Council approves $235.9M budget, tax levy

At its May 30 meeting, Springfield City Council approved a $235.9 million budget for the 2006–2007 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Among the key items in the 273-page budget:

• Sales and use taxes are expected to bring in $76.4 million, up 6.4 percent from the 2005-2006 total. That growth is important, as the city is expected to derive 32 percent of its total revenue from sales and use taxes.

• Property taxes should bring in another $14.4 million, up about 1 percent.

• General operating expenditures, which include Police, Fire, Parks and Public Works, will total $93.7 million – 39.7 percent of the city’s total spending for the year.

The largest single spending increase comes in employee salaries and benefits, according to city Finance Director Mary Mannix Decker.

“It does always increase somewhat, but this year we’re putting another almost $563,000 in the (police officers’ and firefighters’) pension plan, and that’s more than we’ve seen as a single-year increase in the past,” she said.

The increase in funding is one of several changes to the pension plan for Police and Fire employees, including changes to benefits for new employees hired beginning in June.

The council also approved the tax levy rates for the new fiscal year, which held at the current 60.86 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

The city charter states that the new tax levy must be approved along with the new budget. That fact, Decker said, can lead to difficulty because information from the state auditor about what the new tax levy rate can be is not usually received until the beginning of September.

“What we typically do at the time of the budget is to use the same amount that we did the prior year, so that’s no increase, and then we’ll adjust it to whatever the state auditor determines the actual level can be for next year,” she said.

More pension changes

Changes to the Police and Fire pension plan may not be through yet.

The council heard a proposal to remove the requirement that citizen members of the pension board live inside the city limits. The three volunteer citizen members would only be required to work or own a business in the city to serve.

City staff said the change is merely intended to give city management a larger pool of people from which to choose.

But the recommendation led to some rather heated arguments, particularly from SPD Officer Angela Burgess, who currently serves on the board.

She wondered whether someone who lived outside the city might be more likely to miss meetings – a worry underscored by the fact that the board did not have a quorum for its May meeting, meaning no official business could be conducted.

“We have over 150,000 people that live within the city,” Burgess told council. “I think it’s a difficult argument to make that you have to go outside the city limits to find a qualified person.”

Mayor Tom Carlson disagreed, pointing out that the other members of the board – including the elected members from the Police and Fire departments – are not required to live in the city.

“I don’t understand the argument that these people should be city residents, yet … half of the Police and Fire work force lives outside the city limits,” Carlson told Burgess.

“If we’re going to say that, by that argument we should require them all to live in the city. But I have a pretty good idea how your respective groups would feel about that.”

Council is expected to vote on the proposal at its June 12 meeting.