Council approves $19.5M preliminary budget for 2012-13

City manager Rick Olson

Page city council put its stamp of approval on a preliminary budget June 13 of $19.5 million, and scheduled a public hearing on it for June 27.

Noting that the spending plan was the product of multiple workshops, city manager Rick Olson called it an “absolute piece of art” as he reviewed it for council.

With Page facing a lake full of red ink, due in large part to sharply higher bond payments set to commence, councilors and city staff scrambled to balance the budget. Their biggest move was to terminate the heads of several city agencies, including the police and fire departments.

After the preliminary plan was approved 5-0 — Vice Mayor John Kocjan and councilor John Mayes were absent — council went on to approve Olson’s recommendation to transfer $355,000 from the sewer fund to bolster the city’s contingency fund.

He originally sought a contingency equal to 5 percent of the total budget — about $1 million — but when all was said and done, the balanced budget included only about $110,000.

So Olson revised his request to 2.5 percent. Adding the sewer fund money to the existing allotment raises the contingency fund to near that level, about $465,000.

He assured council that neither sewer services nor infrastructure will be affected by the transfer. And if the money isn’t spent, it would be returned to enterprise fund, he added.

That is, in theory the money might not be spent — in essence, it’s a “rainy day” fund — but councilor Lyle Dimbatt verbalized what most were likely thinking.

“It’s like loaning your family money. Is it a loan or is it gone?... It’s gone.”

Olson offered a timely example of the types of things the contingency money would be used for. He said the airport’s security system had crashed the day before and that it might cost $20,000 to $25,000 to get it up and going again. Those funds wouldn’t have been in the budget because it was an unforeseeable event.

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