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McKinney expects $3.4 million in savings
By Chris Beattie, cbeattie@starlocalnews.com
McKinney anticipates $3.4 million in expenditure savings by the end of the fiscal year, and projects revenues will come in at $89.8 million next year.
City Manager Jason Gray last week updated the McKinney City Council on the city's current and projected budget. The council will adopt the FY 2013 budget on Sept. 18.
"It looks like from an expenditure side, we're approximately $3.4 million to the good for the current fiscal year," Gray said, referring to charts that outlined expenditures and revenues from recent years compared with this year.
The city's property tax rate is set to remain at nearly $0.59 per $100 valuation. Rate constancy stems from average McKinney home values slightly decreasing since 2008.
The rate is well below the rollback rate, a standard to which citizens could elect to "rollback" if the council were to adopt a higher rate.
"The average bill for a citizen of McKinney will stay relatively constant and, in many cases, will actually go down," Gray said.
At-large Councilman Roger Harris stressed to Gray that the city should be looking to drop the tax rate, rather than just maintain it. "It's something that's been weighing on my mind," Gray responded.
Revenues and transfers for the proposed FY 2013 budget amount to $89.8 million. Once the city collects what Gray expects to be increased revenues from the current fiscal year, it will have close to $500,000 more than expenditures in its general fund. Gray said the city staff is looking over potential options on which to spend that money.
"There are always two different ways of doing these budgets: one is to budget it down to the dollar, and the other is to allow for a little bit of flexibility," Gray told the council. "While half-a-million dollars is a lot of money, on nearly a $90 million budget it ends up not being a whole lot of differentiation...It's a good problem to have."
Mayor Brian Loughmiller said that the city has "some very credible needs out there that are capital items" and that it might want to use the savings to address them now. One such need, he said, could be more police officers patrolling city streets.
Loughmiller said he's received lots of emails in recent months regarding home invasions, which he credited partially to the city's continued growth. The FY 2013 budget proposes adding two police positions - a property room safety officer and crime scene technician - but not more patrol officers.
"Naturally, as a city grows, we have to deal with increasing crime rates," Loughmiller said. "I'm interested in knowing...how we're affecting or managing the operational side of the police."
Gray assured the council that "public safety is always going to be one of those areas we look very hard at," and that the issue is at the top of his mind. He said such savings should be used for one-time capital expenses.
The first budget public hearing is Tuesday, and the city will publish ordinances with council-suggested changes on Sept 9. A second public hearing and the adoption of the budget, tax rate and free-rate ordinances will be Sept. 18.
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