After weeks of budget hearings, Springfield Finance Director Mary Mannix Decker introduced the city’s $310 million fiscal 2013 budget at last night’s City Council meeting.
The
proposed annual budget, a 4.3 percent increase compared to fiscal 2012, allows for merit-pay step increases, 1.5 percent pay raises for city employees and the hiring of 18 employees for the $3.3 million Doling Aquatics Center and the $5.2 million Dan Kinney Family Center, both under construction and scheduled for completion in December. In total, the city would have the authority to add 34 positions to city staff.
Council is expected to vote on the budget at its June 4 meeting.
The fiscal 2013 budget - which begins July 1 - is bolstered by a projected 3 percent growth in sales tax revenue. The projected rate increase for fiscal 2012 was 1.7 percent, and actual revenue exceeded the budget estimate by $2.9 million, which allowed one-time purchases of Police and Fire service vehicles and an increase to the city's rainy-day fund to 19 percent of revenue.
For the fiscal 2013 budget, city officials are requesting across-the-board employee pay raises for the first time in four years. Merit step increases were restored in fiscal 2012 and extended in the proposed budget at a cost of $775,000 to general revenue. City Manager Greg Burris said in his budget letter to council that the moves were important for the city as it works to retain top employees.
“With approximately 45 percent of our full-time employees at their top step in the merit step system, an across-the-board increase is strongly supported by the city’s leadership team,” Burris said in the letter.
Other items in the proposed budget:
- The city has entered into an amended consent judgment with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which has approved the city’s Early Action Program, allowing $50 million to be spent during the next seven years to improve sanitary sewer collection and reduce sanitary system overflows. The fiscal 2013 budget also adds 16 positions to the city’s Clean Water Services division of the Environmental Services Department.
- The city’s Employee Wellness Program, which was restored in fiscal 2012, would be extended in fiscal 2013 at a cost of $30,000. An additional $35,000 would be set aside to allow employees to join the Park Board’s family centers at a discounted rate.
- Sales and use taxes amount to 35.4 percent of the budget’s revenue, while charges and fees account for 25.1 percent. Of the appropriations, special revenue takes up the largest portion of the budget at 31 percent; enterprise spending amounts to 25.4 percent; and the general fund accounts for 23.4 percent.
