While City of Spokane leaders struggle to determine what services to fund for 2006, citizens can tackle those same budget issues using an online tool on the City's web site called the "Budget Calculator."
The calculator was developed for the Mayor, City Council, and senior managers. Now, the City is making the tool available to citizens at by clicking here. Citizens can see detailed explanations of all the services the City provides using General Fund dollars—that's tax dollars, primarily sales tax, property tax, and utility tax. And, they'll see how much money the City's department managers have asked for to provide each of those services.
"We hope our citizens will use this tool to gain a better understanding of the City's budget and our financial challenges," says Mayor James West. "As we prepare the 2006 budget, we believe it’s critical for citizens to examine what we do and see what those services cost."
The City has about $121 million to spend on General Fund services for 2006. Those services include Police, Fire, Libraries, Parks, Streets, Municipal Court, Neighborhood Services, and more. If all the City's services were funded at the same service level as in the 2005 budget, it would cost at least $6 million more.
The City is facing another year of budget cuts because of a serious structural imbalance in our budget.
Our expenditures continue to grow at a significantly faster rate than our revenues. Each year, City leaders work to reduce expenditures and increase revenues, but the City has not been successful at dealing with the underlying problem.
For 2006, expenditures are expected to grow by 6.6 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for revenues. Costs for benefits are soaring, and wage growth has outpaced revenue growth. The City also has seen dramatic increases in the price of fuel and other goods.
This imbalance will continue for the foreseeable future. The City's Budget Office is anticipating expenditure growth of 4.5 percent, compared with revenue growth of 2.5 percent through at least 2010.
To address our budget challenges, the City is using an approach to budgeting called "Priorities of Government." First, the City set seven key citizen priorities. They include:
- Growth and Learning
- Healthy Citizens & Environment
- Leadership
- Mobility
- Reduced Vulnerability
- Safety
- Strong Economy
Then, the City's division and department managers were asked to develop proposals, or "bids," to provide services that met the goals of each priority. Those bids were ranked, allocations to each priority area were determined, division and department mangers made recommendations on what to fund, and now the Mayor is working to develop his budget. This is the same process the City used to devise the 2005 budget and to develop a mid-year revision to the 2004 budget.
On the web site, citizens will be able to see all the bids in each of the priority areas. The same dollar amount that the City is using is allocated to each priority. Citizens can use the tool to fund a service at the full cost, a partial cost, or not at all.
Please note that if the amounts listed under each priority are added together, the total won't equal $121 million. Some things are fixed costs—like debt service on outstanding bonds—so they weren't included in this analysis. Also, bids for Parks & Recreation services weren't included because, by City Charter, the Parks' budget is controlled separately by the Park Board.
