The Culver Town Council is preparing next year’s budget, but a bit of extra information is needed prior to making cuts.
Budget work sessions were scheduled in preparation for fiscal year 2016. During the work sessions, department heads meet with members of the Culver Town Council to explain their budget line items.
Town Manager Jonathan Leist says the work was largely preliminary.
“Council didn’t make any real decision,” says Leist. “They’re kind of gathering all that information so we can put together one sheet and be able to look at what we would actually be able to fund.”
The Culver Fire, EMS, and Park Departments presented their budgets on Thursday. The remainder of the departments will present their budgets on Friday.
While not exempt from budget constraints, the Town of Culver does not anticipate making major budget changes. Advice has been given from the state not to anticipate more than 2.5-percent revenue growth. Culver has already given that sum to hires in the newly created EMS Department.
Leist says he personally met with each of the department heads prior to their presentations to the Town Council, but says the biggest unknown is still the EMS Department.
“Having now three full-time people in the department, you know, that’s quite an increase and just seeing how much of that is going to eat into anything else that we wanted to do,” says Leist. “But we had an idea of what that was going to be when we made the decision.”
Cuts will be made by the Town Council prior to budget adoption. The fiscal year 2016 budget will be put on display and approved later this year.
Culver spent time earlier this year planning town-wide projects that could be included in next year’s budget to improve quality of place.
