Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Bellevue adopts tentative $1.5 million budget

Council decides against hiring new police officer


By JASON KAUFFMAN
Express Staff Writer

After more than a month spent jockeying limited budget figures around during a series of meetings, the Bellevue City Council last Thursday adopted a preliminary budget for the 2006-2007 fiscal year totaling approximately $1.5 million.

The tentative budget, which cannot exceed $1,535,345, represents an approximate 12 percent increase over last year's budget, which was $1,352,097.

In the next and perhaps final step of Bellevue's budget setting process, the City Council will hold a public hearing on Aug. 10 before formally adopting the finalized appropriations ordinance for the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

"That is where the public can come in," Bellevue City Clerk Dee Barton said. "In fact, we encourage the public to come in."

During that meeting, the council may decrease or shift funds throughout the city's various departments, but it can't increase the overall figure above that which it has already adopted. The public can stop by City Hall to pick up a copy of the preliminary budget, Barton said.

Early on in Bellevue's budget setting process, the heads from each department in the city each developed a budget wish list for their own departments, Barton said. Afterwards, they each sat down with Bellevue City Administrator Tom Blanchard to determine what budget requests they would present to the City Council for their consideration.

State statute requires municipalities to match their overall budgets to their projected revenues, Barton noted. "You've got to cut your expenses to meet your income," she said. "You cannot spend any more than that."

By department, some of the highlights of Bellevue's preliminary budget adopted last Thursday include:

• For employees in each city department, the City Council has approved an across-the-board 3 percent salary increase. Overall, the payroll expenses for the 2006-2007 budget year rose by $64,818 over last year's budget to a total of $534,638.

• For the Bellevue Marshal's Office, the preliminary budget of $372,245 for the 2006-2007 budget year includes a single line-item expense of $16,380 in the capital expenses portion of the budget. That money will be used to pay for Bellevue's shared portion of purchasing a communications system for Blaine County's Consolidated Dispatch, or E-911, system.

"That's going to be our portion," Barton said.

• Also in the Bellevue Marshal's Office, due to insufficient funds the City Council has elected to not go ahead with budgeting the funds necessary for hiring a new officer for the department as they had wished. "We did not get a new officer this year," Barton said.

The council did, however, increase by $5,000 the funds budgeted for the part-time reserve officer salary.

• In the administration and City Hall portion of the budget, the council has included $500,000 for land acquisition in the capital-expenses portion of the budget. The figure represents a $50,000 increase over the same item in last year's budget.

These funds have been included in the budget just in case a property the city might wish to purchase land for the purposes of building a new City Hall, library, fire or police station, or if land for any other city use comes on the market, Barton said. In the event that doesn't happen, like last year, the funds simply won't be used and will remain in Bellevue's savings account, she said.

"We show it as an expenditure," Barton explained. "By statute we cannot extend any funds that haven't been budgeted."




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