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By Darcy Ellis
Editor 7-1-2008
Facing the same economic challenges plaguing most enterprises and households these days, the City of Bishop has managed to put in place a budget that maintains programs and projects without cutting any public services.
The city was also able to still fund the financial aid requests of several outside entities, such as the Chamber of Commerce and Laws Railroad Museum.
The City Council adopted the $11,533,515 spending plan at its June 23 meeting following a brief report from City Administrator Rick Pucci in which he praised department heads and staff for doing an “excellent job of managing expenses in order to keep the city financially viable during these difficult times.”
So effective was their belt-tightening, Pucci later explained, that not only is the city offering a service package comparable to what it provided last year, but Bishop’s municipality doesn’t expect to be bouncing any checks when trying to fund those services.
“I feel good about the budget – not about the state and the economy in general – but we’re going to be able to provide the service package that the City Council wants and the constituents want, and we’re going to be able to fund that service package,” Pucci said.
The 2008-09 preliminary budget (so-called because it’s based on projections of expenditures through June 30 and then adjusted in October after the city’s official audit) reflects an approximately $200,000 increase over last fiscal year’s spending plan, which totaled about $11,313,000.
While Pucci described the increase in expenditures as almost neglible, he said it nevertheless can be attributed to several factors – most of them beyond the city’s control.
In addition to reflecting the newly negotiated benefit packages of city employees along with salary increases, the budget also takes into account hikes in workers’ comp insurance rates and skyrocketing fuel costs, Pucci explained.
“The other reason expenditures go up – even if it’s a relatively small increase – is that the State of California takes money away from local governments for programs and services that it requires them to still provide,” Pucci said.
One example of the state shifting financial burden to the city is its insistence that the city fork over money when it books an arrested individual into the county jail in Independence. The booking fee was originally instated a couple of years ago and then canceled when the state decided “in its infinite wisdom, that it wasn’t such a good idea,” Pucci explained. Apparently, state lawmakers have had yet another change of heart as the booking fees are scheduled to be reinstated this fiscal year.
Annoying state-induced funding headaches aside, the City of Bishop’s “biggest expenditure” is its employees, Pucci said, which makes sense given that the city is a “service-oriented organization.”
The city’s public safety entities, police and fire, take up the largest chunk of the budget with regard to operational costs, which according to Pucci, is “typical everywhere in the country.”
Another major contributor to the city’s operational side of the budget for 2008-09 is $2 million to $2.5 million worth of street improvement projects, the lion’s share of which are funded by state and federal agencies.
Those public works projects essentially dictate the size of the city’s annual budget.
“Next year, the budget could be $8 million if we don’t do any street projects or $14 million if we’re lucky enough to receive funding again from Caltrans,” Pucci said.
Pucci and staff began preparing the preliminary budget in January, and for the next three months he met with the individual departments on their specific spending plans. The culmination of those meetings is a draft preliminary budget presented to the City Council on May 12. Budget hearings began May 14, and gave department heads the opportunity to present their budgets to the council in person, and also allowed outside, non-profit groups the chance to present funding requests.
The council at the time could decide whether to approve those requests or make other changes, and have the budget returned at a later time for approval.
According to Pucci, the council agreed to provide funding to the Bishop Chamber, Inyo Council for the Arts, Inyo-Mono Senior Program, Senior Legal Services and Laws Railroad Museum.
Those requests were included in the budget approved on June 23.
The city knows well ahead of the adoption of its preliminary budgets in June what its spending plan is going to look like, thanks to both the budget hearings in May and weekly meetings held throughout the year where department heads discuss their respective budget situations and fiscal needs and challenges.
“We go into our budgets every year on a very conservative note,” Pucci explained. “I don’t believe in the concept of saying, ‘OK, everybody trim 20 percent from your budgets.’ But I do give them a realistic picture of what I think the budget is going to be.”
According to Pucci, especially helpful are the weekly department head meetings where “everybody listens to everybody’s needs.” And while the department heads are “not always sympathetic,” the process helps give city leaders a broad budget picture to use when prioritizing their requests and hammers home the notion that, with the exception of Water and Sewer funds, all of the city’s monies come from “one pot of funding” that must be shared.
Aside from cooperative department heads, Pucci also credits the city’s ability to balance its budget with consciously keeping low staffing levels. In fact, there are less employees on the payroll today than when Pucci started with the city in 1980. “Not many entities can say that,” Pucci said.
The city has kept its staffing levels lean through consolidation of positions, “and the employees have really bucked up” and taken on additional responsibilities, with some of them wearing “three, four or even five different hats,” Pucci continued.
Public Works employees, for example, are certified to perform multiple tasks, from operating street sweepers to repairing water mains. “That really has a significant, positive impact on the budget,” Pucci said.
Overall, Pucci is pleased with the spending plan in place for Fiscal Year 2008-09, and impressed with the work of staff in keeping costs down.
“Staff made a diligent effort to keep the budget as tight as we can,” Pucci told the council on June 23. “I think this is a viable budget, and the city does have the finances to accomplish this new budget.”
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