Deena Winter: How will mayor deal with budget shortfall?

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The municipal budget is on the minds of many at city hall these days.

The mayor is putting his budget proposal together and it will go public in about a month.

So everybody’s wondering how the mayor will deal with a $6 million budget shortfall: Will he propose raising property taxes? Or slashing and burning budgets?

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Late last month, Mayor Chris Beutler was tight-lipped on the subject. The budget was about half finished, although much depends on the outcome of negotiations with five of the city’s six unions whose contracts expire this year. The size of salary increases for more than 2,000 city employees will certainly affect the budget picture, since personnel costs account for about 70 percent of city spending.

The city is “feverishly involved in negotiations” with the unions, which he said need to “reach out to the public” to explain the budget situation and “demand as little as they can possibly sell” to their members.

“I believe they understand the difficulty of this year’s budget,” he said. “We need help from the unions.”

The mayor is getting a closeup look at the way public employees’ salaries are set in Nebraska. Public employees aren’t allowed to strike, but their salaries must be comparable to colleagues’ in other cities. And it doesn’t matter how tight the city budget is.

Beutler said he’s “definitely seeing different dimensions” of the state law now that he’s mayor, as opposed to when he was a state senator.

If the city is forced to increase salaries too much, he said, “we’re being forced to dig our hole deeper.” 

Auditing city hall: Where to begin?

The City Council is trying to figure out where to begin, now that it finally has an audit board.

A volunteer audit board is ready to go to work on internal, financial, operational and performance audits of city government. (Although it remains to be seen how much they can accomplish with a $100,000 annual budget.)

The board takes its cues from the City Council, which seems unsure where to begin. Early this month, Council Chairwoman Robin Eschliman wrote a draft request that the audit board evaluate:

* The performance of inspections of weeds, snow removal, graffiti and landscaping in the public right-of-way. Currently, employees are pulled from several departments to do such inspections.

* Whether county, state and federal funds are being appropriately used by the health department and whether the department offers services that are duplicated by other government agencies. She cited as examples  dental work, environmental work and Community Health Services.

* The Antelope Valley Project.

* The Fire Department.

* Possible creation of a public board to oversee public works and water and wastewater divisions.

Also mentioned as a possibility for review: “the interchange between enterprise and general fund dollars.”

On Monday, Eschliman also added to the list of possibilities an examination of the city’s use of tax increment financing. TIF is an urban renewal financing tool the city increasingly uses for economic development and revitalization projects.

The council also discussed possibly forwarding two or three general topics for the audit committee to peruse. But it hasn’t settled on which.

What do the pigeons think?

So far, the new, flat-bottomed Harris Overpass seems to be deterring pigeons, as hoped.

The girders are encased in steel over the Haymarket, leaving fewer ledges on which to roost.

The rest of the bridge will not be pigeon-proof, but some fear the pigeons will move to Haymarket businesses, rather than the west end of the bridge.

Project manager Kris Humphrey said she’s heard comments from business owners about more birds, but no avalanche of complaints.

City finds the leak

No, not that leak.

After a few hundred gallons of water seeped out of Woods Memorial Pool in recent weeks, parks workers finally found the source of the leak.

The leak has prevented the pool — which holds 900,000 gallons of water — at 3200 J St. from opening this season, although its sprayground is open.

Parks head Lynn Johnson said the leak was found at the seam between the deep well and shallow well.

The pool was re-caulked Monday and will be refilled today. The city expects to have the pool operational by the middle of next week. Which would be good, because the pool is scheduled to host a three-day swim meet the weekend of June 20-22.

Parks and Rec considers Irving preschool

The parks department is looking into the possibility of starting a preschool program in the Irving Recreation Center, which adjoins Irving Middle School, 2010 Van Dorn.

Johnson said his department is evaluating whether a preschool would meet a community need and generate revenue on weekday mornings, when the rec center is underused.

The department already offers a nature-oriented preschool program at Pioneers Park Nature Center.

He said it

“Being a lawyer, that won’t be a problem (for you).” — Councilman Doug Emery, after Councilman John  Spatz joked that 10 minutes wouldn’t be enough weekly radio air time for him. Spatz is an attorney.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.