Certain plan
in uncertain times
By John Marshall
The world is covid-scrambled and Washington and Topeka are wobbly and unsure. But closer to home the footing remains certain at the courthouse, and in Lindsborg local government steams on with assurance.
At City Hall, a municipal budget for the next year has emerged, a chart of the expenses and revenues needed to keep the City running for the coming year.
The core of the City’s overall budget is a $3.2 million general operating fund that – remarkably – includes a 5 percent cut in the current tax rate for that fund. The operating budget ( which pays the City’s day-to-day expenses) is the largest of six municipal funds financed in part by property taxes. About $921,000 (29 percent) of the general fund comes from property taxes. Other revenue for this fund, and others, is derived from sales taxes, utility and other fees and assessments, and contribute to overall municipal funding.
Five other funds, totaling $1.2 million, include nearly $373,000 (31 percent) in property tax revenues. They are:
– Debt service ($394,130 total, including $162,594 in property taxes);
– Library ($62,618, includes $53,578 in property taxes);
– Industrial ($74,500, includes $20,507 property taxes);
– Recreation ($344,500, includes $84,094 in property taxes);
– Ambulance fund ($322,027, includes $52,000 in property taxes).
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The times call for a steady hand as the coronavirus upends life as we had known it. Local officials determined early last spring that city government, and the ways to pay for it, would stay on course.
Parks and recreation, the library, police and fire protection, streets, water and electric service, hospital debt, the ambulance service, trash collection, recycling, flood control, housing developments and more are among the elements in municipal finance. The budget includes estimated costs for 14 funds, six of them financed in part with property taxes, others funded through sales taxes, fees, state aid, and grants and loans through state and federal programs.
Budget deliberations this year have been a heightened challenge. The municipal staff, led by City Administrator Greg DuMars, the eight-member City Council and Mayor Becky Anderson, have been charged with finding money to operate local government while confronting the effects of a viral pandemic, national recession, unstable financial markets and the withering effect of a state legislature that for years has neglected to reverse a precipitous decline in state aid to cities and counties.
This year for Lindsborg, a total levy of 49.52 mills ($49.52 per $1,000 assessed valuation) is estimated to raise $1,294,211 for the six municipal accounts supported in part by local property taxes. That compares with a current levy of 48.23 mills, raising $1,209,000 – an overall rate increase of 2.7 percent.
In these fractious times, that’s a frugal tax rate, balanced downward by that five percent (1.97 mills) reduction in the general fund levy.
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The City’s total budget for next year is estimated at $11.1 million. This compares with $8.9 million in actual and estimated spending for the current year. The difference involves large balances of reserves – akin to savings accounts – chiefly in the water, sewer and electric funds. These accounts, drawn down or fattened up, must be included in the budget document regardless of intent to spend; by law, money in reserve cannot be encumbered unless it is part of the budget.
Other budgeted funds proposed for 2021, including reserves (with current estimated spending in parentheses):
– Special Streets, $286,835 ($35,000);
– Special Parks and Recreation, $36,484; ($0)
– Tourism promotion, $57,856 ($20,000);
– Sewer, $833,385 ($767,731);
– Water, $652,766 ($622,000);
– Refuse Collection, $504,482 ($307,500);
– Stormwater Utility, $575,606 ($95,000);
– Electric, $3,795,421 ($3,859,763).
These funds are supported through user fees, state revenue allocations or specific taxes, such as motor fuels tax allocations, local transient guest (“bed”) taxes and retail sales taxes. The total retail sales tax in Lindsborg is 9.5 percent, composed of the state’s 6.5 percent; 1.5 percent for McPherson County; and a 1.5 percent Lindsborg levy.
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A municipal budget does not suddenly appear in the summer mists. It is the product of months of planning, of devising blueprints (and financing) long in advance that can lead to such improvements as Välkommen Trail, the flood control project, the Sundstrom Conference Center, a new water treatment plant, upgrading the municipal power grid, East Swensson Street, the renovation of downtown and so forth.
All the while, the government must move ahead, keep the streets clean and safe, the water running, the lights on, the trash hauled, the parks tidy, the town lively, vigorous.
The municipal budget is the plan that keeps government on course, central to a framework on tight deadlines that demand accuracy, efficiency and effective results.
The budget for Lindsborg this year is a certain triumph in uncertain times.
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