20080708 Articles by Bryan Schutt of the Carroll County Times on the Westminster FY 2008 2009 budget

Articles by Bryan Schutt of the Carroll County Times on the Westminster FY 2008 2009 budget:

July 8, 2008

Related: Westminster Dept Finance Budget 2008 – 2009 FY, Westminster Mayor 200505 to 2009 Thomas K. Ferguson

Westminster set to hold special meeting Jul. 8, 2008: Westminster’s Mayor and Common Council will hold a special meeting Wednesday to approve a $3.5 million bond. The $3.5 million will be used to finance several city street projects. The Common Council originally approved the decision to...


Westminster to borrow for street repairs By Bryan Schutt, Time Staff Writer Tuesday, June 17, 2008: Westminster council members and city officials said they needed to borrow $3.5 million to keep up with the city’s deteriorating streets. Following through with several months long of discussion, Westminster’s Common Council approved the decision last week to borrow $3.5 million to catch up with street repairs. The council stressed that the work they plan to complete is catch-up work only. “The council spoke loudly and clearly their strong desire and intent to try to get caught up and keep roads from getting much worse,” Mayor Thomas Ferguson said. “I’m not happy about taking on more debt but it’s the only realistic way to get this done.” Roland Unger, Westminster’s director of finance, said the $3.5 million loan is for a 9-year term, borrowed at a 3.66 percent fixed interest rate. He said the approved proposal came from BB&T and was about a full percentage lower than the other offer the city received from PNC Bank. The city will pay about $128,000 of interest-only payments this fiscal year and next, and then will pay about $571,000 in interest and principal for the remaining seven years of the loan, Unger said. The city only extended the loan for 9 years because they didn’t want to pay for something longer than it was useful. “Because the life of road repairs are about 10 years, we didn’t want to take out a loan that exceeds the life of what we’re repairing,” Unger said. Including the $3.5 million loan for the streets project, Unger said he estimates the city’s debt to asset ratio at about 27 percent. He said the city has about $26 million debt and about $94 million in assets. He said he doesn’t believe the amount of debt the city has will affect future borrowing and the debt service on the loan matched up with what the city would budget for street spending. “I don’t think we’ve exceeded what’s reasonable,” Unger said. “We should spend on streets is about $400,000 to $500,000 per year. The debt service on this loan is $571,000 per year.” …


Carroll County Times editorial: No agenda is sign of poor government Editorial for Wednesday, June 11, 2008: People often complain that governments have hidden agendas. Unfortunately, some Carroll County governments are very literally living up to that, if they have an agenda at all. Take for example the City of Westminster's Common Council meeting Monday night, where the council approved the fiscal year 2008 budget. The problem? Despite numerous attempts, we were unable to get an agenda for the meeting until about 3:45 p.m. Monday - just slightly more than 3 hours before the meeting. It was only then that it came to light that the city planned to approve the fiscal year 2008 budget. Needless to say, there probably were few average citizens who were aware of what the council was going to do at Monday night's meeting. Passing the budget is, more often than not, the most important decision any governing body will make during the entire year. And for some reason, the Westminster Common Council didn't view this as important enough to let taxpayers know about it sooner than three hours before the meeting. On the town's Web site, there was still no agenda posted Tuesday morning, just a notice that the May 26 meeting was canceled because of Memorial Day, and the next meeting was scheduled for June 9. There was no agenda for the meeting, and certainly no mention of the approval of the budget. The state's Open Meetings Law doesn't require governments to post agendas of their meetings. But common sense would suggest you aren't going to get too many people to your meetings if you don't tell them what the meeting will cover. Posting agendas is just a basic part of good government, whether it is required or not. The fact that the budget was approved without a public hearing is another matter altogether. This is just the most recent and egregious example of governments not posting agendas for meetings within a reasonable time frame. Municipalities around the county routinely do not post agendas until the day of the meeting, if at all...


Westminster OKs fiscal year 2009 budget By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Tuesday, June 10, 2008: The City of Westminster approved its fiscal year 2009 budget Monday night at the Common Council meeting without holding a public hearing on the complete budget. During the May 5 public hearing on the constant yield tax rate, the city decided the tax rate will remain at $0.44 per $100 and a narrative budget was passed out and made available to the public, but a public hearing on the proposed budget never took place. There weren’t any comments from the public about the budget during the May 12 Common Council meeting. An amendment to the city code says the mayor and Common Council shall hold a public hearing on the proposed capital budget on or before May 1. In what City Administrator Marge Wolf described as a difficult process of balancing the budget, the city’s budget calls for $37,633,002 in total appropriations for fiscal year 2009, down from last years $40.8 million in expenditures. The $37.6 million consists of about $16 million in general fund requirements, about $6 million in sewer fund requirements, about $13 million in water fund requirements and nearly $2 million for housing fund requirements. Also approved was a $3.5 million bond for street expenses. The first two years of the bond will have interest-only payments of about $128,000, according to Mayor Thomas Ferguson, and then the city will have a debt service of about $500,000 in principal and interest per year for seven years, he said. Ferguson said the city also laid out a prediction of revenues and expenditures for future years. “The revenue picture is not all that bright,” Ferguson said. “[In the future] the city will need to make tough decisions regarding revenues and expenditures.” Wolf said Westminster has its work cut out for making future budgets that will continue to encompass everything the city currently offers. The city is organizing several task forces to reduce spending, Wolf said. In August, it will look at all of its fees and assessments and try to create a clearer picture of future allocation of city funds. City officials are hoping for input from residents in the survey they are set to send out this month, but that information wouldn’t apply to the 2009 fiscal year budget. Councilman Robert Wack said although the budget process may have painted a harsh picture, the city has set a high standard of fiscal prudence, and in the long run he believes the city will benefit from the change in the budget format. “This was a huge step forward in quality of information on how we make decisions of how we spend taxpayers’ money,” Wack said. “It looks bad because of good things.”


