General fund down 14%, total city expenditures drop 20%
MT. PLEASANT—The Mt. Pleasant City Council has adopted a $3.4 million general fund budget for fiscal year 2023, down about $550,000 from the $3.95 million in fiscal 2022, a drop of 14%.
Mt. Pleasant is projecting total expenses for everything the city does (that’s the general fund combined with all of the enterprise and special funds) of $8.7 million in FY 2023, down from almost $10.7 million in FY 2022. That’s a drop in city expenses of nearly $2 million, or 18%.
The 2022 fiscal year ran from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. Similarly, the 2023 fiscal year started July 1 of the current year and will run until June 30, 2023.
Dave Oxman, city finance director, said the 2022 budget was artificially inflated by receipt of one-time American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money. The 2022 budget also reflected a one-time transfer of retained funds from projects that were unable to be completed in 2020.
The fact that budgeted revenues in FY 2022 were exceptionally high helps explain why the FY 2023 general fund budget, as well as the combined total budget for all city activities, dropped significantly from FY 2022 to FY 2023, he said.
Highways and public improvements , part of the general fund, saw a 38% increase, or more than $117,000, in FY 2023, due to ambitious plans for road resurfacing. Some of the increase occurred be- cause funds had to be moved forward on projects that were originally planned for the previous fiscal year (2022) but delayed until the current fiscal year, Oxman said.
The administrative expenses budget for 2023, also in the general fund, increased by 6% from 2020, while the swimming pool budget was up 4%.
But there were also significant general-fund decreases from FY 2022 to FY 2023 in buildings and grounds, down over $41,000; the fire department, down $22,000; and the police department, down just over $21,000.
Oxman said the city is in sound financial condition. He said that the city has been guided for years by a conservative fiscal policy that has centered around avoiding debt and paying for things as they go.
Regarding the FY 2023 budget, he said, “If anything, we erred on the conservative side, which should give the city some cushion in the event of unforeseen circumstances.”
Many of the city’s enter- prise and special funds— items such as the Power Department, Water Department and Community Develop- ment and Renewal Agency (CDRA)—also dropped from FY 2022 to FY 2023. The combined total of 10 such funds went from $6.7 million in FY 2022 to $5.33 million projected for FY 2023. That translated to a drop of 20%.
Asked how inflation and supply-chain problems have affected the city, Oxman said that so far, Mt. Pleasant has been able to cope with increased costs of goods and services. But supply problems are significantly impacting some departments.
For instance, transformers for a house or new business service used to take days or at most weeks to arrive. Now delivery of residential electrical transformers is more than a year out. And suppliers are now saying commercial transformers could be as much as two years out.
Oxman said the Power Department has been able to mitigate the impact through swapping agreements with other municipal power departments, but the situation makes it difficult to promise delivery of services at specified times.
