Budget figures in question

CITY HALL — A $167.8-million capital improvement plan that was approved in March after six months of laborious study sessions may face renewed scrutiny, city officials said, if a reexamination of the budget finds there is less money available for the projects than originally thought.

As part of the effort to determine how much, if at all, the budget figures are off, City Manager Jim Starbird has applied “additional resources” to the effort and last week replaced acting Director of the Finance Department Ron Ahlers with Senior Internal Auditor Bill Fox.

While it is too early to tell if the budget available for the 10-year capital improvement plan is accurate or off, the staffing reassignment was made to make sure “we had staff there we could be confident in,” Starbird said.

City officials would not say what spurred the audit in the first place, but at issue is whether the City Council based funding decisions on an inflated budget. If so, cuts to those finalized appropriations would have to be made in order to balance the budget.

Ahlers could not be reached for comment Thursday, and a secretary in his department said he would not be back until Monday. City executives are moving closer to finding a permanent replacement for the head finance position, and will probably have one selected by the end of this month, Human Resources Director Matt Doyle said.

Fox and his team are working to complete the audit ahead of the budget study sessions for fiscal year 2008-09 planned for later this month.

“I’m sure we will have to make some adjustments,” he said, adding that it was too early in the process to know what those adjustments may be.

The fact that there is a reexamination of the capital improvement budget at all has produced a certain level of “insecurity” on the City Council, Mayor John Drayman said.

Allocations for fire stations, an expansion of the library system, street repairs, parkland acquisition, an aquatic center and technology upgrades are all packed into the budget, which spreads the funds over a 10-year period based on priorities the City Council set after six months of tedious study sessions.

Each year, the council is scheduled to revisit the list of priorities and put them up against the financial picture for that year.