Marion again avoids looking at spending
Staff writer
Avoiding yet another opportunity to question specific spending, Marion City Council seemed to agree Monday night to raise the city’s tax levy by 3.9% instead of 9.8%, as originally advertised.
At a special session called after lack of budget deliberations was pointed out, council members considered only two options — budgets with identical spending except for how much of a surplus they would create (plus a minor variation in funding for the city library).
No formal vote was taken, but members seemed unanimous in preferring the smaller increase.
Still, they did not look at where any of the money would be going or where savings might be possible.
Except for a few points raised by council member Tim Baxa, no one questioned any of the spending proposed in the draft budgets, created by city employees with technical assistance from an outside accounting firm.
In most cities, including Marion in the past, council members spend much of the summer poring over specific spending requests from department heads in drafting annual budgets.
By council members’ own admission, that didn’t happen in Marion last year and has not happened this year even though the effective deadline for approving the budget is just five days away.
Given the city’s lack of residency requirements for employees, that means budget proposals were drafted almost entirely by people who will not have to pay city taxes the budget imposes.
During a public forum at the end of the meeting, former council member Ruth Herbel attempted to ask about confusing amounts listed in the budget.
Mayor Mike Powers cut her off, however, and suggested such questions should be asked only at the city’s formal budget hearing at 5 p.m. this coming Monday.
The stakes in city budget decisions are high. With residential appraisals increasing an average of 12.2% countywide and even more in Marion, tax bills could soar if rates are kept the same.
That’s what the option that seemed to be rejected by council members would have done.
The second option would not bring the budget down to the so-called revenue-neutral rate that the county has chosen to enforce with its budget. But the gap between the rates would be smaller.
Unless citizens avoid speaking up at Monday’s formal budget hearing, the city could be in for a lot of questions.
Herbel’s first question, before Powers cut her off, dealt with $83,463 budgeted for personnel costs for city recreation.
The city’s recreation program has been turned over to a new USD 408 commission, which imposes its own taxes.
Herbel questioned why the city should be spending so much on recreation wages and benefits and why the amount spent needed to increase by 17.1% from $71,260 in 2023.
Clerk Janet Robinson, who played a key role in drafting the proposals, said the money budgeted went for such things as Art in the Park.
Powers cut off discussion before Robinson could explain why such an amount should be listed as paying for wages and benefits when Art in the Park has no employees.
Budget forms presented to council members and concerned citizens before the meeting were hard to follow.
Sections of the 72-page document were labeled Option 1 and Option 2. However, after Option 2 was presented, an unlabeled duplicate of that option followed. It then was followed by an unlabeled duplicate of Option 1.
Moreover, nearly everything in Options 1 and 2 was identical. Only the amount of surplus changed.
The budget proposals were structured to compare estimated spending for the current year to proposed spending for next year.
The source of current year estimates was not specified, however, and in many cases the estimates represented massive increases over what actually was spent last year.
For example, general administrative salaries were estimated to increase by 24.3% from last year to this but were proposed to stay exactly the same next year.
If such a budget were followed to the letter, it would preclude raises next year unless current year estimates have been padded to allow for them.
Similar concerns were noted elsewhere. Wages and benefits for cemetery workers increased 187.3% from actual 2023 numbers to estimated 2024 numbers.
Robinson attributed this to hiring a second cemetery worker, but the amount is close to what hiring two extra workers might cost.
Moreover, the budget for cemetery employees is proposed to increase by an additional 28.5% above this year’s estimated level.
Park employees’ pay and benefits are budgeted to have similar increases — rising 69.5% from actual 2023 spending to estimated 2024 spending and then rising an additional 3.2% in proposed 2025 spending.
Even though a great number of police positions have been vacant both last year and so far this year, spending on police pay and benefits is estimated to increase this year by 33.9% from actual 2023 numbers and would increase an additional 11.7% from those numbers in 2025.
Questions about spending weren’t the only issues in the budget proposals.
Revenue from the city’s 0.75% sales tax for economic development was moved in the proposed budgets from the city’s general fund to its own special fund to make tracking easier.
However, the amount of money deleted from the general fund was made up for by a massive increase in transfers from the city’s utility fund.
No utility revenue was transferred to the general fund in 2023, according to the proposals. This year, an estimated $200,000 will be. Next year, a transfer of $420,000 is proposed.
This may reduce the utility fund to the point that council members might be encouraged later this year to increase utility rates to keep the fund solvent.
Proposed total spending in all major general fund accounts seems to have increased massively from actual figures for 2023.
Here, by major area, are the percentage increases from actual 2023 spending to proposed 2025 spending:
| Cemetery | 219.0% |
| Museum | 132.9% |
| Airport | 97.3% |
| Streets and alleys | 80.1% |
| Parks | 79.6% |
| Police | 67.9% |
| Municipal court | 66.2% |
| “Library programs” | 42.2% |
| Recreation | 19.1% |
| General administration | 4.2% |
For city budgeting purposes, 1 mill of property tax is equivalent to $13,000 in spending. Put another way, here’s how many additional mills each of those areas would be consuming compared to actual 2023 spending:
| Police | +15.4 mills |
| Streets and alleys | +11.9 mills |
| Cemetery | +5.5 mills |
| Parks | +4.1 mills |
| “Library programs” | +2.4 mills |
| Museum | +1.7 mills |
| Airport | +1.3 mills |
| Recreation | +1.1 mills |
| General administration | +1.0 mills |
| Municipal court | +0.8 mills |
Note that these are not totals spent but rather increased spending over actual 2023 expenditures.
Only a small portion of the city’s budget comes from property taxes, of course, but reductions in any area could be used to reduce property taxes.
A question not asked after Powers cut off discussion Monday night was the difference between general fund “library programs,” which includes substantial wages and benefits, and the library fund itself.
Other questions include why $36,000 in swimming pool expenses show up in one part of the proposal as being consistent in each year — 2023, 2024, and 2025 — but in another section vanish from the 2025 column.
Budget notices published in the newspaper in anticipation of next Monday’s budget hearing at 5 p.m. do not include breakdowns by accounts within the city’s main funds.
Those were included, however, in the 72-page packet, padded with duplicate pages, that was provided before this week’s meeting.
It is available here.