SILOAM SPRINGS -- After three workshops and a week of revision by city staff, the Board of Directors voted unanimously to accept the 2016 city budget at Tuesday's meeting.
Including restricted revenue and expenses not included in the general expenses, the budget shows $51 million in income and $56 million in expenses. About 875,000 of that spending will come from the city's general savings. The remaining expenditures will come from accumulated restricted money for restricted expenses.
Siloam Springs' budget is bigger than many cities its size because it has recently acquired construction crews to complete projects in-house, and is one of the few cities in Arkansas with its own electric company, according to Christina Petriches, finance director.
The budget projects 47 percent of the income for the city will come from electric revenue, which works out to nearly $24 million. The next largest source of income is public works at 22 percent, and then taxes with 14 percent.
The city could begin to see savings from its construction crews this year.
"We do look ahead and say, in the long run we're going to be able to save money by doing this in-house," said Holland Hayden, communication director.
The biggest difference between this year's budget and last year's is some organizational changes and a drop in capital expenditures, Petriches said.
The organizational changes will move some salaries around to different departments.
The reason for the drop in capital expenditures is that last year's budget included money for the new library and some new construction equipment that will not have to be included in this year's budget.
This year, City Administrator Phillip Patterson and Petriches were able to get more input from the public and from the board of directors on what the budget should focus on. For the first time, there were three in-depth meetings that picked through the budget in detail. Petriches said the city plans to bring the budget workshops back next year as well.
Those workshops had a very real impact on the 2016 budget. When Patterson presented the budget to the board on Tuesday, he said some changes had been made based on comments made during the workshops.
"Based on some of the comments that I heard during the presentation, I felt like maybe the budget didn't have enough focus on the downtown side, specifically the master plan," Patterson said.
Trees on Broadway Street, lift station improvements and a cross walk on South Mount Olive Street, accounting for a grant for the recycling building expansion, pedestrian bump-outs and striping on Broadway Street were all added. The striping on Broadway is to change the east side of the road away from parallel parking, Patterson said.
It got a bit more complicated however, as Patterson said he realized there was a planned lane reduction, known as a road diet, on Mount Olive, and if those improvements were made to the street the improvements would either need to be redone or the diet couldn't happen. To that end, he also added the road diet to the 2016 budget, which is listed at a cost of $235,000.
To re-balance the budget, city staff removed the salary of a contractor who had been hired and was therefore being paid elsewhere in the budget, cut the planned purchase of a jack hammer that was purchased in 2015, moved a couple projects to restricted funds and canceled the construction of a fence.
The final and most substantial cut staff made was to reduce potential city wage increases. Originally, city employees were budgeted to make a 2 percent cost of living adjustment, or COLA, increase and up to a 3 percent merit-based raise.
Under the new plan, the COLA increase has been removed. Instead, a 3 percent merit-based raise has been budgeted. Patterson said department heads would review employees' performances and send the ratings on to Patterson's staff, which would assign raises.
Patterson said he wanted all employees to get a raise unless their performance was unsatisfactory.
The change cut $262,800 from the budget, which was enough to cover all of the Mount Olive projects. All together, the changes resulted in a $45,000 increase to the depreciation fund and no change to the general fund.
The 2016 budget is available online through the city website, under the "agendas" tab. The 2015 budget will be available once the revised 2015 budget is approved, Petriches said.
Individuals are welcome to ask the city staff questions about the budget.
NW News on 11/23/2015