2009 ends better than expected for City's budget

Fort Scott City Manager Joe Turner announced during Tuesday's meeting of the Fort Scott City Commission that the amount of cash carryover into the 2010 budget was more than double what was expected. According to Fort Scott Director of Finance Susan Brown, the city estimated a carryover of $250,000, however through department cutbacks, the city was able to carryover nearly $565,000 into 2010.

Brown said the increase in carryover was due to many departmental cuts and the fact that they city's revenues came in on target. In addition, the departments found new ways to be more efficient. She said if they had not made cuts earlier, the carryover would have been significantly smaller.

"It's not anything we just did majority internally ... every department within the general fund had a hand in it that helped cut back," Brown said. "I'd like to say there's all these big things we did to make it happen, but it's just a matter of every department buckling down."

Turner added, "Our frame of mind back in August ... was our revenues were uncertain ... we were going to fall way short. We started cutting our expenditures drastically."

According to Brown one of the major contributing factors to the boost in carryover was a decrease in traffic at the Fort Scott Municipal Airport. She said the city saw a significant decrease in fuel costs. Also, the city made cuts to both public safety facilities as well as the number of part-time employees hired in the summer.

"It is kind of a variety of things, you can't just say it was one thing," Brown said. "Everybody was being more careful."

With an increased carryover, the city will have less trouble when it comes time to build the 2011 budget in April. Turner said the commissioners will be more involved in the budget process in addition to the process starting earlier.

"When we start developing our 2011 budget, it is going to be a lot easier," Turner said.

According to Brown

the ideal situation is for the city to have a cash carryover equal to three months worth of operating costs, or about $600,000-700,000. With the city estimating $250,000 in carryover, the city was facing the possibility of making more cuts.

"What we were projecting it to be in 2009 ... we were barely making it to 2010," Brown said. "If we had not come in on target like we thought we were going to ... then we were going to have to make more cuts in 2010."

One cut that has already been made is expected to make an impact on the 2011 budget. Turner said that the cut of the Human Resources Director position will impact the budget because that salary will be available to boost the carryover into 2011, however the impact will not be drastic.

"It will have some kind of an effect on next year's mill levy," Turner said.

Not all is positive with the increased carryover. Brown said that with cuts to departments comes a decrease in the quality of services provided.

"On the flip side ... even though we cut expenditures, some of the services did suffer from that," she said.

Both Brown and Turner agree that if the city can maintain operations within the 2010 budget, then the increased carryover should play a large part in preventing an increase in the mill levy.