South Ogden's Budget Meeting Tonight

As a reminder, tonight's city council meeting will include a public hearing regarding South Ogden's budget and potential cuts. Our city manager, Matt Dixon, appears to have been working around the clock to put together comprehensive plan to help South Ogden emerge from our current situation. At the same time there appears to be some shock and confusion from our local officials at my concern to our budget crisis. I would ask them to remember my blog is titled "From Where I Sit" and so I am posting my opinion based on the limited information I receive regarding the issues, this includes newspapers, minutes, agendas and (when possible) attendance to city council meetings.   At the same time, the resident's of South Ogden can only do the same.   Therefore I am glad tonight we are having a public meeting to help set the record straight and help us all more fully understand the situation at hand.

Some points of interest that will be brought up:

1. Our 2008-2009, 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 budgets have all be challenged with a city deficit. However each year we have made attempts to balance this but cutting back and using our general fund. 2008-2009 we had too much in our general fund and needed to use that money, however would have either way so you can't really use that as an excuse. We have used general funds to balance each year but not as much as we may have heard. In total it appears to be $148,147 has been used of general funds in the past two years.
2. General Funds revenues have dropped nearly $360,000 and Expenditures have dropped $168,488 over the past two years. (Interesting expenditures have only dropped half of what our revenues are. If I did that in my home, I would lose my home!)
3. Our current budget deficit is really $377,535 not as high as $700,000 as has been previously mentioned. The cuts planned should bring us down to $83,491. The city has a plan to help make this happen by some reductions in work force, elimination of the 401k match, cutting back in travel, etc.

This is not an easy job and I am sorry we have to go through this. Though it is next to impossible to compare us to other cities (since all have different revenue streams and structures). I am seeing a lot of cities who are not dealing with these same issues, for example like Plain City and Farr West who both made early adjustments to prepare for the drop in sales tax revenue.

In the end, I would really like our city to stop spending more than it has. I am glad we have an emergency fund and can cover our deficits. But for three years straight we have been in the hole, it appears (from where I sit) we've just kept spending and hoped it would all work. This is hard because we are counting on sales tax revenue to help us and the money hasn't come.

What I want to know is how do we estimate how much sales tax we will receive and how do we adjust the estimate for the current economy?

What do you want to know?