The city of Plymouth is taking ambitious strides toward expansion and modernization, but planning for a bigger, brighter future is proving to be expensive.
City Finance Director Jeff Gardner presented portions of the draft budget for 2008-09 to members of the city council at a special budget workshop on Wednesday afternoon. Revenues conservatively projected for next year are $555,350, slightly below the $564,135 of last year. Expense projections will be the topic of later workshops.
A major part of Gardner's presentation was a comparison of actual expenses for the past year to those projected a year ago. This comparison showed an $86,000 deficit in the current year's budget, which Gardner said was almost entirely due to vastly increased expenses in the planning department. Actual figures for planning show an overrun of more than $87,000 beyond the anticipated expense, while other expenses came in at levels near or below projections.
The 2007-08 budget was approved with an expected deficit of $42,512, so the $86,887 is only $44,375 worse than what the city had already feared.
Many of the expenses associated with the city's anticipation of growth are being paid, either directly or indirectly, by developers planning to complete major subdivisions in the future. As the Plymouth pipeline project proceeds toward fruition, expectations for at least three - if not five or six - major developments are affecting and often complicating many areas of the city's fiscal activities.
The good news for the past year came in the form of $35,000 more in revenues from property taxes than had been expected. No one at the meeting could explain the rise in property values in this year of nearly universal declines.
| Jerry Budrick |