Minutes of the January 12 special joint meeting of City Council and Financial Advisory Committee yielded this:
Mr. Espiritu discussed the fund balances along with suggestions to make them sustainable. He recommended that the General Fund build up a 25% fund balance with the City setting aside 5% per year over a 5-year period. Also, the Water Fund should attain a 25% balance with rate raises over a four-year period.
The Water Division has an FY 2010 budget of $4.8 million (PDF pp. 95-97), which incidentally matches up pretty well to the projected water sales revenues. However, it costs only $2.8 million to operate the Water Division. Where does the other $2 million go?
$850,000 goes to debt service
$550,000 is set aside for capital improvements
$500,000 is transferred to the General Fund
$25,000 goes to the Property & Liability Insurance Fund
Part of the General Fund transfer is meant to pay for a billing clerk, which would make more sense if Water weren’t already paying a worker who is assigned to the DeKalb-Taylor Municipal Airport. In fact, since the airport additionally sucks at least $250,000 annually from the General Fund, I figure it would be more honest just to transfer from Water directly to DTMA.
The City of DeKalb is planning to raise water rates each year for the next four years, and when it does each hike will be accompanied by a sob story. Don’t you believe them for a second. We already are paying for a lot more than just water.
2 comments
Comment by Ivan Krpan on February 11, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I didn’t know that an entity within our city government could make that big of a profit on what they do.
I was told once by then the city manager at that time that they had to watch how much they could charge for permits and fees associated with the code enforcement department. He told me that they could not end up showing a huge profit at the end of the year, little was fine.
I would say $2 million is a huge profit. To me this would also mean that we are paying an exhorbitant price for our water, water that taxpayers have paid for in way of infrastructure to pump, clean, and deliver to those who pay for the service. Something truly wrong here.
Comment by Anson MacDonald on February 12, 2010 at 2:56 pm
In our society you need a license to carry a gun.
(Actually in DeKalb it’s even illegal to possess a slingshot! Who knew?)
But ANYONE, it seems, can publish whatever numbers they want and folks are expected to accept them at face value.
I guess city hall has free license to publish whatever they want! And all the general public knows is that they receive an annual award for transparency so everything must be on the up and up.
At one of the last council meetings, Alderman Teresinski scolded the Assistant City Manager for being less than transparent on fund transfers in his reporting vehicles. It should be fun to see what happens when citizens are given the true story of city finances going forward.
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