“It's not easy. It's not necessarily the way we would prefer to do business,” said Mayor John Engen. “It's not sustainable. But for this year, folks have figured out a way to save money.”
Earlier this year, Engen asked department heads to find 3.7 percent savings to hold the city's depleted rainy day fund steady. Most ponied up, and the savings amount to $1.7 million.
Most departments tightened their budgets by postponing hirings, Ramharter said. Others plan to forego travel to conferences or hold off on buying new equipment.
Street maintenance Superintendent Brian Hensel found some $72,000 in savings, of which roughly $15,000 came by delaying scheduled purchases. For example, Hensel said instead of buying a new sander this year, he may patch up an old one with welded steel.
“We can cobble. We can get by for another year for sure,” Hensel said.
In the mayor's office, travel was among the costs that got the axe. The cut saved $4,828, according to a spreadsheet provided by the city finance office and posted at www.missoularedtape.com, the Missoulian's government blog. It knocked down the travel budget in the office by more than half, to a $3,192 total.
“For all of us, travel and training is professional development,” said Chief Administrative Officer Bruce Bender.
Bender said the mayor agreed to give up a conference. Bender, who typically attends a national meeting of city managers, already had decided to opt out of a September convention.
At those meetings, Missoula officials gather ideas from other city leaders and listen to national speakers, Bender said. He generally heads to the meetings seeking solutions to a specific problem. One year, he scouted for Web development ideas and found Civic Plus, a company the city has hired to upgrade its own site.
“We were all pretty impressed with it. That helped us focus on where we could go with our Web site,” Bender said.
Information technology director Carl Horton said the overhaul is costing less money than planned, too. The Civic Plus contract is for $68,600, but the Web project was expected to cost more like $80,000 or even $90,000.
“We had had quite a bit of money set aside to do this project, and it came in far less than what we thought,” Horton said.
That money was saved in the Capital Improvement Program before the call came to squeeze department budgets. Horton found savings early on in his department by knocking down his hardware budget from $150,000 to $80,000.
“I slashed my budget,” Horton said.
He found another $25,000 when the mayor asked departments to trim. Some $13,300 of that money is listed as “training” costs, and Horton said his network engineer already had completed training this year. Also, he said some certifications aren't required every year, although the money for them was in the budget.
“Some years, they didn't use it, and some years, they did,” Horton said.
For some department heads, the tight budget year is going to be a nail-biter. The Missoula Police Department and Missoula Fire Department have the biggest budgets, with police at $10.6 million and fire at $9.6 million.
Personnel costs make up most - $9.1 million - of the fire budget, according to the city finance spreadsheet. In his budget report, Engen wrote that departments whose budgets were mostly personnel couldn't meet the 3.7 percent target.
Fire Chief Tom Steenberg reduced his budget by $80,000, of which $45,000 is in overtime costs. The department is fully staffed, so if firefighters avoid injuries and Missoula doesn't see a lot of big fires this year, he said firefighters should be able to avoid the OT.
“I've really got my fingers crossed on the overtime,” Steenberg said.
The Parks and Recreation Department found $62,500 in savings, including some $15,500 in “operating supplies.” Director Donna Gaukler said that means holding off on replacing worn-out parks equipment unless it's a safety issue.
Compost, used to keep turf grasses and flower beds healthy, and gravel cushion for trails are examples of “operating supplies.” So are things like basketballs, baseball bases and tennis nets, but Gaukler said Parks and Rec is going to try to approach the replacement delays in ways that aren't noticeable, at least in the short term.
“It's not preferred because at some point, we're going to have to catch up,” Gaukler said.
A big chunk of the overall savings comes from salaries and wages, or vacancy savings. In other words, some departments aren't filling positions and the openings translate into a gain of $606,665. The finance department saved nearly $49,000 in salaries and wages, for instance. The city attorney saved some $28,000. Parks saved $30,000 and police saved $325,000.
“In police, you'll see quite a bit of holdback,” Ramharter said.
Engen said he hopes the decisions made now will keep the city from having to make even more difficult choices next year. The city cannot do deficit spending, so he said the strategy is about putting money aside.
“These savings are about rebuilding our rainy day fund, our cash balance, and cash balance is very important to helping us maintain a rock-solid credit rating,” Engen said. “Without that, everything we do costs a lot more.”
Had the city not asked departments to squirrel away dollars ahead of time, Ramharter said the fund would be $500,000 in the hole at the end of the fiscal year. Instead, the account will stay in the black and the city plans to grow it in coming years.
“It'll be a planned, concentrated effort, and we're just going to have to ride this out,” Engen said.
Compared with other cities, the mayor also said Missoula is in good shape. He said he's relieved he isn't facing problems like those in Philadelphia, for example, which has cut 200 employees and lopped off programs.
“It's much better to be mayor of Missoula than it is to be mayor of Philadelphia today, and I thank my lucky stars for that,” Engen said. “And I sympathize with the mayor of Philadelphia.”
Reporter Keila Szpaller can be reached at 523-5262 or at keila.szpaller@missoulian.com.
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Fred Garvin wrote on Nov 16, 2008 12:32 PM:
" One can only hope that all the savings opined about in this article are not already spent on some other project. It is pretty clear, stop spending our money on crap that really means nothing in the overall scheme of things. The mayor has a dauntless task while riding herd on the council... "
Erik M wrote on Nov 16, 2008 7:11 AM: