 By Glen Thompson April 21, 2007
Last year, the Assembly required staff to reduce the General Fund budget appropriations by 1% or a mere $168,000. Six months later, staff presented (and the Assembly approved) budget amendments increasing appropriations by $181,000. Net affect: spending increased! To make matters worse, staff's estimate of revenue was overstated by $650,000 and they overspent the amended budget by $50,000. At budget time last year, we were predicting an ending fund balance of approximately $2,075,000 to start this year. In reality, we actually started this year at only about $1,425,000 yet another $650,000 erroneous revenue estimate in the 05/06 fiscal year. The predicted General Fund
reserve balance in the fund will dwindle to a dangerous level
of only $700,000 by
July 1 of this year. In two years time our reserves have shrunk
by $1.3 million due to erroneous revenue estimates. They want to increase General
Fund spending by $700,000 and cut school funding by $380,000
($700,000 below the predicted cap) and this wonderful
budget will allow our fund reserves to recover back to almost
$1 million (half of what they have said reserves should be for
the past two years). They are unable to control spending. Their solution is to cut school funding and raise taxes. Does anyone but me see a problem here? Glen Thompson P.S. The mil rate would be
set at 6.3 to avoid a tax increase. About: Glen Thompson is a member of the Ketchikan Borough Assembly. and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sitnews.
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