Who exactly is responsible for the Saratoga Springs City budget? How is the surplus tracked and spent? If you’ve ever wondered about how the Spa City handles its dollars and cents, you apparently aren’t alone.
On Tuesday, June 26, a meeting called by Commissioner of Finance Michele Madigan took place at the Public Library on Henry Street. It was open to the public, and its purpose was to answer some frequently asked questions about the city’s budget process. Portions of the city’s 2012 budget (totaling approximately$37 million) were referenced during the presentation.
“This is to give you an idea or overview of how we go about adopting our budget and that process,” said Madigan.
Under the city’s commission for of government, Madigan is responsible for the budget, and she said that the budgeting process starts with a “requested budget.” That budget then leads to a comprehensive budget that comes out every year in October.
“Our goal is to have our budget completely adopted by the end of November,” said Madigan.
Madigan then gave a brief overview of exactly what a budget is.
“The city budget is a plan on how we allow ourselves to expend money. It’s not a checkbook, it’s not cash … We don’t have all of the money in hand at the beginning of the year,” she said.
She added the city has the ability to spend less than what’s budgeted for, but not more
Deputy Commissioner of Finance Lynn Bachner also chimed in during the Q and A session.
“We have five main sources of income…property taxes is one, sales tax, VLT, state aid and mortgage tax,” said Bachner.
Those sources account for a little more than 80 percent of the budget. State aid sources include revenue sharing, CHIPS Program (Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program) and court facilities aid.
“The remaining 18.1 percent of the revenues are made up of other sources,” she said.
Other sources of income include utilities tax, franchise tax, NYRA admissions tax, parking ticket revenue and building permits, among others. NYRA admissions tax for example, is expected to bring in $435,000 for this year. And franchise taxes (from things like cable television) will total around$459,000.
Combined, the other sources account for a little more than $6million of the total budget.
So where does all that money go?
“At the city, we’re accustomed to thinking of expenses in terms of departments (mayor’s office or recreation). We understand that well but I’m not sure that’s as helpful as it can be to the public. The public tends to think of things in terms of categories like how much we spend on wages, how much do we spend on benefits,” said Bachner.
The Public Safety Department accounts for 56 percent of the budget and Public Works accounts for 24 percent. Other notables include the Finance and Recreation Departments, each at 6 percent, and the Mayor’s department at 5 percent.
Mandatory spending, such as wages, makes up 86.3 percent of the budget, or just over $32 million.
In Madigan’s Financing Department, the second highest expenditure has come to be the data processing network.
“The portal to city government for citizens has really become technology (Internet). It’s busted transparency wide-open and made the government a lot more accessible but it does require a fine tuned IT department,” Bachner said.
Within just the last week, a transparency link has been incorporated into the city’s website. Under that tab, visitors can look at any expense, under any department within the city’s government. According to Madigan, more content is being added. Data is available back to 2008 at the moment.
“I had run on transparency, and at the very least made the Finance Department’s information available to citizens in a way that they could understand it. It’s interactive visual data on the budgets. I’ve gotten quite a bit of positive feedback about this,” said Madigan.
While all of the information had been available to the public prior to the transparency link (via a 200-plus page document of the budget),Madigan felt the benefit of residents to be able to access the information online was important.
One of the last issues addressed at the meeting was the surplus.
“Every year…we determine whether we’re going to have a deficiency or a surplus. There have been times … where we’ve had a deficiency. At this point in time…we actually have a surplus,” said Madigan.
She emphasized that this is “not found money.”
An internal city policy dictates the unassigned fund balance should be between 10 and 12.5 percent of the budget. The unassigned fund balance stands at about $6.2 million, an increase of about $2 million over2010. That reflects a 2011 operating surplus of $3.5 million, of which $1.55million was restricted, or assigned. The $1.55 million figure will need to be audited before any spending plans can be finalized.
Madigan expects the number to be finalized in August and her recommendations on how it will be spent will be made public sometime in September. How to spend the money will likely play a significant role in the budgeting process.
More information on meetings and public hearings concerning the budget are posted on saratoga-springs.org
