Preliminary city budget 3 percent down from 2003

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM--While the city's preliminary 2004 budget is lower and the taxes needed to help fund it will be less than this year, City Council members still were looking Tuesday for justification to head off expected criticism from legislators next spring.

"I just know that when they (legislators) hear we're taking the 60 percent increase, come February, they're going to be blaming us for raising taxes," Councilor Clark Tuttle said.

Councilors were given a preliminary budget that calls for spending $12,287,848 which would be a decrease of $387,327, or 3.06 percent, from 2003. The proposed 2004 levy, including a 60 percent levy-back to recover budget cuts in 2003, is pegged at 3,763,598, down $19,765 or .52 percent from the $3,783,363 levied in 2003.

"The impact on New Ulm is that we'll be levying less (than in 2003)," City Manager Brian Gramentz said.

"It looks like at this point that the 60 percent levy-back will have minimal impact on property owners," Council President Dan Beranek added.

Tuttle then asked that all department managers document for the council what the cuts they were forced to make mean to the community.

"I want people to realize what these legislators are forcing us to do," Tuttle said.

Even the commissions and organizations that the city supports with tax money are going to feel it this time around.

"In 2003, the departments were cut, but the groups we subsidize didn't get cut. This time we're cutting them," Gramentz said.

Groups including the Concord Singers, Healthy Communities/ Healthy Youth, Heritagefest, Human Rights Commission, Lind House, Municipal Band, New Ulm Battery, South Minnesota Initiative Fund, taxi service subsidy and Wanda Gag House all are facing substantial cuts.

The city's support of the Region 9 Development Commission's Small Business Development Center will drop to zero under the preliminary budget proposal.

"I'm inclined that the cuts all be closer to zero if it is needed elsewhere," Tuttle said.

In previewing the staff's budget-cut proposals, Gramentz said: "We're going to reposition some duties and see if we can get by. It may be longer range things that will fall to a lower level (of priority). We're going to do the important stuff, and when we can, we'll get to it with other things."

He advised the councilors that "when you see an increase, there's a corresponding decrease somewhere else."

But there were some economies achieved, too, in making the cuts, he said.

"We found that by hiring three part-time employees to provide cleaning services for our four public buildings (including the fire station) that it worked out better than when we had staff at each of them," Gramentz explained.

Gramentz noted different approaches being used in dealing with cuts in the library and park and recreation department budgets.

"In the library, they're trying to save staff by reduced capital expenditures, and in park and rec, the idea is to keep the full-time staff to keep buildings running while cutting programs."

In the library, Director Carolyn Baird said the book budget is being cut by 30 percent, and magazine subscriptions and alternative audio visual formats would be cut by half.

Programs to be cut in park and rec focused on enrichment classes and leisure service programs, including arts and crafts, trips, playground, the Puppet Wagon, and programs, Director Dave Bechtold said.

Gramentz said, in addition to inflation, the principal due in 2004 in the city's debt service funds increased 15.37 percent over 2003 and the interest due increased 4.05 percent.

After accepting the preliminary budget and setting the maximum property tax levy for 2004, the council set Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2003 at 5 p.m. as the date for a public hearing on the 2004 budget. It also set Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003 at 5 p.m. as an additional hearing date if needed.