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June 26, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels May 15, 2004 $93 million By Steve Zimmerman Ashland Daily Tidings The Budget Committee has finished its 2004-05 budget process and has approved a $93 million budget for the fiscal year, holding the line on property taxes in the process. It will go before the City Council for adoption following a public hearing on June 1. The committee approved a property tax permanent levy of $3.56 per $1,000, approved bond levies of $536,000 and approved the local tax option levy of $1.38 per $1,000. Lee Tuneberg, Ashland Finance Director, said revenues have been and continue to be a concern. "Given all the things we factored in, we do have, in some cases, dwindling or flat revenues but increasing costs," he said. "It was good to hear that our health care is not going to be quite as high as we projected. However, we are anticipating our PERS rates to go up. That is not an immediate cost but we are trying to set aside moneys to minimize the impact itself. "We do have a variety of increases we are imposing on all of our enterprises. The effect on the utility bill will be about 6 percent. That is higher than anybody would like to see it but in some cases we haven't raised the rate in awhile and need to deal with the additional cost. But the property tax is being held virtually the same." Tuneberg noted that keeping the tax rate the same was important. But he said, because of increasing costs in areas the tax finances, the job of holding the line is becoming more difficult. Committee Chairman Marty Levine said the process went well this year. "We didn't spend a lot of time on unnecessary issues," he said. "Sometimes in the past the department heads have wanted to show off the good job they have done. Bit I think they sensed this time we wanted to get down to the task at hand. This year, the department heads spent their time explaining the variances and that was very helpful to us." Levine said the process in the past has not gone this smoothly. "We had some years where there were some strong, differing opinions," he noted. "But this committee has been together the last several years and there is a real team spirit. People are professional and polite and that goes a long way in making the process much more enjoyable for everybody." This is not an extravagant budget, according to Levine. "This is a bare bones budget, Ashland style," he noted. "Ashland delivers an excellent level of service to its citizens and in Ashland that is the standard. Given that, you could say it is bare bones. There is not a lot of expansion, the property tax levy was held, fees were raised but taxes on the average citizen were not." And there were no real surprises in the budget. "We have tried to minimize that kind of thing," Levine said. "At the committee's request, we meet with Lee and (City Administrator) Gino (Grimaldi) and their staff early in the process and go over the goals and parameters that the committee feels from sensing what the community wants." This year, the committee said the property tax rate should go up. Tuneberg and his staff then put the budget together using the parameters given by the committee. The department heads then discussed in what ways they complied with those parameters and, in more detail, what ways they were unable to comply with those parameters. One of those areas was the Parks Department and how they were going to deal with maintenance of school grounds. "The problem is that back in the early 1900s, the City of Ashland voted that parks should be separate and that they should have a separate commission elected by the residents to run it. For years and years, the parks commission had its own levying ability. "When Measure 50 passed, it had the effect of swooping up the parks levy and the city and combining them under one umbrella. And we never really formalized how the parks allocation is determined. Each year the staff produced a citywide budget and has given the parks the same proportionate amount it was given prior to Measure 50." Levine added that if funds get tight, that issue could come to the fore again and some final determination will have to be made on funding parks. Communications was a large part of the budget, with Ashland Fiber Network coming under intense scrutiny. "The key thing here is what is your focus on the budget," Tuneberg said. "If you focus on capital improvements in a given year, that number goes up and down based upon not only need, but 'What do we have the ability to do in any given year?' "The same is true with financing. We may finance a set of projects that may take three years to complete. In this case, we are doing AFN financing three or four years after the fact on some of those costs that were financed internally." Levine said AFN was a focus area of the committee. "That was, individually, the most significant department we looked at this year," he said. "It has had the most struggles and challenges of any of the departments this year. For the first time, we made a examination of where AFN is going, whether it is sellable or if it is salvageable." The committee heard from Navigant, the city's consultant on AFN, about whether AFN could be sold to an outside entity. "We accepted the suggestions of the consultant and we have had the principals from AFN report back about the salability," Levine said. "And after what we heard tonight, we have determined that right now the best course of action is to follow the recommendations of the consultant. Next year we will take a hard look at how they've managed to place those things into the process." A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for June 1 in the city council chambers. A cultural grant subcommittee will meet Thursday evening to discuss what grant money is available and where it should be allocated. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams