In his latest blog post, Mayor Friedberg says that “the outcome of this year’s budget process is an adopted budget that represents a 4.4% property tax revenue increase, down from the original 8% proposal. The resulting tax rate increase for maintenance and operations, calculated in accordance with the state Truth-in-Taxation (TnT) formula, is 2.4%, well within the new 3.5% rollback rate that will go into effect next year. The impact on a home at the average value in Bellaire of $936,582 will be $93 versus last year.”
He states that “the budgeted reserve, central to the City Manager’s recommendation, remains essentially unchanged from his original proposal because we instead cut back further on expenses. Primarily a $150,000 decrease in General Fund salaries and benefits as we seek to contain growth over time in personnel costs, our largest expense category by far.”
After citizen input about the City Manager’s budget and focus on the IT and communications increases, “the City went to great lengths to explain those trends, demonstrating that what was previously a decentralized IT budget across multiple departments has now been consolidated under the umbrella of the City Manager’s office (which also includes the budgets for HR and the City Clerk), resulting in greater efficiencies and cost savings. Looking at the whole picture, we see that those increases are offset by decreases elsewhere. Same with interdepartmental personnel transfers; moving an employee from one department to another results in no budgetary impact.”
The Mayor points out that “it’s important we recognize that a lot of the spending that goes on behind the scenes, and that therefore as residents we don’t see, is still necessary to support the provision of the services we do see.”
He also would like residents to “keep in mind that adoption of the budget isn’t our only opportunity to question these expenses. What the budget does is to appropriate funds for enumerated purposes, but those funds aren’t actually spent until sometime during the fiscal year, when a particular purchase comes to Council for consideration, with public input, and with considerably more detail and backup than would ever have been presented in the budget document. If we’re not then satisfied after full and informed discussion, we don’t have to spend the money.”
The Mayor also addressed funding for debt service.
See the Mayor’s full blog post HERE.
