BonnerSprings.com / Bonner looking at tighter budget

Archive for Wednesday, July 16, 2008

July 16, 2008

Like many Americans, Bonner Springs will be on a tighter budget next year.

The Bonner Springs City Council conducted its first budget workshop for the 2009 budget on Tuesday. Tillie LaPlante, director of budget and financing for Bonner Springs, proposed for the 2009 budget a 1-mill reduction in city property taxes, making the levy 29.456. A mill is $1 for every $1,000 in assessed property value.

The mill levy could still go up after being certified by the county, though, LaPlante said, as a result of a possible property tax exemption the county could award Capitol Federal Park at Sandstone.

LaPlante said the approximately $70,000 in property taxes that could be exempted shouldn’t necessarily be thought of as a loss or shortfall for the city. The Unified Government, she said, had asked when negotiating with the venue’s new tenant and manager, New West Productions, whether Bonner would consider giving the company an exemption on property taxes. Because any revenue from sales and liquor taxes generated at Sandstone would be better than nothing — the result of having no tenant for the site — the city agreed, LaPlante said.

Figuring in that exemption, the total property taxes collected for 2009 general fund spending would be an estimated $1,604,691, and the total general fund revenue for the city would be $6,387,906, down from $6,398,612.

Despite the downward change, the city is still in good financial shape, City Manager John Helin said, because of LaPlante’s work and her conservative outlook on financing.

LaPlante estimated the carryover from 2008 to 2009 at $1,686,824, which is 24 percent of the projected 2008 budgeted expenditures of $7,055,820.

The general fund expenditures for 2009 are estimated in LaPlante’s budget at $7,689,937 with a year-end balance projected of $384,793.

The meeting followed last week’s presentation by Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., County Administrator Dennis Hays’ proposed 2009 budget, which includes a major cut in UG funding for infrastructure improvements for the county’s three cities.

Last year Bonner Springs received about $169,000 through the Countywide Initiative for Funding Infrastructure program, which began in 2006, and under Hays’ proposed budget each of the three cities would receive $49,000. The distribution would mean the end of the program, Hays’ budget report says, though “the program could be reconsidered in the future when the economic picture is more favorable.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Clausie Smith said he had been lobbying UG Mayor Mike Reardon in earnest to keep the program.

This year the city used its CIFI money for its mill-and-overlay street program, and for 2009 Nettleton Avenue is slated to receive $30,000 worth of repairs. Despite the reduction in county monies, the city’s overall streets budget for next year is twice that of 2008, as a result of state grants in the amount of $700,000 for improvements to Front Street, making for a total of $1,373,700 allotted for street improvements.

In Edwardsville, City Administrator Mike Webb said the reduction in CIFI funds of about $100,000 from this year’s amount could result in the city having to let go of some employees. The cut “could have impacts in layoffs, though that’s (CIFI money) not used specifically for personnel. Obviously, we still have to maintain road programs that CIFI was eligible for — if we have to use those funds for another portion … I’m hoping we won’t have to.”

The cut also “would make it difficult to continue” the Woodend Road repair project, Webb said.

In an e-mail to Hays, Webb wrote, “we certainly hope it would not be part of the budget package, because we feel that taxpayers are paying into that fund, with the property tax associated with that.”

Webb said county property taxes going to the CIFI fund total 1.776 mills.

“It’s my understanding that’s not going to reduce the tax rate,” Webb said, “just that it (CIFI money) won’t be available.”

Another change for the next budget year in Bonner is an estimated $15,000 decrease in sales tax revenue, from a projected $2,911,650 in 2008 to $2,896,650 in 2009, as a result of a new Wal-Mart coming near the Village West area in Kansas City, Kan. LaPlante had originally planned for the store’s opening and its cutting into the city’s sales tax revenues this year, but now it’s slated to open in May 2009, she said.

One other big change for next year in LaPlante’s proposed budget is the addition of a full-time city inspector, whose hiring could reduce the costs for outside consultants’ inspections and allow the city’s project manager to perform more administrative work, perform inspections for rights of way, and conduct a GPS inventory of manholes, water valves, storm drains and other important public works property. The salary of the inspector is $42,000, half of which would come out of the Public Works budget and half out of the Utility Department.

The next budget workshop for the City Council will be 6:30 p.m. July 21.