Rogers tries to make budget hearing a 'ho-hum' affair
Posted on Sunday, October 19, 2008
ROGERS — Government budgets are usually boring enough without any help. Numbers upon numbers upon numbers, percentages and trends, charts and graphs. And more numbers.
The process covers everything from healthinsurance costs to pencils and paper. To vehicle purchases. To something else. And everything in between.
The sheer magnitude of detail included in municipal budgets can leave all but trained accountants — and maybe even a few of them — dizzy as line item after line item start to blend into one page-sized gray block.
Rogers Mayor Steve Womack wants the city’s budget to be even more boring this year than when it was presented in 2007.
“ I want this to be a ho-hum kind of event, even though we face an economic climate that’s very uncertain, ” Womack said.
The face of Rogers’ budget numbers belongs to city treasurer Jerry Hudlow. The oft-praised CFO has this year’s books nearly ready for inspection.
“ It’s just a matter of detail, and there’s a lot of detail to it, ” Hudlow said.
Hudlow’s job is to juggle the figures while walking the balance beam between all of the city’s departments. It turns him into a fiscal acrobat tasked with allotting money for all the city’s needs while maintaining a 1 percent or 2 percent surplus as a safety net.
There are a lot of talks going into the process. Hudlow met with department heads last week, going back and forth between them as he cut spending here, granted a request there. The numbers are matched with the departments’ spending over the last five years. Continued trends in spending are generally accepted, Hudlow said. New or increased money must be defended.
By comparing the trends and basing next year on years past, the creation of the budget takes on an assembly-line atmosphere, Womack said.
“ It’s kind of a routine that our staff has become very comfortable with, ” Womack said. “ If you take out the handful of one-time expenses, our budget is a predictable process. ”
Hudlow begins his work with the administration budget, which has the most income — most taxes and fees pass through there — but one of the lowest departmental expenditures.
Then he adds departments, watching the income rise slowly and the expenses jump rapidly.
The predictions, the financial forecasts, make Hudlow’s duties fly against his temperament. He is an optimist by nature, but he must be overly conservative by occupation. While he may hope for a 3 percent, 10 percent or even 20 percent sales-taxrevenue increase this year, he is only projecting 2. 5 percent, less than the 3 percent he predicted, and apparently will realize, for 2008. And in the back of his head, he knows where he can make cuts, slash funding, save money, just like he knows where to send unexpected windfalls.
“ You have to be prepared in both directions, ” Hudlow said.
After years of plenty, the city is taking a closer look this year at the money it will allocate.
“ The first thing that came out of our mouths in every budget presentation was, ‘ Don’t take this personally, ’” Womack said. “ Government is insatiable for the tax dollar, and we guard that very carefully here. ”
Some unfilled positions will be cut through this year’s budget, and some jobs will be added, Womack said. The plan is to avoid layoffs but evaluate whether it is necessary to fill vacancies that arise. Those who stay, Womack said, could be in for a raise similar to last year’s, when employees were given a $ 1-per-hour raise or a 5 percent increase, whichever was greater. Womack said he’d like to do something similar this year.
A lot of the city’s plans for this budget were presented as a desire, not as a promise, as Womack did when he said there was “ no intent” to take money from the general-fund reserves to balance the budget. The budget will and must be balanced — Hudlow promised it and the state requires it — but when some city officials are already surprised the growth has continued this long, it becomes more difficult to walk the hard line.
Womack said there wouldn’t be any major expenditures this year like the ones in the past that have spurred economic growth. He credited those developments for helping stave off any recession-like symptoms thus far as the city’s income continues to grow.
“ This is hard work, ” Womack said, “ but we make it look easy. ”
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