higher dollar items over time. This effort has helped us separate our budgeting into three main categories. I would like to discuss my recommendations in each one. The first category is our day to day Operations budget. This budget pays for the supplies, utilities, buildings and programs that are taken care of by each of the departments in the City. We have been working under a model called ‘Target Based Budgeting’ for Operations. This allows departments to move their Operations funding as needed to cover the daily work of their areas. In order to have more funding for our other two categories, the departments were asked to provide a flat Operations budget. Other than unavoidable increases, this has been accomplished. There are several operational items that I am recommending be funded. These include paying for our local elections this fall, providing some funding for economic development, and increased utility costs in some departments. Some of the outside public safety entities, VECC and UCAN, have required increases for their services. I am also recommending increasing the budget so we can open the Park Center again on Friday nights. The second category to fund is for Capital Improvements in the City. We have a variety of large projects and equipment that must be funded. This year the amount requested for these items was over $30 million dollars – we had $1.8 million to spend. A CIP Committee of executive, legislative and staff members made recommendations on what priorities should be funded. A good portion of the $1.8 million dollars came from savings in our departments throughout the City. When they save budget dollars, a portion of that money is programmed for their CIP priorities in the next fiscal year by the Committee. Some of the projects recommended by the Committee include: ‐ $100,000 for a new grass truck for the Fire Department to fight fires ---PAGE BREAK--- ‐ $50,000 to purchase three thermal imagers for firefighters to locate people in fires ‐ $50,000 to update the General Plan that is currently 10 years old ‐ $510,000 for police cars purchased in this fiscal year ‐ $40,000 to replace police ‐ $55,000 to re‐plaster the competitive pool at the Park Center ‐ $10,000 for additional radar speed signs Road projects are included in the CIP and we have committed 20% of the general fund savings to be added to the Class C road money to improve our streets. It is under two million dollars, but our Street Division works very hard to make it go as far as possible. Other projects will be done in our Power Department, Water, Storm Water, and Sewer Divisions, which are separate enterprise funds. I am also recommending using some of our CIP reserves to spend $50,000 to begin plans for a new City Hall. Finally, the third leg of our budget is to take care of our wonderful employees. We are an organization that provides service. That means we have a need for excellent people who work hard to make Murray City the great place it is to call home. Each year we look at the best possible way to provide them with benefits and compensation. This year we looked at over 10 options in an effort to take care of some of the challenges that are the result of the rough economic times. We have considered compression, merit, market adjustments, hourly increases and COLA’s to find the right balance of equity for the employees. I am recommending that we cover the increases in health care costs of about 5% and the increases for the Utah Retirement System. These benefits alone will take $550,000 to fund. Due to the 3 years when no pay increases were given, we have seen a challenging compression problem, especially in our Public Services and Public Safety areas. I am suggesting that the lower quarter of our employees in their pay range, about 100, receive compression adjustments. This will not take care of the total problem, but will help begin a process with these changes. For fulltime employees, my recommendation include about a $1,000 raise and funding to provide a small increase for seasonal employees to be determined by the department heads. The City staffing level will remain as it is with two exceptions. I would like to add a Civil Engineer position for the Public Services Department. They have been very short handed with the high demand for building services. The second position would be in the Library. Our Director, Kim Fong, would like to transition her staff from fewer seasonal positions to more fulltime people. She will reallocate funding from seasonal personnel to provide for this new position. We have some items that are to be considered from the non‐departmental fund, including helping with a COG initiative to provide for the homeless population in the valley. We also continue to pay our portion of the UTOPIA commitment. I am recommending that we use funding from reserves in the current fiscal year and the next budget to transition to a utility model for fiber. I believe plans for this ---PAGE BREAK--- direction can be completed during this time and will give us the opportunity to manage this valuable infrastructure. I would like to acknowledge the cooperative work between the Council and the administration in this process and in dealing with the other efforts to improve our City. Because this will be my last budget address, I would especially like to thank my staff for their continued support and outstanding work. Justin Zollinger, our Finance Director, has done amazing work in helping with options to review, and scenarios to consider. I believe we are very careful stewards of public funds. It has been my goal to use them to leave Murray as what we all believe it to be – “The Best City in America.” Thank you for your time and consideration.