City leaders have been meeting for months to chew and chaw over the upcoming biennial budget.
But Auburn residents first put eyeballs on and ears to the 2017-2018 preliminary biennial budget at the initial public hearing Oct. 17.
Unfortunately, few Auburnites showed up, and no one spoke.
Public hearing number two is at 7 p.m. Nov. 7. At the Nov. 21 hearing, the City expects to present the property tax levy and the budget. The property tax levy is due to King County on Dec. 1.
“This is really consolidated from everything we have looked at in our meetings,” City Finance Director Shelley Coleman told the Council.
Auburn’s budget may be seen on the City’s website under the rubric Fiscal Reports.
To summarize, the document shows an $184 million expense budget for 2017, which, coupled with $82 million in ending fund balances, brings it to $266 million. As for 2018, the city-wide expenditure budget is $190 million. With $74 million in ending fund balances added, that’s about $264 million.
The budget is comprised of about 20 percent capital expenditures — including debt service and other operating expenditures — that provide for services and programs. In previous budgets, Coleman said, general fund revenue sources were about one-third property tax, one-third sales tax and one-third other taxes and fees.
“We’re shifting away from that. We’re relying more and more on property tax revenues, in this particular budget,” Coleman said.
In total, general fund program improvements are about $2.4 million for 2017 and about $3 million in 2018. Other funds come to $870,000 in 2017 and $1,080,000 in 2018. The total for all funds for 2017 is just about $3.3 million and $4.1 million in 2018.
Even though inflation has been under 1 percent, Coleman said, City costs have increased more than 1 percent.
“We have budgeted 4.3 percent increases in salaries alone. A lot of the employees are still getting their step increases, and those are generally about 2 to 2.5 percent per step, and we anticipate with the Teamsters, whose contract is up this year, and with the police contract, which is up next year, those contract increases are running around 2 to 3.5 percent,” Coleman said.
A fly in the soup — sales tax revenue is slowing.
“We’re seeing that thus far they were about 1.7 to 1.8 percent year over year so far. So we have been conservative in our sales tax projections in this biennial budget,” Coleman said.
“… You may have been listening to talk on the street, and we are due for a recession, believe it or not,” Coleman said. “It seems like we just got out of a recession, but it’s been about eight to nine years, and we are due.”
As yet, Coleman said, nobody can say how deep or how long such a recession would be.
“As for interest rates, the results are mixed, whether we’ll see a rate hike in December. It’s about 50-50 so we’ll see, we’re getting close,” Coleman said, noting that given the recent strong jobs report from the federal government, the odds favor a rate increase.
