With a Sept. 15 deadline looming, Columbus city officials have started preliminary discussions for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget.
Chief Financial Officer Mike Bernsen said meetings with the city’s department heads were held Wednesday and Thursday.
“Right now, their budgets are just basically gigantic wish lists as they operate under the ‘if you don’t ask you won’t get it’ philosophy. We will make our recommendations and the budgets will become suggested budgets.”
Bernsen said the members of the city council will begin holding work sessions toward the end of next week.
“We like to have the budget as cleaned up as possible when it goes to the council,” said Bernsen.
After the council discusses the budget, Bernsen said a general work session will be held where the final budget will be compiled. A public hearing will then be held before the budget is approved before the Sept. 15 deadline. Millage rates and property taxes will also be discussed at the public hearing.
The bulk of the city’s operating budget is made up of collected sales tax and property taxes. Bernsen said there are “many other line items” that also contribute to the budget. With a budget of $22,983,000 in FY 2012, Bernsen is optimistic about the prospects in the coming year.
“I’m a diehard optimist,” said Bernsen. “We certainly hope our sales tax numbers will continue to increase. We were down for the month of July from 2011 and that is the only drop we have seen. We still have two months in which to collect and we are hoping that our collections will still end up higher than last year. But we are going to budget based on the 2012 numbers, which is $8.8 million collected in sales tax. But I’m cautiously optimistic — it still could go either way. We are going to be conservative on property taxes because we have lost some of that revenue. We are still gathering information and we can’t accurately project what the millage rates or tax rates are going to be for the coming year.”
Jeff Clark was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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