Ephrata council passes 2009 budget

EPHRATA — The Ephrata City Council passed the 2009 budget, which will scale services back to 2007 levels.

The city is predicting a drop in revenues of about $1 million when compared to last year, this is about 7 percent of the budget. The budget is set for a 13 percent drop in sales tax, a 31 percent drop in fees and fines and other charges and an about 25 percent drop in outside sources of revenue.

City Administrator Wes Crago said the city is trying to be prepared if the economy does become bad.

“I’ll underscore again that all of our indicators for the coming year are positive,” he said. “The local economy appears to be unaffected by what’s happening nationally.”

He said Chelan’s and Quincy’s budgets do have more optimistic budgets, he said it’s likely their forecasts will hold.

“We had to take a more conservative approach,” he said. “We didn’t have to lay anybody off, but we are trimming back pretty dramatically what’s going on.”

The only increase in revenue they expect is in property taxes, Crago said the change is mostly because of higher assessments and new construction.

As a result of the drop in projected revenue, the city will cut services back to 2007 levels. Crago said this won’t make the streets or parks unsafe.

“Parks in 2007 were not bad. They weren’t falling apart,” he said during a budget workshop in October. “They just didn’t have the shine that they had this last year. That’s the sort of change we’ll be doing.”

City staff chose to balance the budget by using about $546,000 out of their reserves in their current expense fund. The current expense fund pays for more than 200 items including salaries for city staff police and the fire department.

While the city is planning on a revenue drop in 2009, the last month of 2008 has seen increases in the city’s revenue. The city’s reserves climbed $56,000 during the last two weeks, Crago said. They have about $882,000 in reserves, compared to about $727,000 at the end of October. The city froze unnecessary spending earlier in the year.

“We’re probably running about 18 to 20 percent below budget on spending,” he said. “The Public Works department in particular has done an amazing job of just limiting their use of equipment.”