2019-252 Ordinance Adopting the Fiscal Year 2020 Budget and Appropriating Monies for the Purpose of Defraying the Expenses of Departments and Funds of the City of Decatur, Illinois for the Fiscal Year Beginning January 1, 2020

Home Browse Search

I have made several other changes to the presentation and format of the proposed budget from previous years: 1)The proposed budget reduces the total number of activity funds from 52 to 45; 2) The budget is no longer organized by fund number, but rather by activity class; 3) Principal activity areas include narrative descriptions of services provided, staffing, budget highlights and departmental performance outcomes; 4) Greater line item detail has been added to increase public transparency and to aid in the review and subsequent administration of the budget; 5) Critical appendices have been added to the budget, including long-term capital improvement plans, council's strategic plans and goals, and other key documents that should link to revenue and expenditure decisions in the budget; and 6) there are a few programmatic budget inserts, added to give a consolidated view of council initiatives that are spread across multiple funds(e.g., neighborhood revitalization). Staff is not finished making improvements to the budget. For the FY 2021 budget, staff plans additional enhancements to the presentation and formatting of the proposed budget, including: 1) Further reduction in the number of funds; 2) Replacing "year-to- date" revenue and expense totals with "projected-year-end" estimates; 3) Overhaul of the city's chart-of-accounts (line item descriptions); and 4) the addition of more programmatic notes— especially where funding activity spans multiple funds. Authorized total expenditures exceed new 2020 revenues in some funds because in several cases financial resources have been accumulated over multiple years to be applied to one-time expenses in 2020 (e.g., water and sewer capital projects, grant projects, etc.). General Fund governmental expenses constitute $70.3 million, or 39% of the total city budget. The city's General Fund, the largest single fund in the budget, comprises more than three-fourths of general governmental activity, and from which nearly 90% of the city staff is funded. The remaining non-general governmental portions of the municipal budget are allocated to legally restricted/special purpose activities and proprietary & enterprise business functions (sewer, water, storm sewer, MFT, Broadband Fiber, etc.). The proportion of general governmental expenses as a percentage of the city's overall budget has decreased slightly in recent years, principally because the city has adopted a complex system of charging these special and proprietary funds for the overhead and administrative services provided by the General Fund. Although the budget is "balanced," (meaning expenditures do not exceed revenues plus unrestricted cash reserves), the city's General Fund is not strong. It relies on several one-time revenues to achieve balancing, and its future expenditure patterns continue to rise at rates exceeding future revenue patterns. The City Council can address its Genera� Fund structural imbalance by taking short and long term decisions in the following areas: 1) shift new revenue creation away from tax-supported streams in favor of user fees and charges for services, and administrative cost recoveries from new Enterprise/Business activities; 2) seek to reduce personnel costs over time (preferabfy through attrition) using a combination of outsourcing, reallocation of responsibilities, plus deployment of labor-saving technologies; and 3) reduce the overall costs of local government by pursuing intergovernmental cooperative projects, local service and government consolidations, and by sharing wherever possible. ii