2012 City of Verona budget and tax rate

The recommended 2012 City of Verona budget is now available for public review and comment. The word "recommended" means that:

• The department heads made their requests
• Administration made some adjustments
• The Finance Committee made decisions on priorities
• Administration made further adjustments in response to those decisions
• The budget now goes to the public and the full Common Council for everyone else to weigh in

Here are my highlights:

2012 is currently recommended to have primarily a "cost-to-continue" budget, meaning that we're mostly aiming to maintain existing service levels. Even this approach results in a 1.5% increase in property taxes, or an increase of $23.40 on a home assessed at $250,000.

The school of thought shared by several of us elected officials is that it's better to have small tax increases each year than to have 0% increases some years and larger increases other years. The City's costs to provide services go up each year and we can only cut so much before we need to take an increase to catch back up. By smoothing out the increases each every year, we can make it easier for taxpayers to adapt.

The Fire Department will see an increase in staffing that is roughly half of what its strategic plan calls for this year. We currently have a full crew at the station 8 hours/day and the plan called for increasing that to 12 hours/day in 2012. We'll actually be going to 10 hours/day. It's a small step that keeps our fire protection services moving in the right direction at minimal increased cost.

One of the issues we're keenly aware of is that the vast majority of the City of Verona's staff salaries are well below the average of comparable communities. This creates problems when trying to attract and retain quality staff. Keep in mind that we run a pretty lean ship when it comes to staffing quantities, so we need above average performance out of the people that we have on-board. The 2012 budget adds $40K out of an estimated $100K needed to close that gap.

One of the most heavily debated topics was adding another police officer this year. The Police Department has a very solid analysis of where their staffing level should be, and 2012 as proposed will have them one officer short. Adding another police officer would have meant another 1.2% increase in the mill rate - almost doubling the existing increase. The current feeling is that it's simply not fair to ask taxpayers to absorb this additional cost when many of them continue to struggle this year.

There is a lot more detail included in the Mayor's memo at the top of the budget document itself. Click here to view it.

A Committee of the Whole meeting for budget discussion is scheduled for Monday 11/21 at 6pm at City Hall. The official public hearing will be the following Monday 11/28 at 7pm during the usual Common Council meeting.