Fort Walton Beach Council minutes — 09-24-1990 Special — reading text

6, 869, 000 it will still be $ payroll, 500. 000 extra which we could eliminate budget and not out of the affect any jobs or any services in the City by using the same payroll. He said there might be one or two employees that need to be added into the budget who are not on last years budget; but there is also one 1 employee, $ 21, 000 for the Chief Building Inspector, and they will eliminate that job. If we went with the same 792, 000. and gave 5% October 1st, we still save 400, 000; if January we went 5% 1st, the $ 300, 000 would probably be in the neighborhood of $ 200, 000 because they would only get 5% for only the last eight months of the year from January to October. That is one way to look at revenues in the budget without cutting out any jobs or cutting any services in the City.  3 9- 24- 90 90/ 91 BUDGET ( CONT.) The second item Mr. deVaux covered is the life and heal th insurance. He employee paysnoted the the smaller amount City pays the larger amount; the and the amounts paid by the City from October to September for health insurance, the total premiums paid to Humana was 574, 116; Macchbees was $ 24, 648; Hull was $ 2, 415; for a total health insurance premium paid last of I year 601, 179. He noted the proposed budget for life & health insurance, which includes the Water Fund, Sewer Fund, CRA, and CDBG Fund, comes to $ 886, 842. If you subtract the $ 601, 179 from the $ 886, 842, there would be a difference of $ 285, 663. He said he did not know what they have been budgeting for an increase in health & life insurance; but if they budget a 25% increase in the insurance rates, then $ 152, 545 would be added to 601, 179, for a total of $ 762, 724; if they todk the proposed amount of $ 886, 842 and subtract the $ 762, 724, which includes the lastyear rate with a 25% increase, there would be an additional $ 124, 118 left in the budget. He explained if he took a true figure of 25% increase of the actual insurance, he would take 25% of 52, 000 for October, November, December, and it would be 65, 000 for nine months; the actually so number would would be greater than savings. a $ 124, 000 He said the insurance representative at a previous Council meeting said the City has been having some good claims and it did not look like the insurance rate would go sky high, as it did in the past; so the City would not have as large an increase as last year. He said if the increase is only 10%, or 17%, the $ 124, 000 would go even larger because he figured 25% of the $ 601, 179. Mr. deVaux said looking at just two items in the by budget, the $ 124, 000 savings in the insurance rates, and the $ 700, 000 savings by just using the actual payroll; the City would save $ 800, 000 to $ 900, 000. He believed the City needed to start using actual numbers, then have a contingency fund set up, instead of over budgeting everything and always coming underneath it. He said those were only two items he looked at, but if they start looking at all the line items in each budget, he thought they could take another 1% off the budget by going back three or four years on each line item to see how much money was spent for each of those years to get an ideas of what will be spent next year. He pointed I out the a Council prime example proposed in postage. say $ 100 was is of $ 100 the amount expenditure for under postage is $ 750, City He said that is a line item where they can spent last year so put down $ 150 for the for which the is last a three years, 7. 50% increase proposed year, and save $ 600; and that can be done line item by line item. He said even giving a 5% pay raise January 1st, he believed they could have a balanced budget, even if they were only $ 700, 000 in the red. 4 9- 24- 90 90/ 91 BUDGET ( CONT.) Mr. deVaux said he has been concerned in past years that staff has always asked Council and to raise revenues every year they budget a deficit budget and come back with a surplus budget at the end. He said, as an example. in the comprehensive annual financial report of the City of Fort Walton Beach ending September 30, 1989. on expenditures in the general fund, the City budgeted a 784, 726 deficit, they ended up with $ 1, 944. 872 positive; that is a difference of $ 2, 729, 000. He said, in this case, they budgeted a deficit and recovered $ 2. 7 million in the budget. He said that tells him they are not spending what they budget, or there are a lot more revenues than they thought they were going to have, and he did not think we were going to have that much more revenues. At this point. Mr. deVaux finished his