Colby council discusses preliminary budgets
Much of the discourse during the Colby city council’s September meeting revolved around the annual budgets that were submitted by the governing body’s various committees.
Of particular interest to the council was an examination of the joint Central Fire & EMS District’s budget. While very little changed between the amount allocated for 2023 and the proposed 2024 budget, it was this lack of change that sparked the discussion among the council members.
“You know, quite honestly, they continue to underestimate the EMS fees for service,” city clerk Connie Gurtner said during the meeting. “If you look at the past few years, we are budgeting $300,000 as revenue. We are $250,000 right now and that’s just through July.”
This underbudgeted revenue from EMS service fees has also been seen in 2021 and 2022. Two years ago, the district received roughly $374,000 in revenue from fees and last year was even higher, sitting at around $423,000. Even in 2020, which saw a significant drop in EMS service calls due to the pandemic, the district only barely came in under the normal $300,000 target figure.
While it was noted that it was better to be conservative rather than underbudget for revenue and then come up short at the end of the year, especially given that there is no way to fully predict EMS usage, the consistent trend of increasing fee revenue was something that the council generally believed that the district’s board should examine more closely next year.
“When you budget $300,000 and all the other revenues are fairly fixed, you now made $120,000 extra in 2022 and you’re projected right now to almost earn $200,000 in extra income in 2023,” Gurtner continued.
The extra funding is put into the district’s cash balance, which is usually utilized for large purchases that are difficult to budget for, like new vehicle. And while members of the council noted that having that extra revenue going towards those future purchases is necessary to some degree, there was also a question of how much and if some of that extra funding should be passed on to the member municipalities by cutting back their contributions slightly.
“When you see a solid three year sample where you are over budget, you can increase that enough and give a break to the municipalities,” Gurtner concluded.
“The biggest thing is explaining to everybody that just because they had this five year plan for buying a truck each of these years, we can’t afford that,” council member Nancy O’Brien, who is on the Central Fire & EMS committee, said. “They just keep getting more expensive.”
The total for proposed EMS 2024 budget sat at $699,400, which was up from the $665,650 budgeted for 2023, though the city of Colby’s contribution actually decreased slightly.
Other committees also noted their proposed budgets items in their reports, with the parks and recreation committee requesting funds for repainting the midway food stand and the replacement of several items around town like lights and picnic tables.
The department of public works also discussed initial big budget items in their report. The purchase of a basket truck and a proposed road project between Community Drive and Highway 13 were the biggest items listed in the proposed $895,420 budget. The council will discuss the city’s full budget more in depth at next month’s meeting.
