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Published September 14, 2008 11:34 pm - 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. 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.” 
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