This budget will take effect on July 1, 2010.
We will start with community requests, it is ITEM A below..
One of the main reasons that we elect people to the city council is to make decisions about how to spend our money. We taxpayers fund Community Requests utterly either through our property taxes, or our utility fees.
You can think of community requests as welfare for organizations that for one reason or another, the Sac City council members feel should continue to exist. The organizations on this list are unable to be profitable and self-supporting.
It should be noted that some of these organizations could be run as a for profit business to live or die by their ability to be profitable, but the heads of those organizations choose to instead utilize this form of corporate welfare to prop them up.
When looking over this chart, keep in mind that aside from the financial considerations, there are political forces at work as well. Many of the people heading these organizations are in charge of other bits of funding or revenue that the city or the city council members may personally benefit from.
One good solid real life example from this list is the SETD (blue). They, among other things, administer endowment grants for the county. Will the City of Sac City be left out of consideration for a future Sac County Endowment grant if they refuse to fund them now? Answer that quietly to yourself.
Now look over the rest of the list and think about the people on the boards of these organizations. Are 100% of them above using their influence to attain a higher degree of funding for their pet organizations? Answer that quietly to yourself.
The point I'm trying to make is that as much as I pick on the Sac City Council, they are just basically pawns to the true powers that run our town. They are on occasion, helpless to do anything but say yes to those ultimately more corrupt individuals, almost all of which at one point or another take stabs at "giving back" to the community in the form of some vanity project that ultimately ends up on this list.
This is NOT to say that 100% of the organizations on this list were established to cater to some personality’s need to be recognized. It’s unfortunate truly deserving entities are rubbing elbows with the people that are merely soaking taxpayers because they are either too lazy or not smart enough to turn a profit and get off the government support.
But all of that is beside the point. The finance committee has taken all of these factors into account and have decided how much they will give each organization this year. In some cases they have chosen to give nothing. In some cases they have chosen to fund the organization at 100% of their asking.
Occasionally we get lucky and there is a majority of people on our city council with integrity. This happens to be one of those years, and they have obviously attempted to not spend as much money on corprate welfare as those corporations with their hands out would have them spend.
Now it's nothing to celebrate in this year that the state has cut off thousands of dollars in funding for streets, BUT, the finance committee of the Sac City Council has kept spending down to just $50.00 more than last year.
Because of the fact that when people get elected, some of them become outright liars you'll probably hear the following phrase at the February 8, 2010 Sac City Council meeting: "We saved the community $11,000" ( I'll let you know who says it first.) As proof they will cite the figure highlighted in green and contrast it to the figure highlighted in orange in the green box below. Keep in mind that that $83K was requested and not paying it does not mean that the city councilmen saved it for you. True savings, if it were your personal checkbook would be if they did away with the entire $72,000 in funding and lowered your gas or water fees.
Also made clear by this chart (and page 13 of the detailed revenue, ITEM B below) is a peculiar item involving Kid's World. Gas customers are giving Kid's World $20,000 this year (pink), BUT Kid's World is paying back $18,000 of a loan that was given to them by, (you guessed it) gas customers, (ITEM B) This means that the gas customers are paying back Kid's World's original loan to themselves.
In other words, here's what kid's world is doing. Pretend you have a friend who $100.00 from you. You have agreed to be paid back in $20.00 monthly installments. The first month your friend comes to you and gives you $20.00, then turns around and asks you to give him $22.00 just to have, (not to pay back) you agree. The next 4 months the same thing happens. Every single month your friend pays you the $20.00 as agreed, but then you give him $22.00. At the end of the 5 months, you will have loaned your friend $100.00, then gave him $100.00 to pay you back with, then gave him $10.00 bucks on top of THAT.
Because of some fund shifting on their books, it will not look literally like a pass-through, but that doesn't change the fact that that's what it is. Kid's World is the only organization, according to this proposed budget, which is currently paying back money from we purchasers of city gas. There are semi-credible rumors that there are organizations who still owe the city money and are not paying us back, but the documents that prove it magically disappeared from the city utility office.
Another unusual item on this list is the funding request for the Senior Center. If you follow this all the way across, you can see that they asked for $250.00 this year, when the lowest they have ever asked for in the past was $500.00. What happened was, the person that normally did the funding requests went to a nursing home and there was no turnover to the current person running the program. Not having any clue about how much was asked for; they just turned in a request for $250. They were advised on the true amount they “need” and resubmitted the request.
I find it interesting that the Senior Center, when left to their own devices comes up with a figure that's only 25% of what they asked for last year.
You also might not be aware that Partners for Progress (misidentified on this document as Horizons) is moving into the Senior Center. At the Rec Center, they paid a monthly rent of $100.00. If they are not ripping the Senior Center off for less, that means the Senior Center will have an extra $1,200 in revenue that they did not get last year. I'm not suggesting that the Senior Center be cut off at all, BUT, I don't think it's out of line at this point to consider allowing Partners for Progress to slide in and provide the funding currently provided by Sac City taxpayers. At that point in time a few years from now when the few personalities keeping Partners for Progress alive through sheer willpower finally lose interest and the Senior Center again needs that money, we taxpayers could could step back in.
Those are all the unusual or notable items associated with this 1 single page of the proposed Fiscal Year 2010 - 2011 Sac City Iowa budget.
Only 63 pages to go. :)
ITEM A
Community Requests
(click to open in new window and enlarge)
HOW TO READ
FY = Fiscal Year. The city's fiscal year is from July 1 to June 30, EXAMPLE: FY 04-05 is July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005.
ALLOCATED = Distributed according to a plan or set apart for a special purpose. I am allocating a loaf of bread to everyone on a daily basis / I'm allocating the rations for the camping trip.
IN THE COLUMN NAMED "FUNDING SOURCE"
GF = General Fund. The general fund is one of five governmental fund types and typically serves as the chief operating fund of the government. The general fund is used to account for all financial resources except those required to be accounted for in another fund.
W = Water. This means that the corresponding entity is going to receive money from the fees you pay for water.
S = Sewer. This means that the corresponding entity is going to receive money from the fees you pay for sewer.
R = Rain Sewer. This means that the corresponding entity is going to receive money from the money you are charged for the Rain Sewer, more commonly known as the "Roof Runoff Tax".
G = Gas. This means that the corresponding entity is going to receive money from the fees you pay to the gas company.
In the green box in the lower right hand corner are the details of this years totals for community funding. The first colum in the TOTALS row inside that box is how much money was given to the above organizations in fiscal year 2009 - 2010, the second is how much those organization requested for fiscal year 2010 - 2011, and the third column is the total of how much the Sac City Coucil will probably vote to give them in fin fiscal year 2010 - 2011.
Below that in the same green box is the percent of change in each individual fund from the previous year. If you follow GAS over into the green box, you can see that in FY 2009 - 2010 the Sac City spent $50,000 out of the GAS fund. In FY 2010 - 2011 Sac City intends to again spend $50,000 from the GAS fund which if you then follow it over means that there is a 0% change in funds spent from that fund from last year to this year. (the items scribbled in pink are estimations.
To read the top portion of the chart, refer to the orange box. In the orange box is the funding request information for Sac City Chautauqua. As you can see, in FY 2009 - 2010 they were allocated $1,500. this year, they asked for $2,000 but will again be receiving $1,500 and it will be funded from the General Fund.
The item highlighted in yellow named "Horizons" is actually an organizations named "Partners for Progress"
ITEM B
DETAILED SAC CITY BUDGET PAGE 13: REVOLVING LOAN FUND (revenue)
(click to open in new window and enlarge)
