January and February’s number-crunching will come to a vote Monday, March 6 when the Perry City Council holds a public hearing on the proposed city budget for the 2018 fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2017.
Perry residents are encouraged to attend the hearing, which is set for Monday at 6 p.m. in the Clarion Room of the Security Bank Building at 1102 Willis Ave.
A modest decrease in the total levy is one bright feature of the FY 2018 budget. City taxpayers can expect to pay $17.81392 per $1,000 of taxable valuation next year, a drop of 7.752 cents from FY 2017.
City revenues for 2018 are expected to be about $9.85 million, about $820,000 more than in fiscal year 2017. Revenue sources include $2.76 million in property taxes, $2.39 million in fees and service charges, $820,000 in Local Option Sales Taxes, $920,000 in Iowa road use taxes and about $3 million from other sources.
The following pie chart shows the sources and amounts of the city’s revenues for FY 2018:
Perry’s 2018 budget was drafted before the Iowa Legislature passed its union-busting collective bargaining bill, so planned increases in city employee’s health insurance premiums — city workers now pay 13 percent of their health insurance premiums — might be subject to change.
Unlike the administrators in the Perry Community School District, the Perry City Hall leadership did not sign any 11th-hour agreements with unions representing the city’s workers prior to the reform of Chapter 20, the part of the Iowa Code governing collective bargaining.
Iowa lawmakers are also looking at reforming the state’s Workers’ Compensation law. They say they want to save money for taxpayers by reducing the benefits paid to injured workers, including public sector workers.
Expenditures in next year’s budget are expected to be about $9.75 million. The largest items on the cost side are $2.2 million for public works, $1.78 million for police, $1.59 million for culture and recreation and $1.14 for debt service.
The following pie chart shows the city’s expenses by category:
There was a $4.55 million increase in the value of taxable property in Perry over the previous year, according to the office of the Dallas County Assessor.
Susie Moorhead, Perry’s finance officer, has worked a lot of overtime in the last six weeks, repeatedly holding meetings and workshops with both city council members and heads of Perry’s seven service departments: public safety, public works, health and social services, culture and recreation, community and economic development, business-type activities and general government.
“When we receive the capital expenditure requests, we ask the department heads to prioritize the requests,” Moorhead said. “We make sure each department receives adequate, if not generous, funding for their capital requests.”
After paying down previous loans and bonds, the city expects to have about $480,000 in Local Option Property Tax revenues to put toward capital spending in 2018. Heads of the city departments asked for about $1.8 million in capital expenditures in their original budget line-item requests submitted in February, but they prioritized their requests.
Most departments received the capital equipment they asked for, although the Public Works Department will have to wait for its $250,000 street sweeper, and the Cemetery Department will not see its needed $139,550 road replacement next year.
