The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Joplin Metro

Discussion

September 14, 2008

Council to discuss budget

By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

Questions of spending, including whether to allocate any of the $2.2 million windfall the city has set aside from a settlement of some cell-phone franchise fees to make repairs at Schifferdecker Golf Course, will occupy the City Council this week.

The council will hold work sessions Tuesday through Thursday on the city budget for fiscal 2009. The new fiscal year starts Nov. 1.

The proposed budget calls for spending of $99.4 million. That is slightly less than the amount spent in fiscal 2008, when the city incurred unexpected expenses to clean up debris from an ice storm that heavily damaged trees, requiring a citywide cleanup.

The proposed budget projects that about $75.4 million will be collected from revenue sources. The remainder of the money to cover the $99.4 million in expenses will come from existing fund balances, said Leslie Jones, city finance director.

Jones said money collected from the sales tax is earmarked for certain uses, such as streets and transportation. It accumulates while projects are engineered, giving the city balances that are used when the projects are actually constructed.

“We use the pay-as-you-go method, so as you are engineering projects, you are collecting sales tax money you aren’t spending,” she said.

As an example, there is a balance available in the capital-improvements fund of $12.7 million that won’t be spent all in one year, she said. But the money from that fund is transferred over to cover expenses when they are actually incurred, she said.

The three sessions to work on budget issues and options are set for 5:45 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. The first night, the council will look at budget requests by the Joplin Museum Complex, the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce and for the city’s cab-coupon program.

On the second night, discussions will focus on employee benefits.

Discussion on whether or how to spend the cell-phone settlement allocation is scheduled for the third session, on Thursday night.

The city will soon receive $2.47 million for two years’ worth of cell-phone franchise fees. The cell phone companies had withheld those payments contending they should not have to pay the fees in any Missouri city. After a court judgment elsewhere imposing the fees on a cell-phone company, the companies have been paying cities.

Approximately $300,000 of the city’s settlement was allocated to reimburse city funds for its share of the ice storm cleanup. The remainder of the cleanup cost was paid by federal disaster funds awarded the city.

City Manager Mark Rohr, in a memo, told the council that “when a city has one-time revenue such as the cell- phone settlement funds, one-time items should be purchased with these resources rather than ongoing operational expenditures.”

The city earlier this year hired a consultant, Larry Flatt, to create a master plan of renovations and updates for the golf course.

The city could spend about $2 million in a one-time investment in renovating the course and clubhouse as well as building a golf practice facility, removal of damaged or dead trees and replacement, replacing irrigation equipment, repairing greens, tee boxes and cart paths, and buying new golf carts.

Costs to update the course also could be phased in over six years, according to the budget proposal. That would entail spending $235,000 to $260,000 a year.

Other items that could be funded with the money include more downtown streetscaping at $500,000 per block, repairing sidewalks throughout the city for $754,000 or building a downtown parking garage for $1 million. A number of other projects, such as repairing or building softball fields, funding neighborhood improvements, developing a downtown green space, also are possibilities but at unknown costs.



Budget meetings

Work sessions on the budget will be held at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday in the basement of City Hall, 602 Main St.

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