MOUNT VERNON — The City Council didn’t go through next year’s $54 million budget line item by item Tuesday night.
Even if they had, city officials say they would have found nothing left to cut.
The 2009 budget was already $2.3 million smaller than this year’s, called for five fewer jobs and skipped $1.7 million in requests from city department heads. It was months in the works, and Tuesday night, the City Council debated a few changes but made none before adopting the mayor’s proposed budget unanimously.
Mayor Bud Norris, who has been in office since 2004, said it was the toughest budget process he has ever faced, and the longest. He said city staff started working earlier, knowing it would be a rough, and that the City Council was included in the process more than ever.
“The difficult challenge is we already have a lean budget and staff for the city,” Norris said, referring to the budget and staffing levels for 2008 and previous years.
That already “lean budget” required deep cuts between this year and next as revenues continue to fall short of expectations.
The Community and Economic Development Department was among the hardest hit with a nearly 13 percent, or roughly $220,000, cut between this year and next, much of which will come from eliminating two positions.
The large decrease in funding is due to the decrease in demand for the department’s services, Finance Director Alicia Huschka said last week. Building activity has decreased, she said, and so has the workload for department employees.
Other departments, however, will see no decrease in activity next year despite smaller than requested budgets.
The Fire Department, for example, will have to make do with $270,000 less than Fire Chief Roy Hari requested. To deal with the shortfall, he scaled back training, travel and equipment expenditures.
Councilman Scott McMullen, a firefighter with the Boeing Co., took notice of the cut in training and in a final hour plea suggested raising the 2009 property tax levy by one half of a percent next year, generating about $30,000, to fund fire training.
The motion failed, just like earlier efforts to increase next year’s property tax levy.
Even with the less-than-ideal training budget, the Fire Department’s total spending will grow next year as will the budgets for most city departments. That is largely due to increases in salaries, which went up by 4 percent for non-union employees and by varying amounts for those represented by unions, and health care costs.
The city’s health care costs will increase 23 percent next year, Huschka said, equaling about $710,000.
For now the city will cover that cost she said, but starting next year the city will have to freeze the cost of health care. That will likely mean changes in benefits and increased costs for employees, she said last week.
“We have had an extremely good heath care plan and unfortunately we are not going to be able to afford it much longer,” Norris said Tuesday night.
* Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .
