Memo- Review of 1999 Preliminary Budget
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. I Office of the City Manager I
Memorandum
To: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
From: Steven C. Mielke, City Manager fi
Date: November 6, 1998
Subject: Review of 1999 Preliminary Budget
Departments will be in attendance at the November work session to discuss their 1999
budget proposals. Each department has been allocated a small amount of time to
review programs and services offered within their department, and to highlight changes
and budget impacts of those programs and services. Additionally, the Police
Department will have prepared an extensive report on the programs and services
offered within the Police Department and will attempt to identify the costs of providing
. each of those programs and services.
The Finance Department and the Police Department have been reviewing, not only the
expenditures within the City of Hopkins, but also making comparisons to other
communities. This process has been only partially useful, in that each of the
departments do things differently, account for their time and efforts differently, and have
different circumstances within their communities which may impact how they choose to
spend their funds. Therefore, the discussions about comparisons to other communities
may be less helpful than had been hoped for. However, we do hope to provide useful
information about where we are spending our money and to provide the Council with
enough information to make decisions about which programs and services they wish to
offer here in Hopkins.
Since requesting this detailed analysis of the Police Department budget, Finance
Director Lori Yager and the PO personnel have been working diligently to complete this
effort. There is undoubtedly more work yet to be done and more time to be allocated to
cost comparisons. If you, in hearing this information, want additional research or would
like additional time to talk about these issues, we can easily arrange for one or both to
occur.
The budget as prepared is an effort on the part of staff to provide a budget that
accounts for all of the existing programs and services, while recognizing the increased
cost, primarily of personnel, in providing those services. I have asked departments to
. focus on programs and services because it is the staff's opinion that the only way to
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1999 Preliminary Budget Review
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. make significant reductions in city spending would be to eliminate or restructure some
of the programs and services we are offering. Our hope would be that if the Council
finds programs or services it would like to have looked at more closely, that we would
receive that direction and could take the time between now and the budget hearing to
more closely look at reductions in services. We also recognize that, generally
speaking, reductions in cost are best attained by reductions in personnel, since
personnel is around 70 percent of the cost of our expenditures.
If there are any specific areas you would like addressed at the Tuesday work session,
please contact me as soon as possible and I will ask the specific department head to
highlight that area.
Mayorccreview1999prelimbudgel
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