2011 budget for The City of Huntington

Dave Traube

Project 4 (Option 2)

4/1/10

Huntington City Council approved a 2011 budget of more than $40 million, which is up from Mayor Kim Wolfe’s proposal of $39.5 million, but down from levels of spending approved for 2010. The details of the budget show reductions in 11 city departments, including both the police and fire departments.

At it’s March 21 meeting, the City Council voted unanimously to cut the proposed budget by nearly $900,000 for the upcoming year, which would in turn result in the layoff of at least 10 city employees.

Mayor Wolfe said many factors contributed to the decreased budget level for 2011.

“All budgets are estimates of revenue,” Wolfe said. “A combination of things caused our revenues to tail off, such as the fact that we saw a large reduction in the workforce this year. So, we were forced to submit a bare bones budget.”

The cuts in the mayor’s proposed budget reflect a $198,871 reduction for the Police Department and a $120,000 decrease for the Fire Department, focusing strictly on cuts in overtime and equipment purchases. Reductions in personnel will affect other departments such as legal, building maintenance, motor pool and floodwall The decreases total nearly $315,000 in just those four departments.

City Council member Frances Jackson said making decisions on funding reductions is one of the reasons passing a budget is so difficult.

“It (passing a budget) is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Jackson said. “When you have to look over every line item because you know the city is short of money and some of them will have to be cut out – it is very, very difficult.”

Wolfe had previously discussed using furloughs in his proposed budget for the city, which are unpaid leaves of absence from work, as a way to offset the strain of the recession in the upcoming budget. The council did approve some furloughs in the final budget but not for the police or fire departments, as Wolfe had mentioned in his initial proposal. The actual approved furloughs are for public works and administrative employees.

“We don’t have the luxury of just buying something when we need it,” Wolfe said. “Charleston is running their city on roughly the same amount of people as we are – 50,000 - and has twice the budget - around $80,000,000. I think we are very efficient at operating with what we have.”

The mayor maintains that the planned amount of unpaid time off for public works and administrative employees will not adversely affect major city operation or public safety, as would likely have happened with furloughs for the police and fire departments, but it does signal that – at least in the near future – the City of Huntington will not be conducting business as usual.

Council members like Jackson are against furloughs as a means to reduce city spending.

“We are hoping not to have to do furloughs at all,” Jackson said. “We are trying to come up with a better way because furloughs mean that we have less people serving our city, in both big and small ways.”

Despite budget cuts across the board, the cities two biggest expenditures, the police and fire departments, will still account for over half of the city’s proposed budget, coming in at more than $21 million.

Wolfe said that while smaller issues are still important, it is the safety of the citizens that should be top priority in Huntington in regards to the budget.

“It doesn’t matter the size of your city, if you don’t have a safe environment,” Wolfe said. “I make the decisions on what I think is the right thing to do, and let the politics take care of themselves. There is no use in making your streets smoother unless they are going to be safer.”

* For my sources I went to City Hall and was told that all City Council members do not have regular hours that they are at City Hall. I was given a directory sheet with all their home phones listed on it and called all of them. The only one who answered my call was Jackson and she was gracious enough to answer some questions for me.

FY 2011 Budget Table

Division	Proposed Budget	Reduction Amount	Adopted Budget
Legal	$363,530	$26,573	$329,703
City Council	$94,210	$2,500	$91,710
Building Maintenance	$296,236	$32,971	$262,135
Engineering	$363,530	$35,987	$874,574
Finance	$908,732	$27,918	$858,078
Purchasing	$106,600	$100	$102,843
Floodwall	$648,677	$102,345	$534,187
Police	$10,741,819	$198,871	$11,069,488
Fire	$10,121,153	$120,000	$10,429,956
PERS	$1,194,534	$165,000	$9,266

SOURCE(S): City of Huntington Annual Budget Estimate, Levy Estimate