Less than a week after the City of Charlottesville reported a surplus of $1.7 million, Director of Budget and Performance Management Leslie Beauregard presented the forecast for the next fiscal year. Things are not looking too bright.
According to staff reports, revenues in 2009 were over budget by $254,506, while expenditures were down more than $5 million.
Real estate tax was over budget by more than $73,000, while sales tax was down more than $900,000.
The preliminary FY 2010 budget approved earlier this year was $142.3 million. It has now been revised to $140.5 million, a decrease of 1.4 percent. Beauregard told City Council that the revenue shortfall projected for FY 2010 is $2.1 million and the reserve fund City Council decided to put in place as part of 2010 is currently $2.8 million.
Although councilors will address where the surplus will go toward in their next meeting, some residents have voiced their concerns about wasteful spending.
Colette Hall, president of the North Downtown Residents Association, urged council to use the surplus wisely. “I always say this, but we need to budget for our needs and not for our wants,” she told C-VILLE. Hall says that there are things a city can’t do without, and for those items, the budget cannot be cut. “Do I think we need more lighted sidewalks? Absolutely. If we have sewer pipelines that are falling apart, do we need to fix them? Absolutely,” she says.
Most worrisome, the sales and use tax, which was nearly $1 million under budget in 2009, won’t see much improvement in 2010. Reflecting national economic trends, city officials are projecting a decline of 5.3 percent in revenue from sales.
Interestingly, however, business licenses “performed well” and come in over budget by almost $1.5 million. According to Bernard Wray, director of finance, the projected original 2010 budget for business tax revenue was $5.7 million. “We are now estimating in the forecast for 2010 that business licenses will be $6.1 million or $400,000 over budget,” he said in an e-mail. Lee Richards, the city’s commissioner of revenue explained that the 2009 surplus came in as a one-time collection of funds from audits performed on businesses in Charlottesville.
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