City Council Work Session 22 April 2008

Budget Matters

By Curmudgeon

[This work session with the Mayor was requested by the Council to have the Administration discuss mostly budget matters involving expenditures from general fund surpluses, RAMP funds and BDO revenues.]

The budget discussion began with Mr. Bill Cook, of the Council staff, summarizing the issues the Council wanted the Mayor to discuss. First up was the surplus in the General Fund... about $4 million. The city is required to keep $2.7 million of that as a reserve fund, leaving $1.2 million available to appropriate at this time. The Administration requests that the $1.2 million be spent as follows: $800K to cover a shortfall in anticipated sales taxes [attributed to the general decline in the overall economy], and $450K to be spent on various capital improvement projects [road projects, Union station repair, etc.]

The city also received $375K in RAMP Funds, allocated to the Ogden Canyon trail project [bridge and overpass], the existing Ogden River Kayak Park [$78 K] and Paddlefest [$13K].

Mr. Patterson reported that the City’s 50% share of BDO revenues came to $2,745,000, which was about $800K more than had been expected. A sign, he said, that things are going very well at BDO. There followed a long involved discussion of several ordinances the city has adopted regarding spending of BDO funds, amendments thereto, all of which ended up this way: half of the BDO money can be used for any purpose, the other half must be used for capital improvement projects --- unless the money is needed for paying interest and principle on the construction bonds issued for The Junction. And, Mr. Patterson noted, the money is needed for that purpose this year, since tax revenues from The Junction have not come in as expected due to construction delays, slowness of Weber County to add finished elements of the project to the tax rolls, etc. So the city must pay, this year, $1,568,850, which is about twice what it anticipated paying.

Read Curmudgeon's full article here.

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