The East Grand Forks council is sharpening up their pencils in an attempt to come up with $346 thousand dollars to close a proposed 2024 city budget gap.
The council is trying to keep next year’s levy increase to no more than five-percent. The current numbers would require an eleven-percent bump to balance the books. Adding to the deficit is a 29% jump in health insurance and a pending increase in employee pay.
City Administrator Reid Huttunen says a finance committee reviewing the numbers has identified some savings both short term and long term – but nothing that will have an immediate impact on the deficit. “The piece that’s not on the list that we come back to is the level of service. If we need to see cuts in those…what services does the city council want to prioritize?”
Finance Director Karla Anderson says that leaves personnel still on the table.
Mayor Steve Gander asked the council to ponder what bottom line figure they are willing to carry in the negative going into next year. “We’ve done that a number of years and very often what we find is that our budgeting process is pretty conservative. That means we tend to under-estimate revenues and over-estimate expenses a little bit. Whatever that number was at the start of the year is less of a deficit than what we initially projected.”
The proposed budget totals roughly $13.6 million dollars. The council will set a preliminary levy later this month with final budget approval in December.
Picture: EGF staff report grapic
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