Amador County – Sutter Creek City Council on Monday approved a $3 million dollar budget for the coming fiscal year with a third straight contingency.
Finance director Joe Aguilar said the budget reflected trending upward of city-wide sales tax, property tax and Transient Occupancy Tax, reflecting an assumed 2-3% increase in revenues.
Aguilar said the worst is over for the economic downturn for the state,” reflected in the upward trend. The budget assumed they will get the revenues the city is getting this year. He said Sutter Creek has done a little better than the rest of the cities in the county, who did not get an increase property tax revenue.
Councilman Jim Swift asked about Assessor Jim Rooney’s comments that home values may decline. Aguilar said “we were told a year ago that we would be moving down and we have not experienced that…. We did not experience what the Assessor told us to expect.” Mayor Linda Rianda said the budget revenue numbers were conservative, based on the current fiscal year.
Aguilar said the budget “closed an $80,000 gap in the Police Department” when it lost a federal grant. He said it is bare bones, and advised the City Council to place itself on the city payroll, instead of its current “stipend” pay due to IRS wanting Social Security taxes collected from politicians’ pay. Swift said Council members cannot be exempted from Worker’s Comp. Aguilar said he hates “being a stickler,” but he expects the IRS to go after 3 years’ taxes.
City Manager Sean Rabe said language to correct the city’s lost Education Revenue Augmentation Funding is incorporated in the Governor’s budget, which the Legislature passed last Friday. Another bill, AB1191 addressing those funds has another legislative subcommittee hearing next week.
Swift said “the budget seems very reasonable and I know you guys worked very hard on this,” after losing the federal grant. He said Rabe and Aguilar were moving forward with diligence in watching costs, and he had confidence in them.
Rianda echoed the praise and said it was the third time they have finished a budget that showed a contingency. She said “some see you as inaccessible, but a lot of that comes from hard work.”
Aguilar said the contingency is about $79,000 for the next year. Aguilar said the contingency could drop by the end of the fiscal year base on a few variable, but “not by more than $15,000 to $20,000 dollars (up or down),” based on April numbers.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
