Tony Brooks took the oath of office Monday and was officially named Chief of the Marysville Division of Police. Brooks becomes Marysville’s eighth police chief, replacing Floyd Golden who retired Friday. Above, Brooks’ wife, Tonya, pins the chief’s badge on him as his son, Isaiah, and daughter, Genesis, watch. (Journal-Tribune photo by Mac Cordell)
Members of the Marysville Finance Committee got an early look at the 2022 budget process.
“This is very much a draft,” Finance Director Brad Lutz told the committee. “Administration has some more crunching, some more discussions we want to have with different departments and see where it comes out as we head into October.”
He said there are “some lessons here to take from this.”
As part of the process, for 2022, Lutz is projecting $25.7 million in general fund revenue and $29 million in expenses and transfers.
Lutz is projecting the city will go into 2022 with a general fund balance of more than $9.8 million and will close the year with about $6.5 million.
“I do my best to be as conservative as possible with revenue and expenditures so hopefully my numbers are actually on the low side when it comes to ending fund balances,” Lutz said.
Lutz said the first is that personnel budget requests, which include new positions as well as increases to bring existing employees into line with market conditions, will add between $800,000 and $1.4 million to the budget, depending on which requests get approval and when.
“But that amount is something that can be easily handled, I believe, by our increases in revenue,” Lutz said.
He also detailed more than $5 million in capital projects with funding coming from the general fund.
“We are utilizing our existing fund balance to take care of some capital projects,” Lutz said. “Some of these capital projects, in theory, could be delayed, but obviously every project delayed costs more in the future, so taking advantage of those funds to pay for these capital projects today makes a lot of financial sense.”
Emery said he wanted to give the committee “a solid overview of where we are at.”
“We feel good about where we are at,” Emery said.
He said administrators and department heads have already had “a lot of meetings.”
“We have moved some things around already and we understand we may need to move some things around more,” Emery said.
He noted that Lutz’s projected revenues “are very, very conservative, and we want it that way.”
“That way we can kind of see where we stand, even under a situation where revenues may not come in quite as close as what we think,” Emery said.
He said he is “a little more confident” than Lutz.
“I think the revenues are solid and going to continue to be solid,” Emery said.
Council and committee member Henk Berbee said 2020 and 2021 have been “very unusual years.”
He said that in the past, the city could expect a 2-3% increase, but projected increase is about 8.3% over last year, “which under normal circumstances would be unusual, but now we are talking about potentially being on the conservative side.”
“I stand by that,” Lutz confirmed.
Emery said the number makes sense because through August, city revenue is up 17%.
Lutz is projecting the city general fund revenue for 2021 to be nearly $28 million, about $1.9 million above the actual 2020 revenue. He is forecasting 2021 income tax revenue at $22.58 million, up from last year’s actual collection of $21 million.
Lutz said there are still “a lot of unknowns in the marketplace as we come out of COVID.”
A final budget will be presented to the finance committee in October. After that meeting, budget packets will be distributed to council with first reading and public hearing scheduled for Oct. 25 and final approval set for Nov. 22.
“Obviously, this is very early in the process,” Emery said, noting the proposal was “totally to take under consideration.”