by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The budget process is grueling. There are hours of number crunching, questions, answers, enough acronyms to fill a mini-novel and plenty of “what ifs?”
And, that was just at Wednesday’s budget review meeting between the Council Auditor’s Office, City Council Finance Committee Chair Art Shad and members of Mayor John Peyton’s staff.
The actual hearings get underway today with a special hour-long meeting of the full Council and conclude — hopefully for all involved — Sept. 25 when Council gives its final blessing to the nearly $960 million budget. In between, there is a plethora of meetings, presentations, a little wrangling, some teeth-gnashing and plenty of scrutiny.
After the special Council meeting, the Council’s Finance Committee will begin hearing from the various City departments and independent agencies.
The Police & Fire Pension Fund opens the hearings during which Fund Executive Director/Administrator John Keane will officially unveil his $20.6 million budget. Of that, $12 million is going towards the old Haverty’s Building which the Fund is renovating and will lease back to the City. Wednesday, Shad — noting the $750,696 administrative salaries for nine people (led by Keane’s $250,000 annually) — questioned whether the Council had any authority to adjust the Fund’s budget.
Kirk Sherman, Council auditor said the Fund presents its budget to Council as a courtesy.
“They get the assets, we get the liabilities,” said Sherman, adding the proposed budget includes a City contribution of $53.1 million to the Fund. According to information provided by Keane, as of May 31, the market value of the Fund’s investments was $1.1 billion.
Wednesday’s hearings also include the Tax Collector, the mayor’s office and several others. Along the way, Council Auditor Kirk Sherman and his staff will assist every way possible. Sherman said he or a staff member will be on hand to answer any questions or address issues from both Council members and the current budget presenter. This round of budget hearings continues through Aug. 30 and wraps up with the City’s Information Technology Department.
That hearing hardly marks the end of the budget process for Sherman’s office. In fact, by the end of the month, Sherman and his staff will have put in thousands of hours compiling or preparing 37 very different budgets.
“Most of my staff works on this,” said Sherman, who has been with the City since 1979.
Sherman said about 13 employees have spent about two months working full-time on the various budgets. And, those aren’t 40-hour weeks and they won’t be for a while. Sherman estimated most work 50-60 hours a week during the budget process. Taking an average of 55 hours a week and figuring those 13 employees worked 20 days each month, that’s 28,600 hours to date. And, there’s much more to come.
“It’s a fact of life,” he said. “This is my 28th summer. I don’t plan on having fun during the summer.”
Over the past few years, Sherman has worked hard to streamline the budget hearing process. There isn’t a formal public comment portion of the hearings (there are, however, public hearings on the entire budget during which citizens will have several opportunities to question Council about various budget items) and the amount of back and forth between particular Council members and a presenter has been reduced tremendously. Sherman said in years past, Council members used the budget hearings to address specific issues within their district with a particular City department or agency.
There won’t be a lot of debate over the individual budgets, either, said Sherman. By the time the hearings start, all of the departments and agencies have submitted their budgets to Mayor John Peyton. He and his staff have dissected them and proposed a final number suitable for the department and manageable for the City.
“The decision is all but made,” said Sherman, adding there might be a little give and take. “It’s probably 90 percent done. If there’s an open item, we can always follow up with it the next Thursday.
“These are just tentative approvals. There is no formal status to it.”
After the budget hearings, the tentative final budget will go before the Finance Committee during its first meeting in September. It then goes before the full Council. By the end of the month, both the Finance Committee and Council will have OK’d the budget — and Sherman and his staff can take a deep breath and some time off.