City approves tentative budget

The Green River City Council approved its preliminary budget Tuesday night for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

This budget can still be changed before the Council approves the final budget, which is scheduled to occur at its June 18 meeting. According to the budget summery provided by the city, the expected expenditures, totaling $15.06 million, are higher than the anticipated revenues, listed at $14.7 million. City Administrator Reed Clevenger said the city will receive some one-time funding during the budget year. This includes funding from the state amounting to $782,000 and enterprise fund administrative fees totaling $728,000. These funds will allow the city to operate with more revenue than expenditures. Other costs and adding in an expected funding balance of $13.4 million is expected to give the city a $3.04 million positive balance of revenue for 2020. After various departmental requests, the budget is estimated to have $927,000 left initialized.

The budget also represents a slight increase over the current fiscal year budget. Clevenger said the main goal for the budget is to limit expenditures within the city.

“Just coming out of the tough budget years ... we continue to focus on fiscal responsibility,” he said.

He said one of the difficulties the city faces with its budget is that department heads have to contend with rising costs, while continuing to work with 4-5 percent sales tax revenues. The city receives a portion of the 4-percent state sales tax, while the additional 1-percent sales tax levied in Sweetwater County is used for specific expenditures.

Despite that, Clevenger said the city will increase its budget to account for $850,000 a month in revenue, up $50,000 over the current budget. He said this increases the total budget to $10.2 million and adds $600,000 to the budget.

Clevenger said the tentative budget mets funding requests by community organizations such as Golden Hour Senior Center, the Green River Food Bank and Flaming Gorge Days. It also prevents city employees from paying for increases to health insurance and continues support for the Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport, though Clevenger said the city may not have to pay as much to support the airport because of statewide air service contracts currently being discussed.