It's budget time again, and this year the Clifton Town Council has decided to spread the financial headache around.
With a new council in place, Mayor Tom Peterson decided to invite the various committees in town to submit their own budget wish lists for consideration when looking at the town's overall fiscal needs.
"We're all sold on the benefits of a committee style of government," Peterson said. "We asked the committee chairs what kind of expectations they had, what they needed and the kind of revenue they might be able to create. We're all trying to work together toward the same goal, of making Clifton a better place."
When Peterson and the other members of the Town Council met at his home on Thursday, April 12, it took four hours to go over 14 pages of budget information, said Councilmember Wayne Nickum.
"What's happened in the past is we didn't have as many committees," Nickum said. "We wanted to give them more input and give the residents some empowerment. It's a much more democratic process."
The budget as it is currently written will be the subject of a public hearing at the next Town Council meeting, on Tuesday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Meeting Hall on Chapel Road.
Only a few requests from the committees had to be denied or reduced, Peterson said, but he is hopeful some new sources of revenue for the town will be discovered in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 31.
"Our arts committee just had a small fund raiser that did really well, and we're hoping the wine festival we're doing in August will be a huge success too," Peterson said.
Other possible revenue sources that may be considered in the future include an increased meals tax.
"We have the ability to look at implementing our own real estate tax, but I think we pay too much as it is, so I don't think we'll do that," Peterson said. "I think we'd all be lynched if we looked at that seriously."
BY CHANGING the town's investment plan to include putting money into a state fund, Nickum said the town was able to increase the interest profit on its investment by at least 4 percent per year.
"We had $100,000 in our savings account, but it was only earning us 1 percent interest," Nickum said. "The state plan may fluctuate from day to day, but we're earning about 5 percent now. In the five or six months we were discussing this move, we could've made thousands of dollars. You really have to be careful and decide where to put your money so it's doing the most work for you."
Nickum, who has a background in financial planning, said that's good advice for anyone to consider.
"We've already earned something like $20,000 more through this investment plan that if we'd stayed where we were before," Peterson said.
Calling the public input portion of the budget process "a change of mindset," Councilmember Mike Anton said the council would continue to work with committees after the budget is finalized by a vote in June.
Not everything in the budget will be set in stone, Anton said. For example, in the fiscal year 2007 budget, the town anticipated a gain of $17,000 from the annual Haunted Trail event in October. However, when a severe storm caused major damage to the Buckley Bridge in the park and the event had to be cancelled, that revenue was lost.
"The Haunted Trail is back on the budget for this year, but to a smaller extent," Anton said. The estimated cost to put on the event this year is $5,000 with projected revenue of only $12,000.
Additionally, the 2007 budget included funding for the establishment of a town office, possibly inside the meeting hall.
"We'll probably hold off on that until we know what's going to happen with the sale of Old Town Hall," Anton said. A decision on that property, which architect and Clifton resident Royce Jarrandt has offered to buy, renovate and give back to the town for its use, should be finalized by later this spring.
"People need to look at the budget and come to the public hearing to talk about it," he said. "They need to look at the items with the bigger picture approach to budgeting the town's money."
Anton was also involved in drafting the town's first Capital Improvement Plan, a sliding five-year schedule of improvements to be made around town.
"We didn't know how much money needed to be spent and what kind of projects we wanted to be working on," he said. "This is the start of developing that plan. It's a test drive for this program."
Anton, Nickum and Peterson all said they were optimistic that town residents and committee members appreciated the chance to be involved in the budget writing process.
"The budget is not engraved in stone until we vote on it, and after that it’s even changeable," Nickum said. "It’s a process and we’re getting the public input. People who have concerns about what is stated in the proposed budget should come to public hearing."