Barstow City Council approves 2009-2010 city budget

BARSTOW • After more than three months of work on the part of the city finance director and city manager, the Barstow City Council approved the 2009-2010 city budget Tuesday in a meeting that lasted less than 20 minutes.

Councilmembers thanked Barstow Finance Director Terri Willoughby and City Manager Richard Rowe for addressing concerns they had about the budget in one-on-one sessions before the special meeting. No one from the audience spoke about the issue during public comment.

When Willoughby and her staff met with departments in preparation for the budget March 24, she said her department was already aware that cuts needed to be made.

“We knew at that point that the (tax) revenue was going to be coming in lower,” she said, adding that after the initial meeting she and Rowe met with managers one-on-one. “We had asked departments to cut 5 percent from their budgets initially.”

With decreased tax revenue, Willoughby and her staff explored different cost saving measures, which included saving more than $522,434 by leaving seven vacant positions open. Willoughby said other cost-saving measures included prepaying the employer contribution for the Public Employees Retirement System, which would make the city eligible for a discount. The finance department also decided against granting a few department requests for upgrades. Willoughby said her department will take another look at those requests in the middle of the year and at the beginning of next year.

Even with the cost saving measures, the city had to transfer $343,275 from its working capital reserve fund in order to balance the general fund budget. The city set aside the working capital reserve in 2004 to be used during tough economic times. The reserve fund currently has a balance of $1.9 million. Willoughby said having that money left over in the reserve fund is good because the city doesn’t know if the state will borrow from its property tax revenue or not.

“There are a lot of legal challenges to that at this point,” she said, adding that the state could borrow about $400,000 from the city’s property tax revenues. “We’re not planning on that at this point; it’s not part of our budget document.”

Even though most of the councilmembers’ concerns were addressed before the meeting, Barstow Mayor Joe Gomez told city staff and his colleagues that he was concerned about losses Barstow’s compressed and liquefied natural gas facilities sustained last year.

Rowe said the facilities weren’t selling the gallons of fuel needed to break even, but the city proposed to convert refuse trucks used by Burrtec Waste Industries to compressed natural gas.

“It would give us the gallonage to break even and recover losses since the facility was put in place,” Rowe said.

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(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com

Other actions taken by the Barstow City Council:

• Approved the 2009-2010 appropriations limit. For the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the city’s appropriations limit is $24,855,562. Barstow is $10,169,508 under its limit.

• Approved the Barstow Redevelopment Agency’s 2009-2010 budget. The agency’s budget this year is $4,283,425. Last year’s budget was $4,378,492. These numbers exclude transfers between agency funds.