Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City's budget is approved

Prescott's City Council approved a budget for the year 2002 at its regular monthly meeting, Dec. 17.

The city's 2001 budget amendment was also approved to adjust it with the final figures for the year.

The council added $290,600 to the budget to make it balance for the year(will primarily be from the electricity purchase).

Carl Dalrymple, the city's accountant, said, "We had budgeted $4.1 million and its actually going to be around $4.5million."

In the electric utilities portion of the budget $290,600, in the general fund $255,800 will be added to the budget and $11,800 from the street department.

The total addition of expenses of the three departments are $56,600 in expenses over income.

Dalrymple said, "The ice storms did cost a bit and we were lucky. The city did a super job taking care of things."

The final figures were taken off the November financial statement and what expenses versus income were expected to be for the month of December.

The budget for 2002 was also presented, with 10 percent, or $303,004 was not budgeted as a contingency fund.

Dalrymple said $210,000 was not budgeted last year.

The sales tax budget was mentioned. Dalrymple said there was an increase in minimum entry level workers to $7 per hour for city employees, except for part-time (or summer help).

When asked about the depreciation fund, Dalrymple said there was $547,137.60 currently in it.

With the firetruck issue, there is currently $103,000 in the fund with another $10,000 being added at the first of the year.

Prescott Mayor Howard Taylor said, "Each year $10,000 is automatically placed in a firetruck fund since the trucks go through a lot of wear and tear. When one wears out we have to either replace the parts or buy a whole new truck."

A council member brought up a new law allowing cities to make payments for purchases over an extended period of time. Under the law, the time limit is five years.

Taylor said fire chief Barry Higginbotham has a truck in mind but there is not enough in the fund to buy it.

The mayor appointed a committee to look at the current firetrucks and determine if there should be some repairs to fix the current problems, or if it would be better to buy a new one. The committee consists of Billy House, Howard Austin, Karen Ward and Danny Beavert.

Higginbotham said, "Both trucks have problems right now. We can't take them out of service at the same time. We haven't found anyone here (locally) that can fix the problems."

He said one of the firetrucks stalls, and has even stalled while responding to a fire. The council discussed the potential problems, but came to no real solution.

"Either way," Higginbotham said, "one will have to be taken out of service to be repaired."

The committee selected by Taylor will meet after the holidays to see what advice they can give the full council on the firetruck matter.

The 2002 budget for Parks and Recreation was considerably larger than anticipated.

Austin said, "I want to make sure that we know what we are doing. If we are going to adopt a proposed budget, we need to make sure all of it (the money) was going to be in one budget.

"I don't want to just do this and find out later we left this (Parks and Recreation budget) hanging."

Dalrymple said, "On your budget, the one that will be shown and transferred quarterly (from the city) you (the council) have to make the decision whether it is going to be $62,800 or $70,000, and that's all the decision you have to make."

Dalrymple said the council can make the decision and he would make the changes on the financial statement for the first of the year.

Austin said when the committee met on Parks and Recreation it thought the budget would be $74, 656, or something similar to that number.

Steve Crow, director of Parks and Recreation, said there was an increase because of supplies.

"Our youth program increased from $5 to $15," he said, "but it's still the cheapest in the entire area. Supplies were a big increase since they provide pants, helmets, shoulder pads."

Crow also said there are enough supples for 90 children (at $50 a child from parks department). The supplies will be issued out and returned at the end of the season.

"We hope to have third graders play next year, so we are looking at 25 or 30 kids at the same price for us," Crow said.

The council agreed with the $70,000 and the budget was passed.