The City of Green River’s budget for the fiscal year of 2015 is $21.7 million, compared to last year’s budget, which was 21 million.
“It went up $700,000 in total mostly due to a couple specific projects,” Green River’s director of finance, Chris Meats said.
The general fund itself went down about $200,000, while the capital projects fund went up $900,000, making a net increase in the total budget around $700,000.
The decrease in the general fund was due to some significant cuts the city departments made.
“What happened on that was the council wanted a 3 percent raise for city employees, with that had to cut back in other areas, couldn’t afford a raise without changing spending habits in other places,” Meats said. “They were willing to do that to ensure that the governing body took care of the city employees.”
Most of the cuts were made between city departments who made significant cuts and some was made when the early retirement package was offered to eligible employees, with six employees taking the early retirement.
The $700,000 increase to the capital projects fund, which funds big projects like streets and roads and community service grants, mostly funded by self tax money, was due to three reasons.
One, it went up for Hitching Post Drive spot improvements. There will be major work done in the next couple years for street improvement.
“When WYDOT goes through to renovated the roads, we won’t have to come back down the road to tear it up again to fix it,” Meats said.
Another large portion of the increase was due to the newly built police department erected last year.
“So we have a lease payment because we borrowed money to build that,” Meats said.
The last portion was due to a new garbage truck the city plans to purchase.
It will cost roughly $300,000, he said.
“We’ve really got to watch where we’re at. Last year we budgeted having a remaining $900,000 to utilize for emergencies. This year, with the decline of revenues we only have about $73,000,” Meats said. “So in essence, expenditures remained pretty flat. We really don’t have a lot of cushion to add more projects.”
They can’t appropriate into the negative, so the city only has $73,000 to make any changes to the city’s budget.
“Everyone likes more cushion than we need,” Meats said.
With the current “cushion” for this year’s budget, they can’t make as many changes to the budget as they have in past years. It is still more of a cushion than the city had in 2013, which was $6,000.
“We just don’t really have those options,” Meats said. “It’s a good solid budget, it just doesn’t leave them a lot of room to do extras. It’s a good budget.”
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