She stated, “We go through this every year. We get the budget the night of a request for approval and we want to hurry up and approve it. There is no possible way any of you [council members] could have read through it.” Plymouth Vice Mayor Mike O’Meara said he looks at the document as a sales forecast. He said, “We receive it and we do our best with it. There are going to be issues down the road, broken pipes or anything, that will throw us off course but this is where we have to start.” Fordyce asserted, “This is a very important document. We have to at least read through this and know what we are approving before we approve it.” She then brought up items in the budget that she criticized as “lush.” Fordyce also brought these items up at the special budget meeting held earlier in the month.

Those items are 5 thousand dollars that was budgeted for community promotion; $500 would be spent towards the rodeo, $1,000 to promote the fair, $2,000 to blue grass festival, $1,000 to chamber of commerce to promote the City, and $500 to the Amador Economic Development Committee. Fordyce pointed out that the blue grass festival is not a non-profit event and went on to say, “The City of Jackson will only promote to non-profit organizations, Sutter Creek is very selective when donating to organizations, and the City of Ione doesn’t donate to any organizations at all. We can’t afford a retirement system, we can’t afford a new city hall and yet, we are giving all this money away. We cannot continue to give out money until we get ourselves into shape. I just know that I pay taxes too, and I would like my taxes to go toward something worth while.”

The budget forecast showed the city at a 50,000 dollar deficit. City Administrator Gene Albaugh told the council, “It is improbable or impossible to flourish while accepting budgets that are unbalanced. You are 50,000 dollars in debt. You must either decrease spending in some places or increase revenue in others. You are getting toward the end of your resources; this has got to end or you are going to end up in a financial crisis.” The council approved the budget 3-1 with Pat Fordyce opposing. The council then approved the city’s appropriation limit for the year. A constitutional amendment, set in 1979, [proposition 4] requires all government entities to set a limit on the amount of money they can spend for each fiscal year. Plymouth’s limit this year is $948,062.