The city is on target to post a $327,000 surplus by the end of the fiscal year, according to the third quarter update.
This is almost twice as much as projected at the halfway point of the year.
“On a $140 million budget it’s still peanuts,” said director of finance Gene Peskens.
The city runs balanced budgets every year, Peskens said. At the second quarter mark, the finance department was projecting a $175,000 surplus for 2010. The growing overall surplus is the result of small surpluses in many areas, not one large element, Peskens said. One area where the city has seen bottom line improvement is in the return on its investments, he said.
A couple of years ago the city was criticized for winding up with surpluses around $2 million. The latest update shows the budget process has been fine-tuned since then, said city manager Bill Holtby.
“It’s playing things very close to the line. At this point in time I would think that we would be certainly under a million dollars in terms of a surplus at the end of the year,” he said. “That’s less than one per cent of our overall budget.”
The city had received $108.9 million in revenue to the end of Sept. 30 and is forecasting to collect $143.4 million by the end of the fiscal year. This is a $900,000 increase from the budget estimate.
The city had spent $106.4 million at the third quarter mark. Administration is forecasting to spend $142.8 million to be spent by the end of the fiscal year, $300,000 more than the budget estimate.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said the fiscal situation is looking good and he’s not concerned.
“My experience is that generally they’re going to forecast fairly conservatively each quarter so likely there’s no bad news in this by the end of the year,” he said.
The only time he gets concerned is when the budget goes sour and can’t be recovered.
“In this situation it’s close enough to not be a concern,” Crouse said.
