The City Budget is undoubtedly the single most important piece of business we do as a city. It’s a months-long process every year from about February through May. It’s the most important because it’s the practical outworking of our priorities; said more simply, it’s when we put our money where our mouths are.
As we create the budget, there are several important priorities. One is to be transparent, gathering lots of input from our constituents and our professional staff, and then communicating that back in a way that allows for continuous input and refinement. That’s part of why it takes so long. It’s a big job just to put together a first draft, but then we pass it around, review it, and create opportunities for everyone, including the public, to comment on it before it’s finalized.
A second priority is to see that the expenditures we’re planning reflect our priorities. There’s never enough money to do everything, hard choices always have to be made, and we work hard to account for the diversity of opinion we receive about what’s most important for the next year, and even farther out than that.
And finally, we have to be prudent in forecasting revenues to match what we want to spend; spend too much and we’re in one kind of trouble since we’re required to have a balanced budget, spend too little relative to what we collect and people rightly feel overtaxed. Get it just right and we maintain a proper “rainy day fund”, getting the right results from what we spend.
This year is a happy one for the City budget-wise. We created a very conservative budget last year because, as you will recall, the pandemic hit hard in March, just as we had gotten underway with planning the budget we’re living under now. We forecast an eight percent decline in revenues, PLUS a $2,000,000 contingency, which is money we would only spend if it came in, but we were prepared to run the City without it. The very good news is that we already know, with a couple of months left in the budget year, that we will cover that contingency, we will meet our lowered revenue plan, and we might even exceed last year’s revenues by the end of the fiscal year. That’s right, our revenues will be close to, and may even exceed the pre-pandemic year!
How could that happen? It’s simple, but not easy. When the emergency began, we adopted an orientation to fight with everything we had not to let the pandemic crush our spirits and ruin our livelihoods. It was not our role to solve the medical aspects of the virus or create vaccines. It was our role to analyze and distribute good information, establish proper safety protocols, and balance the need for all aspects of public health; not just physical health, but mental, financial and community health for the citizens of Tucker. Part of that balance was to leave as much room as prudently possible for individuals, businesses and other organizations to make smart, creative decisions about how to survive and even prosper over the course of what has turned out to be a much longer than anticipated battle. Now the report cards are starting to come in.
We had more new businesses created than we lost during the pandemic, including several new restaurants who are hitting it out of the park. Our manufacturing and distribution sector has been solid for the most part, and many have prospered, even struggling to find enough good employees. Sales tax receipts are up in the County, reflecting continued strong consumer spending, albeit in some different ways than before. Businesses staying in business and employing lots of our citizens has led to improved receipts from Occupational Tax Certificates, alcohol taxes, franchise fees and other key sources of income to the City. As property values increase, so will our small slice of your property taxes, which fund our parks. SPLOST revenues, which fund many capital projects, may be up slightly from last year. And, as the hospitality industry gets back on its feet, even taxes from those operations will begin to return to normal levels and beyond.
I’m grateful to our community for its balanced, responsible and patient approach to facing this crisis. As we finish the budget from now through the first of June, I invite you to ask questions and examine the priorities we’re developing. Just as we’ve all been in this public health crisis together, we’ve all been in on the solutions together, and we’re all heading into the future together. It’s a bright future indeed for all of us in Tucker and, as always, I’m glad we’re in it together!
