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Evansville faces $132,000 budget shortfall next year

EVANSVILLE — City leaders say everything is open for discussion, including furloughs, to close the city's $132,000 gap in next year's budget.

That shortfall—more than 6 percent of the budget—needs to be closed just to match this year's budget before looking at any kind of budget increases, City Administrator Dan Wietecha told the city council Tuesday night.

"That's why we need any and every good idea we can get," he said.

The council and many department heads met to begin discussion on the 2010 budget and hear a presentation from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. The alliance is a non-partisan, nonprofit research organization whose mission is to teach and inform the public about state and local government.

Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance President Todd Berry presented numbers from 2007 on how Evansville compares per capita to 20 Wisconsin cities with similar populations, 4,000 to 5,000.

At $103.50, Evansville's per capita general government ranks eighth out of the 20, falling near the median of $98.54. The city's street maintenance came in near the low end, ranking 18th; the city's fire/ambulance came in fifth, and police services ranked 16th.

Among the comparisons presented, Evansville stood out on the tax base—80.2 percent comes from residential. The low end of comparable cities was 34.6 percent for residential while the high end was 88.7 percent.

Tuesday's meeting was meant to give city council members and department heads "food for thought," Mayor Sandy Decker said.

Wietecha led the discussion by asking leaders to consider ideas to streamline services, consider reducing or eliminating services, increase or charge user fees and ideas to include the public in the budget discussion.

"There's not much fat in the city's budget, but I'm sure there's places we could do better," he said.

One idea already suggested to Wietecha was to not budget $30,000 for sidewalk improvements, as has been the case the last couple years.

Furloughing employees also would be on the table because employees make up about 55 percent of the budget, he said. But some city council members stressed many other options would be looked at first.

Several people commented on how hard it is to get residents to share ideas and become involved in the budget process.

Alderman Tony Wyse said he thinks part of the community thinks the city leaders can solve these problems, so they don't need to participate. Another part of the community always has a negative opinion about city actions, but doesn't offer suggestions, he said.

The city needs a campaign to bring those people together for discussions to get ideas, Wyse said.

Ideas suggested included neighborhood meetings, presentations and discussion at audiences such as the chamber of commerce and a phone number where people could leave ideas on an answering machine.