Town Budget
- nealsshah
- Sep 28, 2022
- 2 min read
Lots of work for a quality product
The Board just wrapped up about 9 hours discussing the FY23 budget. We get really into the weeds since this board, and many before it, truly want to understand all the nuances and assumptions that under pin the forecasts. Based on all the feedback from the Board, Staff will come back to the October 10th meeting for adoption. Like with any budget, it is a bit of an iterative process as staff has to take our feedback (across all six of us) and figure out a way to make it balance. All that said on the process, some thoughts on the assumptions:
We clearly have some headwinds on the revenue side. The town derives the vast majority of revenue from sales & use taxes. Most neighboring communities are seeing double digit increases in this revenue source, but not Superior. With Target having been closed through the end of August and Tesla still closed and a large number of our residents displaced, we have a conservative forecast for revenue
Given the above, our spending has to comprehend uncertainty and what we can do about it. Some x factors: How fast will rebiulds happen? How many won't rebuild? These are terrible questions to ponder and I remain hopelessly optimistic about our rebuilds
Will the Tax extension pass? This is the 0.16% tax that was initially approved by the voters in 2003 to help pay for the Diverging Diamond interchange. Most folks have probably forgot how bad traffic would get trying to get onto US36 headed westbound
in the mornings. The DDI has been amazing in terms of decreasing accidents and increasing throughput. That tax sunsets at the end of 2022 and we're asking the voters to approve an extension (10 years) to help fund expenses related to the Marshall Fire. The budget (point of this post) assumes it won't pass and you can see how we have had to make a sizable number of cuts.
A key aspect of the budget, is how much stays in the bank each year. That's the "reserve" or what I think of as the shock absorber. It allows us the ability to continue functioning if something really bad happens. Like the Marshall Fire....Or the 2013 floods.
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