Common Council moves up street projects, will take on debt By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Tuesday, May 13, 2008: Deciding that improvements to Westminster streets couldn’t wait, the Common Council revised the fiscal years 2009-2014 Capital Improvement Plan at Monday’s meeting to front load the city’s budget for street overlay projects, and go in debt in the process. The $7.4 million in the six-year CIP for street overlay projects has not changed. But the allocation of the funds has been reworked. Instead of backloading the city street projects, $2 million will be included in this year’s budget and $1.5 million will be included for the fiscal year 2010 budget. The city will have to borrow the money for this upcoming fiscal year’s projects, and the general fund budget will be adjusted to reflect the projects, according to City Administrator Marge Wolf. The Common Council’s justification to rework the budget was the importance of getting the projects done before the streets become much worse. “The cost of not doing this now is far greater than the cost of doing it now,” Councilman Greg Pecoraro said. He said the interest rates to borrow money are very favorable right now, asphalt costs will probably continue to rise, making the project even pricier, and the current slow down in construction in the area means the city will probably get the best contract price for the project as the council could hope for…


Westminster council delays budget hearing By Brian Schutt, Times Staff Writer Tuesday, May 06, 2008: Westminster city officials decided to hold off on the fiscal year 2009 budget public hearing because they believe the city government needs to re-evaluate the lack of funds put forth for city streets in the Capital Improvement Program. Instead, the Common Council conducted the public hearing for the constant yield tax rate Monday night. Mayor Thomas Ferguson said property assessments increased during the year and the city will generate an additional $510,315 because of the increase. The council won’t reduce the tax rate to offset the increased assessments, but it will not increase the tax rate either. The tax rate will remain at $0.44 per $100, according to Ferguson. The public record for the constant yield tax rate will remain open until 4:30 p.m. Friday. The public hearing for the budget was tentatively rescheduled until the May 12 meeting of the Common Council…


City officials tout budget document's new look By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Monday, May 05, 2008: Westminster’s new budget document represents a bright spot in an otherwise tough fiscal year to plan, according to city officials, and now, they say it’s time for residents’ input. While the old budget was about 25 pages of numbers, the new 100-page narrative budget outlays how each department spends its money. Copies of the budget will be available at the public hearing tonight. “People have been asking for more clarity,” Councilman Gregory Pecoraro said. “This form [of the budget] lets us show people what we’re actually spending money on. I think people could pick it up and say, ‘Now I understand where my tax dollars are going.’” City Administrator Marge Wolf said the narrative-style budget was something the council had been working toward for the past couple of years, and their specific budget layout was inspired from the City of Greenbelt’s budget design. She said Westminster’s new budget format is also recommended by the Public Finance Officer’s Association because it helps people understand the city’s spending. Mayor Thomas Ferguson said he believed the new budget is greatly improved over previous years’…


Proposed Westminster plan focuses on water, sewer issues By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Wednesday, April 30, 2008: Although city officials say Westminster needs additional funding for street work, water and sewer funds make up the majority of the six-year Capital Improvement Plan that was proposed during this week’s Common Council meeting. The water and sewer funds make up more than $58 million of the $74.6 million CIP. Maryland Department of the Environment projects make up the bulk of the expenses, Westminster Director of Planning, Zoning and Development Thomas Beyard said. “Water is a big item for the city and will continue to be one for the next few years,” Beyard said. He said the Westminster wastewater treatment plant upgrade and expansion will cost about $36 million, and $27 million of that money will probably be funded by MDE…


Westminster overhauls Capital Improvement Plan By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Tuesday, April 29, 2008: Budget concerns became a reality in Westminster Monday, when the proposed Capital Improvement Plan featured a scaled-back fiscal year 2009 budget. The Westminster Common Council was presented with a CIP drastically different from the one originally approved by the Westminster Planning and Zoning Commission on March 13. The revised document had 2009 expenditures totaling about $6 million; the March 13 document had about $8 million in expenses. Though the water and sewer funds make up $5.4 million of both the old and new CIP, the revised CIP eliminated $229,000 in funds for police vehicles and bumped the Americans with Disability Act park renovations until the 2010 fiscal year, which saved the city $125,000. But the most noticeable change came in the street department fund. The revised CIP cut more that $1 million from the Street Department. Streets, which are always a concern, were originally slated to have a $400,000 budget to start renovating city streets, but now all the work to be done on streets has been delayed until the 2010 fiscal year…


Westminster officials say they don't plan to boost taxes By Bryan Schutt, Times Staff Writer Sunday, April 27, 2008: An increase in taxes won’t be recommended in the city’s upcoming budget, according to Westminster city officials, despite worries about revenues for the fiscal year. City administrator Marge Wolf said the budget will be tight this year, especially because the city has seen so many increased operating costs. “Workers’ [compensation] increased by 30 percent, health insurance rates increased 10 percent and electric rates went up 40 percent,” Wolf said. The Common Council will meet on Monday to discuss the Capital Improvement Program, and it will hold a public hearing on the budget May 5…

20080708 Articles by Bryan Schutt of the Carroll County Times on the Westminster FY 2008 2009 budget