The panel will make recommendations on the city’s spending plan
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
The Ashland Citizen Budget Committee was presented with the city manager’s proposed budget and the financial metrics of various city departments during the first of three committee meetings Wednesday.
City Manager Sabrina Cotta said a balanced budget of $372.5 million is proposed for the biennium that begins July 1, with $89.7 million for capital funds and $100.2 million for the general fund.
Ashland faces numerous potential pitfalls in the coming biennium, including uncertainty regarding previously reliable federal grants. State grants are sometimes only a “pass-through” for federal funding. That means grants in general may be scarce in the near future, Cotta said.
Limited reliance on federal funds
“The city is in a good position in that a lot of our essential services are not reliant on federal funding,” she said. “We are continuing to monitor and we’re continuing to be impressively nimble for a government — I think — to try to get after opportunities as they are presented and continuing to push things forward.”
Cotta noted how the loss of a FEMA grant program previously counted on to support the city’s water treatment plant project prompted city staff to swivel to applying for an alternative and potentially still live FEMA grant, as reported by Ashland.news.
The statewide cap on property taxes is a problem for city general funds throughout Oregon. Ashland also has limited industry and a largely tourism-based economy. The city owns a high number of facilities in need of maintenance and is seeing other issues, such as a decline in reimbursements from Medicaid for ambulance services
For the next two years, the city’s budget will be conservative and focused on maintaining essential services, Cotta said.
Councilor Eric Hansen asked if the Budget Committee determined it wanted to revisit something previously discussed by the City Council, such as fees. Cotta responded that the Budget Committee could make a recommendation for the council’s approval and vice versa.
Changes to the city manager’s proposed budget require a majority vote of the committee or eight members of 14, said Finance Director Marianne Berry. At the next meeting of the committee, such changes need to be discussed and specified to give staff enough time to complete the budget. Every meeting of the committee is a public meeting, and any comments from the public could be “folded in,” to that discussion, she said. The committee cannot approve the addition or removal of personnel or programs but will approve the final budget.
Parks spending will be topic
The committee will meet again on May 7 and May 14, according to the city’s public meeting calendar. The May 7 meeting will include a discussion of Ashland Parks & Recreation, Cotta said. An interactive budget book is available online.
The departments of Police, Fire & Rescue, Public Works, Information Technology and Ashland Fiber Network budget data. View the slideshow presented at the meeting.
| Police FTE (full-time equivalent staff) — 38.0 Budget: $19,139,886 | Electric FTE — 20.0 Budget: $42,436,776 |
| Ashland Fire & Rescue FTE — 45.0 Budget: $25,241,978 | Public Works (general fund as opposed to divisions and enterprise funds) FTE — 21.5 Budget: $8,487,863 |
| Ashland Fiber Network (part of IT department) FTE — 6.0 Budget: $7,110,975 |
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
