Mayor-elect Corbett doesn't hesitate to challenge city staff at his first budget meeting

City Council budget meetings always seem to come with a little bit of a flavor that much has been worked out behind the scenes, the results of which ultimately will emerge in a public meeting in late January or so.

In any event, the role of City Council members at early budget meetings has typically been to listen as the city manager, the city's finance director and the department heads make presentations with wish lists for the city's next budget year.

Mayor-elect Ron Corbett apparently hasn't yet gotten the memo.

At Thursday evening's budget meeting, Corbett first took on the city's new 1-percent franchise fee on electric bills, a fee the city has yet to impose on gas bills.

Corbett, an opponent of the franchise fee, wondered why the city estimated that the fee would bring in about $1.2 million a year to the city, when, in fact, the city now expects it will bring in twice that amount on electric bills alone.

City Manager Jim Prosser said the city didn't have good access to Alliant Energy information when it made its estimates last spring.

Corbett also wondered why Alliant was paying the city the fee revenue quarterly and not monthly so the city could collect the interest on the revenue, not Alliant. Prosser said he would check, but he said state law might dictate when the money is transferred.

The mayor-elect next wanted to know how the city was doing now that it was nearing the six-month point of the current budget year before he wanted to know about plans for the budget year beginning July 1, 2010.

At one point, Finance Director Casey Drew noted that the city was losing some tax revenue because of abatements on flood-damaged property, but he said the city hoped that new construction in the city would offset that loss.

To this, Corbett asked, “You hoped?”

Corbett wondered if city staff tracked revenue and expenditures during the budget year. He noted that the state of Iowa, for instance, has been making cuts in its current budget year because of negative developments in the state's fiscal picture. How does the city know it shouldn't be doing the same thing? he seemed to be suggesting.

City Manager Jim Prosser said there is value in doing such budget tracking. At the same time, he noted longer-term changes in the market value of property has more affect on the city's budget.

(Even so, nearly six months into the current budget year, the city is reporting that the Police Department will not be taking in $200,000 and the Fire Department $175,000 in expected revenue from a new accident-response fee because of its iffy legality. The current Police Department budget also anticipates $750,000 in annual revenue from red-light and speed-enforcement cameras, which are not yet in place.)

Corbett next had questions about the cost of the city's flood-recovery director, Greg Eyerly.

Corbett noted that the council created the position only after some local private-sector employers made a commitment to paying some portion of the position's expense.

City staff noted that the local business community was paying $60,000 in the current budget year toward the $206,029 annual cost for Eyerly's position. The city is now proposing to pay the entire annual cost on its own in the next budget year.

Didn't the city negotiate with the local employers for a three- to four-year commitment? Corbett asked. He wondered if the city had been the victim of some kind of “bait and switch.”

Prosser - who along with a council majority had been kind of slow to embrace the creation of Eyerly's position - suggested that Corbett talk to the private sector.

Corbett left after about an hour to wait on tables as part of a non-profit fundraising event for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization.

He will take office on Jan. 2 along with two other new council members, Chuck Swore and Don Karr.

Outgoing Mayor Kay Halloran invited them to join the budget presentation since the new council is the one that approves the next budget.

Both Swore and Karr had questions for City Attorney Jim Flitz wondering if Flitz's staff of four attorneys might be too many for the city.

Karr didn't want to pay attorneys “to chip golf balls in your office,” he told Flitz.

Flitz noted that his office has a lower per-capita cost than other Iowa cities with full-time attorneys' offices.

Council member Kris Gulick noted that contracting for legal fees might cost $175 an hour if the city decided to farm more legal work out.