Generally speaking, Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson’s latest quarterly budget update to the City Council on Tuesday was a dead ringer for his past several ones.
Most city revenue streams remain stagnant or well below projections. To avoid layoffs and cuts to city services, Anderson said, the city made another round of nips and tucks in spending, department by department.
With the city’s approved $443 million general fund budget for 2009-10 now projected at $406 million based on actual revenues so far this year, the city will also need to dip into $3.8 million in reserves and refrain from filling vacant positions, he said.
“It’s an abnormal recession,” Anderson told council members. “We do not anticipate that we will be fully out of it till (20)12. So it’s longer and it’s deeper. I don’t think that’s news to anyone.”
But at least one new twist emerged from the latest budget update: A dispute over the Tacoma Public Library budget, originally approved for $24.7 million.
As part of their first-quarter balancing act, Anderson and Finance Director Bob Biles recommended a $1.6 million cut from the library budget – a “goal” Anderson said his budget team gave to library officials earlier this month.
After the presentation, Library Director Susan Odencrantz said the library cannot make those cuts this late in the budget cycle, in part because it already has spent or encumbered the money based on its approved budget.
The last time Anderson met with the library board was in November, after which the board agreed to reduce library spending by more than $400,000. Since then, the board has asked for budget information from the city manager’s office to help it plan its budget, but heard nothing of the latest proposed cut until earlier this month, Odencrantz said.
“We can’t turn the ship that fast,” she said. Though she declined to say what impacts the proposed cuts might have, she added: “It will be a killer for us.”
Unlike with other city departments, Anderson doesn’t have the authority to revise the library budget. Considered a “sub-agency” to the city, the library gets its budget appropriation from the city. Under state law, the library’s Board of Trustees is responsible for spending that money, though the City Council also can revise the library’s overall appropriation.
While every other department head has agreed to restrict spending, the library board so far has not agreed to his budget team’s latest “goal” for the library, Anderson said.
So, Anderson said he brought the matter to the council, laying out five alternatives for potential action – ranging from allowing the library to keep its budget as is, to making different kinds of spending revisions.
The council decided it wants to meet with the library board before choosing an option. A meeting with the board is set for the council’s regular study session next Tuesday.
Mayor Marilyn Strickland and Councilman Jake Fey both noted that the library board has for months sought budget information from the city.
“It’s clear that the library board was paying attention and was cooperative,” Fey said. “That was laid out for me months and months ago.”
Odencrantz said she heard of the city’s latest budget recommendation for the library April 14.
All department heads received budget adjustment information at about the same time, and had been working with the city budget team well before that, Anderson said.
“We are dealing with the biggest recession (since) the Great Depression,” Anderson said. “It takes us time to analyze the information we have before we can go to the department heads.”
The latest round of budget balancing, in part, is based on how departments so far have actually spent their budgets, while previous adjustments were made based on departments’ projected spending. The change was made because budget projections “were not holding up” as the budget cycle has unfolded, Biles said.
“That’s a sea change in how they’ve been budgeting up to this point,” Odencrantz noted. “We had no idea this (requested cut) was coming.”
Aside from the library’s recommended cut, now left to the council to decide, Biles and Anderson have made $8.4 million in cuts to the Public Works Department, and $9.2 million to “non departmental” spending, among other trims.
The city also has reduced by $3.8 million surplus contributions into city fire and police pension funds and city health insurance.
The reduced contribution levels still leave those funds above required levels, Biles said.
“The payments into these funds have essentially been higher than what was required, so we have surpluses,” Anderson said.
With all trims, the city still faces a $48,000 budget gap. Anderson added he does not expect the city will make service cuts or layoffs, “so long as the economy improves.”
Lewis Kamb: 253-597-8542
lewis.kamb@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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