Last Thursday, The Cape Girardeau city council met for a special budget session to review the proposed fiscal year 2019 (FY19) budget.
The discussion focused on completing projects, such as an increase in spending for public safety and continuing promises made to citizens in PRS2, which voters passed in April. Another topic of discussion, a concern among many councilmembers, was the inability to afford pay raises for city employees.
The proposed operating revenue for FY19 totals just under $72 million, and salaries, wages, and benefits for city employees are estimated to account for $26 million of that total.
Operating expenses are broken down into ten categories, under which public works, public safety, and parks and recreation take large percentages. Respectively, they are estimated to be budgeted around $28 million, $14 million, and $7 million.
Mayor Bob Fox said raising general revenue is of huge importance.
“The bottom line is that we’ve done very well with what we’ve said we’re going to do with streets, parks, and fire tax, and we’ve done very well with all of our capital needs,” said Fox. “But we’ve let the others slide a little bit. We need to have a plan.”
He said this would include hiring more police officers and upgrading salaries, among many other actions.
“It just takes a lot of staff, time, and research to figure out how to do it,” said Fox.
To Ward 4 councilman Robbie Guard, public safety and street maintenance are critical investments when considering the next fiscal year’s budget.
“We have a violent crime problem. That's a fact,” said Guard. “Number two: the streets in town. We’ve received a lot of complaints about those, and that’s been underfunded. We use the TTF5 (Transportation Trust Fund 5) to create new and put new in.”
Another concern among the council is that over the past year, the city has seen a decrease in growth of recurring revenue. This is received primarily from sales tax, which has grown less than 1% in the past year. This has sparked council discussion on whether the flattening of growth is expected to be a continuing trend.
Ward 1 councilman, Dan Presson, addressed the council by asking how they should accommodate the overall rising cost over the next five years.
“We have another study session to address that,” responded Guard. “Because after the use tax, it could be real estate tax, it could be some form we haven’t even come up with yet. Increasing sales tax is not going to be feasible.”
Presson said taking sights off of the future may be beneficial in managing the sales tax.
“‘There’s another tax. In order to patch this hole in the bucket, we’ll put this other tax into play.’ I think we can’t think that way,” said Presson. “We need to frame things in what can we do with what we have, instead of constantly looking to the future to patch holes with additional taxes.”
Presson said that the cost of healthcare, promotions, and personnel are only going to continue to rise, and thinks the council should find efficiencies instead of cutting services.
City manager Scott Meyer agreed, and said one option would be to cut services, but to do so responsibly.
“We want to start with efficiencies, and then talk about services,” said Meyer.
The FY19 budget begins July 1, and will be in effect until June 2019. The first reading for the proposed budget will take place at the second city council meeting next month, June 18.