An Easy Solution To This Financial Problem Is A Balanced Budget Ordinance

By City Council member Stephanie Brinkerhoff-Riley

It would place the onus on the Administration. They would be obligated to review expenditures and revenue as of June 30th and make a forecast as to expenditures and revenue through December 31st. If expenditures are outpacing revenue, the Administration would be obligated to reduce spending and divide it as evenly as possible over August through December. And do so with the inclusion of City Council or at least the Finance Chair.

What they do now is close the books on all nonessential vendors in October or November. Bills submitted in these months aren’t paid unless essential, like Vectren, until January or February. They had so many bills in 2014 that they couldn’t pay them all in January and some got pushed to February of 2015. A friend of mine sold a trailer to the City in October and was not paid until February. The contract employee who runs the Rental Registry went 4 months without getting paid last winter.

Forcing an analysis and forecast would theoretically pull spending in line with revenue and potentially get vendors paid sooner, while pushing fewer bills into the next budget cycle.

As of June 30th of 2015, expenditures were outpacing revenue by about 5 million. We know that revenue in the second half of the year is less than revenue in the first half. Property tax collections in June run about 55% of the total collected, and the bulk of the City’s other revenue sources wind down in the coldest months- zoo admissions, pool receipts, permit applications, etc.

Revenue was 43 million and expenditures were 48 million as of June 30th this year. The blue book for June doesn’t accurately reflect this, as Russ invested property tax receipts in the Hoosier Fund for 21 days, so selling those investments shows up as revenue- it’s a double entry. He and I went over actual numbers at the August town hall meeting. He said revenue for the year would be 79 million. So we have 36 million in revenue to collect and 31 million that can be spent. That’s a bit over $5 million a month for July through December. We could with the right ordinance, pace that out over the rest of the year.

I don’t think I’m having an original thought, but I have not looked at other cities to see if they have an ordinance that can be modeled. What do you think?

Stephanie Brinkerhoff-Riley

3rd Ward City Council Member

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Steve,

If that is the case, she should have received an email from my adm assistant indicating that I was called out of town and asked if the meeting could be put off until Tuesday or the day before. In regards to the second meeting, I never was notified until the day before the meeting an again was out of town. Why is it that all the meetings appear to be on Fridays. Regardless, during the meeting with Conor and Dr. Adams, I made it perfectly clear that MAJOR reductions in operational funds, i.e. GF & Parks had to be considered. With that said, my absences in the meeting made very little difference when I strongly disagreed with Conor and Doc.

Now, that your fiscal year ending July 31, 2015 posted up cash declines in your operational funds as defined by your controller in the amount of $12,774,000 your mere 1.5 m reduction in the GF is a pimple on the proverbial buffalo’s butt. In regards to Parks, you know and I know that the revenues will be no more than 9.7 m and that is a stretch . .meaning that PF will be out of balance by 600k which is illustrated by the 7/31/15 year end loss in cash of 1.1 m. And, finally, the administration’s claim that you have received “clean” audits would support the posting of fund balances on the Indiana Gateway website which clearly indicates that in the first three years of your boss’ administration overall cash balances have DECLINED by $47,000,000. Generally, I do not include the comprehensive fund approach because many of those funds are fiduciary, i.e. accounts in the 600’s and 800’s but since Mayor Winnecke has floated the totality of those funds as accessible to make PAYROLL which by the way includes the Police and Firefighters pension funds then it is only fitting that an explanation of where did all of that money go over the three year period of time.

This administration is bleeding money and if the administration does not believe this, I suggest enrolling in Basis Principals of Accounting 201 & 202 . And in closing, if Mayor Winnecke thinks that the utility funds should be included as accessible to make payroll, I suggest that he review the provisions within the bond covenant where the utility is prohibited from loaning funds to third parties while bond balances are outstanding.

So, instead of wasting your time and mine, the GF needs an additional reductions of 6.5 m and the Park an additional 600k and I will relent considering the Bernie Maydoff approach concerning increasing the “Tax in Lieu Of” expense to the Utility. While on this subject, why are you hammering the folks in the County by increasing the cost of their Water & Sewer bills in this scheme to increase the GF revenues at their expense???

Should you have any questions, please so advise.

JOHN FRIEND

5th Ward City Councilman

Please take time and vote in today’s “Readers Poll”. Don’t miss reading today’s Feature articles because they are always an interesting read. Please scroll at the bottom of our paper so you can enjoy our creative political cartoons. Copyright 2015 City County Observer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without our permission