Vienna officials believe city budget is balanced
By ROGER ADKINS
POSTED: March 7, 2008
VIENNA — City officials believe they have balanced the budget for 2008-2009 fiscal year and plan to vote on the document at a meeting next week.
Council members received a copy of a balanced budget during a meeting Thursday at the city building on 29th Street.
They will have a week to review the document and an in-depth discussion will be held during a 7 p.m. meeting next Thursday. Officials hope to vote on the budget at that meeting.
“We do have what we feel will be the final version of the budget, the balanced version,” said Councilman Bob Marshall, chairman of the finance committee.
Marshall said one highlight of the budget is the purchase of a street sweeper at a cost of $110,000. Mayor David C. Nohe said the city’s current street sweeper is in need of replacement.
“We’ve just exhausted ourselves with the old one,” he said.
Nohe and Marshall said the budget also includes $500,000 for street and infrastructure improvements. They said this is the eighth consecutive year the city has dedicated that amount to streets and infrastructure.
“That’s highly indicative of this administration’s commitment to improving streets,” Marshall said.
Nohe said officials took an 80 kilowatt generator out of the budget. However, the dire need for an emergency generator urged Nohe to appropriate emergency funds from the current budget for the item, which could cost as much as $50,000. Nohe said the police and fire departments would need the generator in the event of a major emergency that involved massive power loss.
City officials also had to remove the purchase of a large dump truck for the public works department. In addition, the police department will receive two cruisers instead of three.
“Chief Steve Stephens withdrew the normal request for a third cruiser because he felt they could get by with two this year,” Nohe said.
A new building for the fire department and a building for the parks department, a total of about $700,000, are not included in the budget as line items. However, Nohe and Marshall said the city still wants to make those two new buildings a reality in the next fiscal year. The plan is to use capital reserve and other funds to build the buildings, Nohe said.
