By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Hays Finance Director Kim Rupp reviewed the city’s 2016 Comprehensive Financial Management Policy during last week’s commission work session. Commissioner Henry Schwaller called it a “‘State of the City’ address, without the politics.”
Rupp reported “the city was able to fulfill the requirement in 2015 and again in 2016 of maintaining a 10% unreserved fund balance and a 25% budget stabilization fund for the General Fund.”
The total General Fund expenditures ended 2016 $700,000 under budget. The newly formed City Commission Capital Reserves captures these funds for future projects and pays cash to complete them rather than increasing costs by bonding.
Hays is the only city in Kansas which uses sales tax revenues solely to finance its General Fund.
There are 13 categories in the Comprehensive Financial Management Policy:
- Fund Balances and Reserves
- Budgeting
- Revenues
- Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and Fixed Assets
- Debt Management
- Cash Management and Investment
- Enterprise Fund Management
- Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting
- Risk Management
- Procurement
- Intergovernmental Revenues
- Economic Development
- Policy Review
Schwaller asked Rupp what 2017 may look like “if we continue the (declining) sales tax trend we’ve had. Have we built a budget that can withstand that?”
In the 2017 city budget document, it is noted sales taxes have been trending downward for the past year.
“We were pretty conservative when we built that budget, when we projected off 2016,” Rupp answered. “We can withstand some more declines in sales taxes–two to three percent. Based off what 2015 did, projecting off 2016 and predicting for 2017, we saw some positives. We budgeted a little bit of an increase off what 2015 did. We’re hoping some of the development around town will help that.”
Still, Rupp was cautious.
“We’re going to have to keep a close eye on it,” he acknowledged. “We’ve built enough reserves in. We have enough room we can weather those storms without eating into that 10 percent, I think. Maybe those take away from the transfer into commission reserves, but certainly I think we’ve built enough in we can weather a storm.”
“In 2005, we had $18 million in the bank,” recalled long-time commissioner Schwaller, “and all of it was dedicated to water exploration. Very little reserves, if any at all. We couldn’t buy a copier for the city manager’s office; we didn’t have the money. Anything we bought we had to issue debt. It was projected that by this time we’d have so much debt the mill levy would be over 40.”
The mill levy in 2005 was 34.4. The 2017 mill levy is 25. It has not increased for a number of years–a high priority goal and directive of city staff and the city commission.
“Because of a good city manager, good staff, and a commission that stuck to its guns, we’ve been able to steer over $50 million into reserves,” Schwaller said. “This is a great report and I want to thank everybody who made it possible.”
The newest commissioner, Sandy Jacobs, has been touring all the city departments and learning how they are managed and budgeted.
“I was very impressed our employees’ knowledge and the stewardship of our money,” Jacobs added. “Along with that, City Manager Toby Dougherty does a great job managing those folks.”
Mayor Shaun Musil and Commissioner Lance Jones were absent from the work session. Vice-Mayor James Meier presided over the meeting.