Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 24, 1995 TAG: 9502240065
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Possible salary increases for city workers and supplemental requests above City Council-imposed spending guidelines are yet to be folded into the money mix.
"There probably will have to be some adjustments made" in city tax rates, Starnes said Thursday. It's an opinion Starnes has held in common with others on council since last year.
Council got a look at the numbers - which now total slightly more than $45 million - at a Wednesday work session, the first of several scheduled in the coming weeks. The current city budget is $40.1 million. Revenues for next fiscal year are projected at nearly $42.7 million.
At the meeting, which focused on the city manager's departments, council members and city officials laboriously leafed through the 200-plus pages of the budget printout reviewing lines of figures. Armed with sheets of round, blaze-orange stickers, City Manager Robert Asbury and Assistant City Manager Bob Lloyd flagged budget pages and line items that attracted council's attention or that may need revision or correction before the final document is issued.
All of his departments stayed within the half-percent budget-increase ceiling council imposed late last year, Asbury pointed out. Salary increases were exempted from the half-percent limit, but Starnes estimated these would be in the 2 percent to 3 percent range.
Starnes said he expects council to tack on $50,000 to $100,000 for a general fund contingency account. That line item was left blank in the 1995-96 preliminary budget, but just $7,000 remains of the $65,000 that was in the fund at the start of this fiscal year, Finance Director Jess Cantline told council.
Supplemental requests, as yet undetermined, could swell the total. However, Asbury said he doesn't anticipate the final budget to exceed $45 million and could be less. The final budget is set to be completed by late March.
Council won't scrutinize the School Board's budget until the last work session March 16, but members of both bodies already have met to discuss the schools' needs, which include additions to both elementary schools and new equipment. Some of those items could end up within a larger bond issue the city has been considering to pay for city projects, including more than $2 million in required water plant improvements. But that kind of borrowing takes time, Asbury explained Thursday.
"It requires about six months of very complex work to develop a bond issue, for a full staff of people," he said. "There is a lag time."
Besides, he said, the bond market is less favorable now than it was a year ago. And going that route could mean projects wouldn't be constructed until 1997, he said. Council will discuss the possibility of a bond issue in the $6 million range during a Saturday work session, set for 7 a.m. March 4.
City officials weren't the only budget reviewers Wednesday. Others, including a group of Radford University government students, struggled with the bulky budget printouts and the occasionally cryptic entries. One by one, the students bailed out as the evening wore on. Just one student remained at the review's end, shortly before 9 p.m.
by CNB