Rebecca Unger of the Desert Trail Reports:
After four hours and 420 pages, the city council vowed at its meeting of Tuesday, June 26, to return to reviewing the 2012/13 draft budget at its next meeting.
The council had various problems with City Manager Richard Warne’s budget that included archival photographs, political cartoons, colorful charts, graphs and pie charts, department descriptions — and $1.7 million from reserves for capital projects and purchases.
Three of the 5 Council were not impressed:
The council also told Warne to sharpen his pencil over administrative costs that seemed to balloon in the 2012/13 year as compared to prior years. The draft budget projected a three percent growth in revenues and a 25 percent growth in expenditures.
He was told to go back and trim down the 420+ page document into something understandable.
AND state law says you have to have an adopted budget by June…
Another mis step for the new City Manager in 29
I was there and judging by Mr Warne’s body language and facial expressions he was NOT happy that he had been called to task by both the Public as well as Council Members. This despite his proclamation that “he could take it like a man”.