Liveblogging: Peoria City Council
Posted in Local with tags Add new tag, peoria city manager on October 7, 2008 by Billy DennisI arrived shortly before 6 p.m., and the meeting is underway. Updates added to the bottom
UPDATE: Turner wants to know if city is tracking evenue lost when businesses go out of business owing the city HRA taxes. Scroggins says the city if going after th taxes, but figures not included in this estimate.
Utility taxes are a primary source of capital funds. Says that gambling money is down over the past five years, and heck, who knows, this source of revenue could go up.
Per capita shared revenue: Have exceeded expectations during the past few years. Trend is starting to decline. Turner asked is they are paid in a timely manner. Scroggins says state has previously gotten behind, but are historically timely. Turner wonders if state will start to get behind. Scroggins promises to monitor closely. 10-15 percent of city revenue.
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UPDATE: I’m sorry. Did I just hear our budget director just way that every single figure in his revenue projection is based on numbers generated BEFORE the events of the last two weeks? Yeah. This will go well.
Scroggins says they estimated 5.75 percent increase in EAV. I’m gonna bet that there is little to new growth in EAV. No one is going to build. No one is going to buy existing homes. Prices will drop, forcing roperty values down.
Once again we have a bureaucrat bragging about property tax rates are stable. Bug fat hairy deal. The levy continues to grow as fast as the city can grow it without rasing the rate. The amount rate is a function of the amount of property taxes claimed by the government, not the other way around. Your rate can go DOWN, and the amount of taxes you are actually paying can go up. It is such bullshit.
Gulley gets it. Comments on how the tanking will change the numbers. Scroggins will try to study the figures later. Gulley notes the foolishness of making big plans now when the trends are the way they are. “How do we budget in a changing economy. I don’t think we can look at (previous) trends.” Scroggins says his estimate are very conservative, and we’ve been accurate during the past four years. Cannot guess what the economy will do, but we will be monitored. My two cents: Scroggins is insufficiently nervious about city’s future revenue.
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Pat Nichting lauds interim Peoria City Manager Henry Holling for committing to submit a ballanced budget. We’ll see.
Eric Turner says he’ll work with Holling to encourage minority hiring.
Spears wants seems to want there to be a process in place to know in advance exactly how any “manna from heaven” dollars will go.
